[afandian]

Nah, private companies have got involved in that kind of thing since forever:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

[denzil_correa]

UFC : The Chiquita banana company who lobbied for the "1954 Guatemalan coup d'état" - an operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan government. Why? The elected president policies were a threat to UFC's exploitative labor practices. CIA involved, Guatemalan government overthrown, dictatorial rule, civil war for decades.

The CIA even launched another operation to find the Soviet influence in Guatemala to justify the coup. The operation was a failure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27état

[pecg]

And the same kind of practices where done in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia, Perú, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, to name a few.

[nickpsecurity]

And for the "fighting wars" part, let's not forget this one:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes

They were quite effective, too.

[pm90]

The nice thing is that these wars are now fought in boardrooms rather than battlefields.