ABSTRACT
This chapter begins to set out the argument that the effect of laws governing war is not merely to civilise war, and establishes a regime of permissible war. The success of the corporations guaranteed by those regimes of permission involves benefits for those states or at least for elites within those states. However, corporate involvement in war-making arises from the common interests that are consolidated in the relationship between those institutions, rather than a 'rupture' in an idealised notion of an antagonistic or oppositional interests. Indeed, corporate power is wholly reliant upon a series of state-organised regimes of permission. It is the benefits that accrue to those states, as measured by the three structural advantages outlined above that provide clear incentives for the state facilitation of corporate war-making. The corporate social responsibility strategy outlined in various Britain's largest arms manufacturer, BAE Systems' documents, can be understood precisely as a process of civilising the technologies of war.
