As in the UK, the US armed forces have massively expanded their use of private military contractors since the end of the Cold War. From military logistics, training, maintenance and intelligence analysis to management, the issue of defence privatization in the USA has been well documented. However, little attention has been paid to its origins in the transition from Republican to Neoliberal models of the state, the citizen and the soldier. In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan already introduced the ideological rationale for the outsourcing of military functions to private firms with his advocacy of the ‘small state’. Simultaneous increases in defence spending prevented these policies from having a major impact on the composition of the armed forces, but Reagan's successors George Bush (1989–93), Bill Clinton (1993–2001) and George W. Bush (2001–9), have applied Neoliberal principles to the military on a large scale. The end of the superpower confrontation facilitated these reforms because it seemed to usher in a more peaceful ‘new world order’ which permitted significant cuts in government defence spending and the size of the armed forces. In addition, the Clinton government favoured essentially Neoliberal policies, albeit perhaps not labelling them so, such as cuts in the military budget and the reduction of government debt. US public opinion supported these cuts as part of a major peace dividend.