Since the end of the Cold War, many observers have commented that civil war and local violence have increased dramatically, with Kaplan pointing to “The Coming Anarchy” as a feature of the twenty-first century (Kaplan 1994). These “new wars” of the post-Cold War era have been described as being about identity issues and not the geopolitical and strategic issues underlying earlier conflicts (Kaldor 1999; Newman 2004). But in the past ten years, scholars, policymakers, and activists have also increasingly highlighted the material economic factors that are critical features of many contemporary conflicts. They have pointed to the importance of natural resources, especially oil and diamonds, in fueling long-running civil wars in Africa. A corollary of this attention to economic factors is that the spotlight of international attention regularly focuses on the role of private investors in facilitating and even causing conflict, corruption, and criminality in weakly governed states. Given the high profile and influence of major corporations operating in the developing world, some activists and policymakers argue that the private sector is critical to conflict prevention efforts. They seek to integrate business into a variety of voluntary governance regimes intended to control or reduce the links between economic transactions and civil war. Why has this shift in understanding and action occurred? Since when is the private sector given responsibility for peace and security issues that are normally reserved for public authorities? Why has governance by the private sector been adopted as the “obvious” solution to these conflicts?