Whither Westphalia?: Sean McFate’s The Modern Mercenary

Abstract

In his 2014 publication The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What they Mean for World Order , Sean McFate uses the concept of “neomedievalism” to conclude that private military companies (PMCs) will play a dominant role in a twenty-first century characterized by decline of the Westphalian order. The book valuably depends on both McFate’s research and personal experiences with DynCorp International to support its conclusions. Yet, McFate’s dependence on neomedievalism and case studies of Liberia and Somalia fall prey to misattribution and selection bias, in turn weakening McFate’s valuable investigation of PMCs.