In offering explanations for the US's enormous post-Cold War military budget … nearly $280 billion for the year 2000 … most defense critics point to the influence of weapon makers pork-barrel politics. Those are certainly factors.

But in this eye-opening book, Ken Silverstein looks at another, all but unexamined force: private warriors, the generals, gunrunners and national security staffers who were cast adrift by the end of the Cold War and are now continuing business in the private sector. Private Warriors moves from an arms dealer's estate in Vienna to a weapons show in Rio de Janeiro to a Soldier of Fortune convention in Las Vegas. It introduces little known figures such as Ernst Werner Glatt, a right-wing German who for many years was the Pentagon's preferred gunrunner, and Andrew Marshall, an aging but still sprightly Cold Warrior who ardently promotes the development of needless new weapons systems.

Other encounters are with more recognizable names such as General Alexander Haig, the former Secretary of State who now lobbies for China and sells weapons to Turkey, and Frank Gaffney, an ex-Pentagon official who has grown rich by promoting the biggest boondoggle of them all, Star Wars. Today's private warriors have one thing in common: a financial interest in war, and the connections to push for a continuation of Cold War military policy.

“A four-star tale of government and industry running amuck.” – Kirkus Reviews

“There's no shortage of shady scoundrels to keep the pages turning. It's great stuff, a nonfiction book that reads like a Tom Clancy novel.” – Christian Science Monitor

“If contemporary novels such as Don DeLillo's and James Elroy's American Tabloid evoke the melodramatic outlines of a secret government … then Ken Silverstein's Private Warriors depicts the real thing behind the fiction, the steely-jawed careerists whose Cold War mentality and insider savvy hold sway over national policy.” – In These Times

Ken Silverstein is a freelance journalist living in the private sector. Washington, D.C. He previously worked for the Associated Press in Latin America. He is a regular contributor to Harpers Magazine, The Nation and Mother Jones. Private Warriors is his fourth book.

 

 Publication
Cloth: April 2000
Paper: August 2001

224 pages

Cloth
1 85984 756 0
US$25 / £19 / CAN$35

Paper
1 85984 325 5
US$15 / £10 / CAN$22