The Private Security State

I have just read a very interesting article from Naomi Klein about how the most profitable sector of business over the last year has been in arms sales and private security. This is in anticipation of the Peak Oil era of endless eco-conflict, civil disturbances and social chaos. Klein states that in order to solve climate change (which is how the politicians are trying to spin the issue of Peak Oil to avoid mentioning the looming nightmare of peak oil) the economists and the politicians must spend billions and billions of pounds on trying to create new technologies to create new energy sources, with no guarantee that any of them will work. Therefore the rich are not investing in those new technologies, instead they are investing in new security industries, private security companies and new weapons productions.

This surge in investment in the private security industry is based on the self evident truth that the rich in the future will require private armies to protect them from the revolting mobs. Private security will be essential for all the rich in the future as Peak Oil impoverishes society to breaking point. The use of private security industry in Iraq with firms such s Blackwater can be seen as a training ground for the future application of the Private Security Society.

The Private Security Society will be the para-military wing of the Corporate Fascist State that will replace our democratic system once Peak Oil hits. National governments will be under the control of the corporations that will survive Peak Oil, as whoever pays the piper calls the tune. Groups such as Blackwater and others in Iraq will form the nucleus of the private armies for hire that will protect the rich in the post-Peak Oil era. Big government will collapse as the economic system collapses and huge swathes of all nations will become Grey Zones where the power of the state, and the rule of law, no longer operate.

We can see pre-cursors of this process already underway in parts of France where society is already collapsing and riots are already breaking out. Here the state no longer controls the streets, instead the Islamists, drug dealers and criminals control the streets. The police when they enter these areas are attacked by rioters and criminals with sniper rifles. Therefore the criminals run the society and the state is just the sponsor of the welfare state for those that live in those areas. The state as its presently exists, and the powers it has, are all products of the present pre-peak oil economic system. Once the oil begins to run out, then power of the state begins to wane. Vast swathes of every nations will no longer be capable of being policed, as the money and the means to police those areas will no longer exist.

As the power of the state wanes, the power of the private security firms rises and the Private Security State will be created. No doubt the super rich will go to well guarded tropical islands or other isolated areas where they will be guarded by private armies, but for the remains of the middle class and the average rich in nations such as Britain, then the only choice will be to hire private security to protect them. This has already happened in nations such as Brazil and Colombia, where the private security industry is used to protect the rich whilst the police are used to target the criminals.

The private security industry will profit as will the private jails, the security and surveillance technology industries and those companies that manufacture weapons to equip the operatives of the Private Security State. The looming threat of hundreds of millions of eco-migrants entering Europe as climate change accelerates is an inevitability. The nation states of Europe will require increasing tighter border controls, internal surveillance of migrants, more removal facilities, more border policing, greater surveillance of terrorists and other threats. This means the state will be required to do more, as the means to do is shrinking.

This conjunction of events will lead to both a security crisis but also a social crisis. The fact that the economists and bankers are already investing in profiting from the nightmare scenario shows us that the nightmare of Peak Oil will not be solved.