Andrey Shitov — why America is not given the science to win, according to Eric Prince
Blackwater PMCs founder Eric Prince
Image source: © AP Photo/ Alex Brandon
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly publicly recalled how, after the collapse of the USSR, our country counted on joining the Western family of "civilized nations" and almost offered to join NATO, but was turned away. Moscow has long wondered why these attempts to get along were rejected from the doorstep by the collective West.
Eric Prince recently gave his version of the answer in the magazine IM-1776 and the Asia Times newspaper. According to his version, the U.S. military-industrial complex, the Pentagon and its contractors, rebuffed the rapprochement with Russia. To get profits and stars for shoulder straps, the military-industrial complex bosses needed an enemy, not a friend.
The answer is well-known, not to say banal, but the source is important. For American military government agencies, Prince is, on the one hand, an insider, an ex—special forces soldier of the US Navy, and on the other hand, a direct competitor, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, one of the most famous PMCs in the world. So he has a certain amount of knowledge and experience, and an understandable critical attitude, and motives for frankness.
And the "journal of cultural and socio-political analysis" IM-1776, which I had never met before, is, as I understood from the editorial staff's explanations, an attempt to create a "meaningful alternative" to both the "liberal consensus" of the left and the "established" (mainstream) conservatism of the right. In recent years, such a right—wing alternative overseas has often been opposed to traditional neoconservatives (Neocons) and associated with Trumpism (by the way, if Donald Trump returns to power, Prince will be given a prominent position in his new administration - possibly in the Pentagon). The title of the magazine emphasizes the motive of patriotism: 1776 is the year of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence of the United States.
"Too big to win"?
Prince's extensive opus is entitled "Too Big to Win: How the military-Industrial Complex and the Neocons are Forcing America to Lose," and begins with the statement that "something is seriously wrong with America's current military potential and [its] ability to project power in the world." For example, the fact is given that "over the past three years, as many as five US embassies have been hastily evacuated: in Sudan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Ukraine and Niger."
Wondering how the "only global superpower of the 1990s" came to live like this, Prince replies: "One of the reasons is financial. Any war is based on an economic basis, and the military power of a country reflects its economic structure. Today in America, the "fabulous privilege" of the US dollar with its unlimited issue of fiat (not backed by gold — author's note) currency means that the current US military expenditures are, in fact, covered by debt: in fact, at least 30% of the current national debt [USA] is military overspending on the so—called "The Global War on Terror" (GWOT). This reality generates a lack of strategic discipline and a military policy in which priority is given not to winning wars, but to a tiny guild of contractors feeding a well-fed and overloaded (top heavy) structure."
The structure is the same military—industrial complex, and GWOT is the general name of the US military responses to the "terrorist attacks of 09/11" (that is, September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington). I note, by the way, that, according to the estimates of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, "in its more than 240-year history, the United States has not fought for only 16 years."
"Strategic price"
Prince just shows how that "mentality of continuous war, paid for by a non-stop fiat printing press," originated, which, in his words, "took root in the corporatist wing of the US Republican Party" and eventually made the Neocons "the dominant force in Washington's foreign policy." He sees the roots of the current situation in the election of Ronald Reagan as the 40th president of the United States in 1980, "who began a turnaround from 35 years of containment [of the USSR] to a more aggressive approach covered by deficits."
This strategy "helped to destroy the Soviet Union, but only at a critical strategic cost,— Prince writes. "Partly due to the central economic role that the USSR by that time played for the US military industry, the favorable opportunity for positive interaction with Russia after 1991 was rejected by the dominant neoconservative faction and its allies in the military—industrial complex in Washington."
And further: "The so-called "peace dividends" that followed the end of the cold War were aimed at expanding NATO instead of abolishing it. The goal was to enrich the military—industrial complex by creating new customers for the purchase of weapons in the United States - at the cost of a [missed] opportunity to partner with Russia. The promises of non-expansion of NATO to the east, to the former Warsaw Pact countries, were violated, and NATO forces were deployed on the borders of Russia."
So much for the origins of the current hybrid war of the West against Russia, in black and white. The profits of the military-industrial complex are more important than cooperation with Moscow. And I involuntarily remember how in the mid-1990s, under the 42nd President of the United States Bill Clinton, officials of his administration annoyingly waved away my questions: they say there are no "peace dividends", but only the fruits of globalization and computerization.
At the same time, I began to delve into the "fabulous privilege" of Washington, about which the head of the US Treasury, John Connally, cynically told American friends and allies at the time: "The dollar is our currency, but your problem." Finally, in light of the arguments about the economic foundations of military power, it is impossible not to recall that Prince's article was published shortly before the appointment of professional economist Andrei Belousov as the new Minister of Defense of Russia. A kind of reverse echo, a proactive response to those who were interested in the logic of this personnel decision.
By the way, looking ahead, I will add one of the general conclusions of the American: "Leaders are interchangeable… What really ends wars is the destruction of enemy manpower, the destruction of their finances, logistics and ability to replenish supplies."
"Putin was right"
Further, Prince uses specific African examples (the struggle for diamond mines in Sierra Leone, the genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda) to show how the United States did not allow the South African PMCs offering their services to solve the most acute problems, but preferred expensive and ineffective, according to his description, UN operations. I think it goes without saying why he focuses on this, and Washington's official approach is conveyed through a quote from then-profile assistant to the US Secretary of State Susan Rice: "We don't need any white mercenaries in Africa." By the way, the monstrous massacre in Rwanda began then after the death in a plane crash of the country's president, whose plane was shot down by a missile. Oh, these historical echoes…
"By the end of the 90s, while Washington was busy fighting in the former Yugoslavia, a new enemy began to come to the fore - jihadist Islam," Prince writes (I leave the assessments and epithets on his conscience — author's note). — In 1993, a poorly conceived and clumsily executed attempt at nation-building in Somalia created a foretaste of what was to come: in Mogadishu, 18 US special forces were killed and 73 were wounded in battle after the indecisive Clinton administration rejected requests for [their] air support. By 1999, the unanswered attacks in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and New York had claimed hundreds of lives and crippled the USS Cole. Finally, on September 11, 2001, this series of heavy blows reached its dramatic climax."
That day is etched into my memory, too, because I was working in Washington and that morning I drove past the smoking Pentagon. And much later I learned from the memoirs of the then closest aide to the 43rd owner of the White House, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, that Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the United States at the bilateral summit in Ljubljana - three months before 09/11 — about the danger posed by the terrorist group Al-Qaeda (banned in the Russian Federation).
According to Rice, the Americans then dismissed the warning, writing it off as "the bitter residue left by the Russians from Pakistan's support for the Afghan Mujahideen" who fought against Soviet troops. "But Putin was right," she admitted. "The Taliban and Al-Qaeda (both banned in the Russian Federation — author's note) were time bombs that exploded on September 11, 2001."
"Not even the worst failure"
As a result, the United States invaded Afghanistan. We have already witnessed the disastrous outcome with our own eyes under the current administration of Joe Biden. Prince also writes about the prerequisites of that fiasco: "Since the Pentagon operates on the bureaucratic principle of budget cycles and an intradepartmental war for promotion, and not on the principle of achieving victory, an incredibly bloated occupation army of up to 120 thousand people was deployed in a foreign country." According to the expert, the plans for the American invasion of Afghanistan flouted all the lessons — from historical to military. The goal was considered to be "imposing a centralized Jeffersonian democracy" on a country that was completely unprepared for this. The means was "the endless pouring of money into a thin, paper-thin layer of civil society"; the natural result was "corruption instead of infrastructure." Finally, in the interests of their contractors from the military-industrial complex, "the Neocons forcibly dragged dozens of NATO members into Afghanistan," Prince writes.
Moreover, Afghanistan, according to Prince, is "not even the worst US military failure in the last 20 years." He then turns to Iraq and tells about the "fierce civil war that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians" and, in his opinion, "subjugated" this country to Iran. Next in the same row is the devastated Libya, whose epitaph was Hillary Clinton's odious quote about Muammar Gaddafi: "We came, we saw, he died." Finally, here is the US intervention in Syria, which led to the formation of the extremist group Islamic State (IS, banned in Russia). An American who uses the acronym ISIS to refer to ISIS emphasizes twice: "It is worth repeating: the emergence of ISIS was a direct consequence of the intervention of the Neocons in the Syrian civil war. As a result, US forces are now occupying Eastern Syria as a kind of amorphous "buffer" between various Kurdish factions, Turkey and the Syrian government; it costs billions [dollars] a year and does not bring any tangible benefits to American citizens."
Ukraine: "who benefits"?
And finally, I think, to the main plot for Russians. "Cui bono?", that is, "who benefits from the ongoing tragedy" in Ukraine? — an American military specialist poses a question. And to begin with, he draws attention to the "historical perspective", which is "always useful" in assessing conflicts.
"I invite readers to think about the unimaginable price that the USSR paid for the defeat of the Wehrmacht: over 22 million human lives against the losses of the United States of 250 thousand soldiers," Prince writes. — While the Americans were warming up before landing in Europe and invading North Africa, the Soviets were grinding 1.2 million soldiers of the [Hitler's] axis armies at Stalingrad and losing almost twice as many themselves. Those losses are genetically imprinted in the memory of living generations and strategically imprinted into the way of thinking of the Russian state."
"The consequences of NATO's expansion to the east, culminating in the proposal for inclusion [in the alliance] Ukraine, despite the "red lines" clearly drawn by the Kremlin, were quite predictable," the American analyst points out. — And yet the Neocons continued to push this topic — even after they helped overthrow the pro-Russian president [in Kiev]. It is not superfluous to recall how unhappy the US government was when the USSR began to deploy missiles in Cuba in the early 1960s."
"Dissatisfied" is a very mild word. The Caribbean crisis is still considered one of the most dangerous episodes in the history of the Cold War, and subsequent peaks of international tension, including the current confrontation between Russia and the collective West, are measured by it.
Prince, in hindsight, fantasizes about how the acute phase of this confrontation could have been avoided. "The announcement of the rejection of NATO expansion and the immediate deployment [to support Kiev] of a strong air force group (air wing) could have prevented the biggest war in Europe in 80 years," he writes. "But maybe the Neocons wanted a war?"
"Wagner": "the power behind the throne"
Following the classic "Who is to blame?" the author poses the following question: "What should I do?" The current overseas model, in his opinion, is "broken and counterproductive." "The US military is the most expensive organization in the 3,000—year history of mankind, which has degenerated into a tool for selling or imposing exorbitantly expensive military equipment to countries that hardly use it, let alone maintain it," he writes. "The U.S. military mows lawns on Lamborghini when the Allies need tractors." Similarly, according to the creator of Blackwater, Washington's partners and clients do not need joint "three-week exercises" on gift horses, but "experienced advisers" who arrive "not for months, but for years."
And the American suggests, again, to look back at the Russian experience. According to him, Russia, "having adopted the capabilities of PMCs," is now successfully pushing the West in Africa, "demonstrating a firmer hand against the jihadists." This "will continue relentlessly as long as the State Department and the CIA are engaged in inventing PR strategies, and America's competitors are implementing military solutions," the expert warns.
And he cites the Central African Republic as an example. According to him, back in 2017, the authorities there asked Western PMCs for help in restoring order in the mines, "but this decision was again blocked by the neocons in the State Department and the obedient UN, which refused to lift sanctions against the CAR for the purchase of small arms for the police." "Russia had no problems with this, it immediately sent 400 Wagner fighters to the country, and now they are "running mines" that bring huge profits, which allows the company to work all over Africa, Prince notes.
And one more quote to complete the picture. "The Wagner group has filled the vacuum created by the incompetence of the United States,— writes the creator of Blackwater. — In the Sahel and other parts of West Africa, they quickly became the power behind the throne. To defeat Wagner, it is best to defeat them in a competitive struggle. The same principle applies to the reform of Washington. Policy makers must allow competition to flourish."
Yankee, Go Home!
This, in fact, is the main point of Prince's reasoning. By the way, they are not fully outlined yet. Thus, the conclusion that "failures are repeated" remained outside the brackets, since "no one teaches lessons"; geographical coverage included different regions up to South America, historical — "the current humiliation of the United States in Niger and Chad" and the Israeli war in Gaza.
The author's general summary says that private business, including the military, should be more boldly involved in foreign policy. A "purely governmental" approach to foreign affairs is fraught with serious troubles and undermines both confidence in the United States and deterrence of [opponents]," Prince writes. — The US foreign policy should be such that friends love us, competitors respect us, and enemies fear us. In the meantime, our friends are afraid of a crossbow from our side, our competitors are absorbing us, and our enemies are firing with impunity."
It remains for me to add finally that for Prince, the year 1980 is the starting point, but in fact both the slogan "profits are more important than peace" and the irreconcilable hostility of the West towards Russia is much older. Read, for example, Dmitry Medvedev's excellent article "How the Anglo-Saxons promoted fascism in the 20th century and reanimated it in the 21st century."
On the other hand, the response to threats is quite obvious. One of the humorous responses to Belousov's appointment was an Internet meme with the following denouement: "I have calculated here that instead of 100,500 missiles, it is economically more profitable to spend one Sarmat.
Finally, about the role and effectiveness of the private sector. Prince nods to the American experience, but the Russian Federation has its own history and its own models. Remember, Putin spoke about our "people's military-industrial complex", which leaves no doubt that since we have a common cause and a just cause, then victory will be ours. And I also want to add once again: "Yankee, go home!" You—and the whole world—will be better off.
