ABSTRACT
In the years following the Vietnam War, starting with the end of the draft, the armed forces of the United States formed a “military cluster” (0.5 percent of US households), a professional, long-serving fi ghting force with its own unique system and set of values, ethics, and beliefs. By default, they would fi ght the next war and the future wars of the United States assisted by various private military fi rms (PMFs). The most signifi cant transformation in the American conduct of war since World War II and the invention of the atomic bomb was not technological, but cultural, social, and political: the removal of the American people from the conduct of the wars of the United States .
