One shouldn't be surprised to find Erik Prince popping up amid the chaos of the Afghanistan withdrawal. Or, that he is trying to profit from it.
Reports today indicate that he is offering to fly stranded people from the Kabul airport on his private plane for $6,500 — for extra, he will extricate people who are cannot get to the airport.
There are few details in the Wall Street Journal article and no sense where this nugget came from, or what kind of resources he has. A former Navy Seal, Prince is the founder of Blackwater, a private security company infamous for its work on behalf of the U.S. government in the early years of the 9/11 wars. He has had his hand in several incarnations and a litany of privateering schemes since then. Most recently he was accused (but has denied) of violating the arms embargo in Libya in a plot to arm militant Gen. Khalifa Haftar so he could overthrow the transitional government there. He has also been connected to a proposal to build a private army for Ukraine against the Russians. He has been tied to the UAE, Somalia and the Chinese government. In fact, his last company Frontier Services Group, co-founded in 2014, reportedly had a contract to train Chinese police in Beijing and build a training center in Xinjiang, home to the imprisoned minority Uighurs.
At any given time, Prince has had access to more than guns. He's had planes and even ships to battle pirates on the high seas. Most of his gun-for-hire proposals never pan out, and his multi-billion-dollar salad days with the federal government seem to be behind him. Maybe even his primo access to Capitol Hill (his connections to Trump put him in the hot seat during the Russiagate period, and his sister Betsy DeVos is no longer the education secretary) is gone too.
But that doesn't mean he's out of the game. Clearly, where there is human misery and conflict, Prince is around, nibbling at the edges of opportunity. Kind of like the "Howling Man," in that Twilight Zone episode:
Wherever there was sin. Wherever there was strife. Wherever there was corruption. And persecution. There he was also. Sometimes he was only a spectator, a face in the crowd. But, always, he was there.
Kelley Beaucar Vlahos is Editorial Director of Responsible Statecraft and Senior Advisor at the Quincy Institute.
Erik Prince arrives New York Young Republican Club Gala at The Yale Club of New York City in Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S., November 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon
An Israeli soldier mans a position in the northern Israeli town of Metula bordering Lebanon on October 8, 2023. photo by fadi amun Copyright: xFADIxAMUNx DSCF4542 via REUTERS
Exchanges of fire between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah, persistent over the past eight months, have intensified in recent weeks. The situation can escalate into a full-blown war in either of two ways.
One is for the present tit-for-tat to spin out of control in a manner that neither side plans. Escalation would be a result of the lethal logic of each side trying to deter the adversary’s future attacks by responding strongly to the most recent attack.
The other route to escalation would be an intentional resort to full-scale war by one side. Hezbollah is unlikely to be that side. Hezbollah has made clear all along that whatever it has been doing to keep the Israeli-Lebanese border heated it has done in sympathy with the beleaguered Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and in support of Hamas. Hezbollah sees no net benefit for itself of an all-out war with Israel. In the last previous such war in 2006, the group could claim some success in standing up to the most advanced military force in the Middle East but paid a substantial price in human and material costs. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah later expressed regret about the cross-border brinkmanship that led to that war.
Israel, on the other hand, may decide to launch a full war in Lebanon during the next several months, if the spinning-out-of-control scenario had not already materialized. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly told Arab officials during his most recent trip to the region that he believes Israel is intent on invading Lebanon. Such an invasion would not be based on any clear-headed and objective analysis of what would be in the best interests of Israeli security. It would be more a matter of internal political and emotional factors driving Israeli behavior.
One of those factors is the situation of the approximately 60,000 Israelis who have been displaced from homes in northern Israel because of the deteriorated security situation there and have been housed in hotels in Tel Aviv or other temporary accommodations. They represent a substantial political force in favor of doing something to allow their return. Of course, outbreak of full-scale war with Hezbollah would at least for a time make the security situation in northern Israel even worse. But the hope, however misplaced, that aggressive military action would somehow lead to a long-term future of peaceful residence in the north is a pressure point on the government.
The personal political and legal situation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to be a major determinant of Israeli policy, on this issue as well as others. It has become generally accepted that Netanyahu’s hold on power and probably also his ability to dodge corruption charges will continue only as long as Israel is at war. With Netanyahu himself having recently declared that the “intense phase of the war with Hamas is about to end,” his stake in a full war on the northern front is probably stronger than ever.
Netanyahu’s tenure also depends on maintaining his governing coalition with far-right extremists, principally Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, both of whom are hardliners regarding use of military force against Hezbollah. Smotrich has called for a military invasion deep into Lebanon if Hezbollah does not meet an ultimatum for withdrawal of its forces from southern Lebanon. Ben Gvir says that even Smotrich’s demand does not go far enough, and Israel should launch a military operation aimed at destroying Hezbollah entirely.
An added factor is a strain of opinion within Israel that southern Lebanon is part of “greater Israel” that was a gift from God, and is fair game not just for military conquest but for additional Jewish settlement. This idea has been on the fringe of Israeli thought, but as with many other extreme ideas in Israel, it shows signs of inching into the mainstream.
The fact that the Netanyahu government’s stated goal in the Gaza Strip of “destroying” Hamas is — as even the Israeli military’s official spokesman now acknowledges— out of reach constitutes a source of frustration that may also help to motivate a lashing out at Lebanon. Add to that the frustration of failing to get back alive many of the Israeli hostages. An operation that can inflict serious harm on another of Israel’s Arab adversaries and can be described as aimed at letting those displaced residents of northern Israel back to their homes might help to satisfy some of the urge among both policymakers and the Israeli public to do “something” in the face of the setbacks and frustrations of the current crisis.
Israel’s devastating operation in the Gaza Strip, which has gone far beyond anything that can be construed as defense and even well beyond targeting Hamas, has been more visceral than strategic — an extended spasm of anger over the horror that Hamas inflicted on October 7. Expanding the war into Lebanon would extend this pattern. The fact that Hezbollah (and other Lebanese) are Arab and that Hezbollah has been a traditional adversary of Israel would be enough cause for expansion of the war in the minds of many frustrated and angry Israelis.
To the extent that genuine strategic considerations would underlie an Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the principal goal would not be to destroy Hezbollah — which is far out of reach — but to push its forces out of the portion of Lebanon south of the Litani River. Accompanying rhetoric would describe such an effort as supposedly buying long-term security for northern Israel.
The long, bloody history of Israeli military involvement in Lebanon strongly suggests that no such security would be bought. Israeli invaded Lebanon in 1978, and invaded it again in 1982, going all the way to Beirut. It maintained an occupation of southern Lebanon until 2000. And yet, Hezbollah is as strong today as it ever was. Hezbollah first rose to prominence in response to the 1982 invasion as the organization that was doing more than any other to defend Lebanese against Israeli incursions. Its popular support continues to rest in large part on the perceived need for such defense — a perception that any new Israeli invasion would strengthen.
The 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war gives a taste of what a new conflict might look like, but the new war is likely to be even more destructive. Hezbollah’s capacity for aerial bombardment of Israel is greater now than it was then. Estimates of the number of rockets and missiles in its arsenal vary widely but center around 150,000. Even unsophisticated projectiles could inflict much damage if through sheer numbers they overwhelm Israel’s sophisticated air defense system. Israel, of course, would be determined to inflict at least as much death and destruction in the other direction as it absorbed itself.
The Biden administration genuinely and rightly does not want to see a new Israel-Hezbollah war. Its peacemaking efforts, however, have only slim prospects for success. Although United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which aimed to resolve the 2006 conflict but was never fully implemented, provides a framework for a possible new deal, the current circumstances for reaching such a deal are difficult. The ideas that U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein has been discussing with Israeli and Lebanese officials attempt in effect to separate the Israel-Lebanon equation from what is going on in the Gaza Strip. That may not be possible, given the negative atmospherics from the ongoing disaster in Gaza and Hezbollah’s posture of maintaining pressure in sympathy with Gaza Palestinians.
Some of the administration’s declaratory policy does not help the prospects for a peaceful resolution and probably makes matters worse. Hochstein reportedly told Arab officials in Beirut that if a full-scale war breaks out along the Israeli-Lebanese border, the United States will support Israel. The administration has conveyed the same message to Israeli officials. Whatever value such messaging may have in deterring aggressive behavior by Hezbollah, it only encourages such behavior by Israel.
If such a war does break out, then, like the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, much of the rest of the world will see the United States as owning the conflict. And with that perception comes all the associated ill consequences for U.S. interests, including the opprobrium, diplomatic isolation, and thirst for revenge by violent elements. Moreover, the administration’s posture will not improve the long-term security of the Israeli citizens it supposedly is trying to help.
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Donald Trump and Joe Biden in first presidential debate and present their platforms. September 29, 2020, Cleveland, USA, screenshot CNN. (Photo: David Himbert / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect)
Tomorrow night, we settle in for a much anticipated show-down between President Joe Biden and former President Trump.
Foreign policy rarely plays a huge role in presidential debates, but with two live conflicts (Ukraine and Middle East) and escalating tensions with China, the Quincy Institute has anticipated questions that could be asked on the key issues of the day and offered these suggestions on how the candidates should respond tonight.
How long should the U.S. continue to send aid to Ukraine?
Battlefield conditions have turned against Ukraine recently, as Russia has made its first territorial gains since early in the war. Despite its advantages in manpower and military, Russia has shown little capacity for conquering, let alone governing, the vast majority of Ukrainian territory.
The Biden administration has pushed for sending aid to Ukraine, and continues to say that it will do “‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.” At the same time, Biden has maintained that the U.S. will not get directly involved in a war with Russia.
However, as conditions have gotten increasingly more dire on the Ukrainian frontlines, leadership in Kyiv has urged Washington and its other Western allies to grow their involvement in the conflict. If Ukraine’s partners go down that path, it could invite a more aggressive response from Russia and perhaps nuclear escalation.
To avoid such an outcome, Washington should push Kyiv to pursue a negotiated settlement. Continuing U.S. aid is critical to provide Ukraine with leverage at the negotiating table.
"U.S. aid to Ukraine should continue as part of a broader diplomatic strategy to orchestrate a negotiated settlement of the war,” says George Beebe, director of Grand Strategy at the Quincy Institute. “Absent a negotiating strategy, continued aid will only prolong Ukraine's suffering, deepen its destruction, and increase the chances the United States and Russia stumble into a direct military confrontation."
Already the war has had a destructive impact on Ukraine. Its economy has cratered, and Ukraine is now thoroughly dependent on Western assistance to sustain it. The country has suffered a massive population decline. And the longer the war continues, the more strained Ukrainian democracy and civil rights will likely become.
The Middle East: Is a defense pact with Saudi Arabia in the U.S. interest?
In the midst of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has now killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, including at least 15,000 children, the Biden administration has gone full steam ahead in its pursuit of a defense pact with Saudi Arabia that it views as the pathway to peace between Israel and Palestine and the broader Middle East. The looming agreement would offer Riyadh a security guarantee in exchange for the normalization of relations with Israel.
Such an agreement could exacerbate regional tensions and introduce more arms, potentially including nuclear weapons, into the Middle East. Washington would be further implicated in a Saudi Arabian foreign policy that has proven reckless without gaining much in return.
“It is not in U.S. interests to extend a security guarantee to Saudi Arabia, which could potentially require the US to send American troops to fight and die to defend the House of Saud,” Annelle Sheline, Middle East research fellow at the Quincy Institute, told RS. “The U.S. is no longer dependent on Saudi oil and therefore should reduce its military commitments to the Kingdom, not super-size them."
In addition to risking American lives, a defense commitment for Riyadh would further tie Washington to a regime that has a concerning human rights record, carried out a war on Yemen that killed nearly 400,000 Yemenis, and who recent court documents show were complicit in the 9/11 attacks.
Biden ran pledging to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah,” but quickly reversed course and has made the potential defense pact a top foreign policy priority. Trump, for his part, also cultivated close ties with Riyadh, launching the first normalization agreements under the Abraham Accords, between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain during his presidency.
How do we compete with China and avoid conflict?
Both the Biden and Trump administrations pinpointed China as their primary national security threat and foreign policy priority. Though tensions have not yet bubbled over into outright conflict, the Biden administration has largely followed his predecessor’s lead with aggressive rhetoric and economic policies.
“U.S.–China relations have been quiet recently, but dangerous pressures are building under the surface. If we stay the present course, we're likely to see major conflict in the next presidential term, no matter who wins in November,” Jake Werner, acting director of the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute, told RS. “To change U.S.–China competition from toxic to healthy, we need fewer provocations on both sides, particularly on the most sensitive issue, Taiwan. Even as we implement prudent safeguards, America should stop trying to exclude China from important markets, technologies, and the life of our country.”
An escalation of conflict with China could have devastating consequences for the United States. Estimates suggest that a war over Taiwan cost the worldeconomy $10 trillion — around 10% of global GDP, and the U.S. and its regional allies would likely lose thousands of service members, dozens of ships, and hundreds of aircraft. One war game concluded that in the first three weeks of war, the United States would suffer roughly half as many casualties as it did in 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“We need to recognize that the US and China share interests on the most important issues to regular Americans, including climate change, public health, peaceful world politics, and expanding opportunity in the global economy,” says Werner. “If each side stops regarding the other as an inevitable enemy, we could begin serious talks on the reforms that would make space for both countries to thrive.”
Are we spending enough on our military?
The U.S. Congress is currently debating a military budget of nearly $900 billion, and some experts say that the real number has already surpassed $1 trillion.
Some prominent Senators want the budget to grow even more, citing the threats posed by China and Russia as the reason. But Washington spends more than the next ten countries combined. And that total is far higher than is required to keep Americans safe.
“We can mount a robust defense of America and its allies for far less than we are spending now if we adopt a less interventionist posture and take a more realistic view of the challenge posed by China,” Bill Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute, tells RS.
Neither Trump nor Biden has shown much appetite for cutting the Pentagon budget, but pursuing a strategy could allow the next president to put diplomatic, economic, and cultural engagement, as opposed to militarism, at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy.
Pursuing such a strategy might push allies to stop free-riding on U.S. military largesse and begin to invest in their own defense and would free up funds that could be invested back into the urgent challenges facing Americans at home.
A video has been released that purportedly shows Omar al-Bayoumi, a man with ties to Saudi Arabia’s intelligence apparatus who has been alleged to have assisted 9/11 hijackers in California, engaging in what appears to be a reconnaissance mission a year before the attacks.
Families of 9/11 victims are now in civil litigation with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and have been alleging there are reams of documents including this video that prove Saudi Arabia’s official backing of the 2001 terror attacks. A federal judge in New York City is now deliberating a Saudi motion to dismiss the case.
This video, recently unsealed in court, shows Bayoumi taking shots of Washington monuments and buildings and talking about “a plan” back home, while zeroing in on entrances and exits to the U.S. Capitol, the Washington monument, and other places.
At one point he says to his intended audience that he will go to the monument and "report to you in detail what is there."
The video was shown on “60 Minutes” last weekend. The plaintiffs in the civil case say the U.S. government has been in possession of the video, along with tons of other evidence, collected at Bayoumi’s apartment in England, since days after the 9/11 attacks, but all of it is still classified.
On Monday, RS spoke with Brett Eagleson, president of 9/11 Justice, a grassroots organization of 9/11 families that have been pushing for the declassification of evidence they say proves the Saudi connection to the 2001 terror attack. The transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
RS: So tell me first, what is 9/11 Justice?
Brett Eagleson: 9/11 Justice is a grassroots campaign of family members that lost loved ones or that were hurt or injured the day of the attack, and goal of the organization is to bring about public education and awareness about not only what the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia did in their capacity to facilitate and assist the hijackers, but also this fight that we've had to have with our very own government on transparency regarding documents surrounding 9/11. Everything has been kept under lock and key for over 20 years now. (We) are passionate about pushing for transparency and pushing for the truth to hopefully one day, finally bring peace and closure to our 9/11 community.
RS: So tell me about this video that's been recently released. Why is it so important?
Brett Eagleson: This video should make everybody upset. That should make not only the family members enraged, but it should make America enraged. The public at large should be up in arms about this. This is a video that our government has had for over 23 years. In the days after 9/11 the FBI asked (London’s) Metropolitan Police, which is known as Scotland Yard, to raid the individual Al Bayoumi’s apartment in Birmingham, England. So we know that our FBI knew about the existence of this video. It was our FBI that instructed the British authorities to raid his apartment. They came upon a trove of documents, hours and hours of videotape, handwritten notes, notebooks containing the names and phone numbers of Saudi government officials as well as senior al-Qaida operatives.
But some of the most damning stuff is this video that we now are made aware of 23 years later. How can it be that the former deputy director of the CIA claims that he was not made aware of this video?
So the importance here is everything we know about 9/11, everything that we've been told about the Saudi role in 9/11 needs to be re-examined. History needs to be rewritten, because in 2004 the 9/11 Commission came to its conclusion, saying that the Saudi government, as an institution, probably wasn't involved in the funding of Al Qaida and probably wasn't involved with supporting the 9/11 hijackers. But the 2004 commission, nobody, had the benefit of this latest trove of documents. Nobody saw this video that was partaking in that commission, senators, Congress people, the commissioners themselves, didn't get a chance to see this video.
RS: So the U.S. government would have known all of this from the beginning, is your contention?
Brett Eagleson: Of course. And now what they're saying is the DOJ has been writing letters to our judge in our civil litigation against Saudi Arabia, and they're saying that they need more time to vet these materials and to vet these videos, and they've had over 23 years, and they've denied the existence of any of these documents. First they said that they didn't have them, and then they said that these documents don't exist. Well now that the truth is out there, and we actually have them, because it was the British authorities that gave us these documents, now they're saying, well, they need time to vet them. Yeah, and they've had over 20 years.
RS: So let's go to the court case. How long have the 9/11 families been battling the Saudi government in court? And can you tell us where that legal battle is today?
Brett Eagleson: Sure. So originally, the 9/11 families filed suit against Saudi Arabia, and this was prior to the inaction of the law called JASTA, which stands for the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. That lawsuit was dismissed because of what's called Foreign Sovereign immunity, so American citizens can't sue a foreign country, because countries have immunity, and the judge threw the lawsuit out on that technicality. So in 2014 there was a massive effort by the families to create a law in Congress called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Law, and it's referred to as JASTA. (It) created a loophole in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, and it said that if you're a foreign sovereign or foreign entity, there is credible evidence that the actions of your government harmed or killed Americans on American soil.
President Obama, at the time, vetoed it, and we couldn't understand why, like, why would he veto this kind of no nonsense, no brainer legislation? We spent a lot of time and pain and effort overriding that veto, and we delivered to President Obama his one and only veto override of his entire eight years of his presidency. We finally got our law, and that is what allowed us to reintroduce Saudi Arabia as a defendant in our litigation, which we did in 2017. So from 2017 until today, we've been in active litigation against the kingdom.
In 2018 the kingdom moved to dismiss our lawsuit, and their arguments were that we still didn't have jurisdiction, despite JASTA, so nothing on the merit, but more so on a technicality. They said that we didn't have enough evidence at that time. The judge said, no, actually, there is enough credible evidence here, and I'm going to deny your motion to dismiss, and I'm going to grant limited discovery on Southern California itself. So, all information related to Omar Al Bayoumi and (9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar) and any individuals associated with those two working in and around Southern California.That was the cell, the terror cell, that we were really focused on. He allowed discovery on that, and that is when things started to get really interesting. Because every attempt at gaining information from our own government about what they knew and what they investigated in Southern California, was met with resistance to the extent that we actually had to subpoena the FBI. The FBI did not cooperate with the subpoenas. Everything that the FBI would produce to us was completely redacted.
You would think that the FBI would be salivating, chopping up the bit to finish an investigation that they never were allowed to finish. You would think that they would be overwhelmed that we were stepping in to try to finally close the gap here and close the loop. But it was the opposite.
We were personally invited to the White House to meet with President Trump in 2019 because the ongoing battle of obtaining documents and obtaining evidence was persisting, and we begged President Trump at the time for help. The Constitution says that the president can declassify whatever he deems necessary. And the president looked us in the eye, shook all of our hands, and promised to help us. And he said he was going to declassify the documents, and was going to help us. So we left that meeting elated. Less than 24 hours with Trump's approval (AG) Bill Barr invoked what's known as the State Secrets Doctrine, an executive privilege which basically labeled all the information we were seeking in the courts from the FBI and DOJ a state secret. And it was like a gut punch to us.
So that set us back a while. It wasn't until campaign season, when Trump was up against Biden, that we reached out to then candidate, Biden, asking if he was elected president, would he help us? At that point, he wrote up the letter saying that if he was, in fact, elected president, he would declassify the documents.
So when Biden got into office, we kind of gave him the space and allowed him to get settled in a little bit. And you know, his first year in office was the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Up until that point his administration had been unresponsive to our requests. So we actually organized a protest because we knew that President Biden wanted to mark the 20th anniversary at Ground Zero, and we wrote him a letter signed by 5,000 family members, saying that if you come to Ground Zero, and if you talk about how important our loved ones are to you and how important this day is, and you still haven't honored your campaign promise to us, we will protest your appearance at Ground Zero. So I think that really moved the needle. Biden enacted a Presidential Executive Order which called upon the declassification of all 9/11 documents. So we've had this executive order for two years now, and his current administration is, one, not even honoring it fully, but two, they're fighting it in court.
So they're now, as we talk about this video and all these documents, Biden DOJ officials are writing letters to the court saying this information is too sensitive. It's not appropriate. They've been fighting against us to try to continue to keep this information under lock and key. Thankfully, we have the video out.
RS: What is the message that you would like the American people to get out of this case and the evidence coming out about it?
Brett Eagleson: Saudi Arabia, if they, in any way, want to try to enjoy normal relations with this country, if they want to do business with our country on a state to state level, they need to fess up. They need to take accountability, and they need to come clean about what their own government did 23 years ago. And until that happens, it should not be that we're able to do engage in security agreements with them, that we're able to sell them the devastating weapons, that they're able to buy into our PGA Tour and have LIV Golf here — like none of those things should be happening until there's an acknowledgement and a reckoning of their wrongdoing.