A transpartisan coalition of groups calling itself “a diverse network of transparency and advocacy organizations” sent a letter to Senate leaders on Wednesday urging them “to take steps to ensure that all U.S. aid to Ukraine is subject to independent oversight,” primarily by confirming permanent inspectors general at the Departments of Defense and State.
Since Russia launched its invasion in late February, Congress has approved more than $50 billion in humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine with, as the New York Times noted, “the leaders of both parties rais[ing] few questions about how much money was being spent or what it would be used for.”
Many are also worried that American weapons sent to Ukraine may end up in the wrong hands. Indeed, referring to so-called “Switchblade” drones the United States is supplying Ukraine, a senior Pentagon official said last month that the Defense Department doesn’t know where they are or whether they’re being used. "They're not telling us every round of ammunition they're firing [at] who and at when. We may never know exactly to what degree they've using the Switchblades,” the official said.
The dozen groups that signed the letter to Congress — which include Public Citizen, Taxpayers for Common Sense, and the Quincy Institute — say that “the sheer magnitude and speed at which the federal government is sending aid calls for robust oversight in terms of both spending and monitoring its use.”
The letter comes just days after 22 House Republicans sent a letter to President Biden expressing “grave concern about the lack of oversight and accountability for the money and weapons recently approved by Congress for Ukraine,” adding that “this money has not been tracked in any meaningful way nor have the American people or elected officials been informed of its effectiveness or use.”
The groups said Sen. Rand Paul’s proposal to place such monitoring in the already existing Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction — given its expertise and oversight experience — is “reasonable.” But they worry such efforts will delay needed aid to Ukraine. They’re also concerned that Sen. John Kennedy’s proposal to create a new “SIGAR” for Ukraine has deficiencies in transparency and oversight.
“Therefore,” the groups say, “we encourage you—first and foremost—to confirm Rob Storch to be the inspector general at the Department of Defense, and to call on the administration to nominate an inspector general for the Department of State.”
Ben Armbruster is the Managing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He has more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of politics, foreign policy, and media. Ben previously held senior editorial and management positions at Media Matters, ThinkProgress, ReThink Media, and Win Without War.
Top Image Credit: 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
Haiti could be Erik Prince’s deadliest gambit yet for business and a ticket back into the good graces of the Washington military industrial complex.
Prince's Blackwater — now called Constellis in its latest incarnation — reigned during the Global War on Terror, but left a legacy of disastrous mishaps, most infamously the 2007 Nisour massacre in Iraq, where Blackwater mercenaries killed 17 civilians. This, plus his willingness in recent years to work for foreign governments in conflicts and for law enforcement across the globe, have made Prince one of the world’s most controversial entrepreneurs.
Prince sold Blackwater in 2010, but remains at large in the private mercenary business. Indeed, a desperate Haiti has now hired him to “conduct lethal operations” against armed groups, who control about 85% of Haitian capital Port-Au-Prince.
As the New York Times reported last week, Prince will send about 150 private mercenaries to Haiti over the summer. He will advise Haiti’s police force on countering Haiti’s armed groups, where some Prince-hired mercenaries are already operating attack drones to take out gang leaders. The U.S. government reportedly isn’t involved.
Reemerging after an extended absence from Washington circles, Prince’s Haiti venture coincides with a number of adjacent bids for the current White House, which during the first Trump term, turned down a Prince plan to privatize the war in Afghanistan.
But what Prince stands to gain by the venture may well be Haiti’s loss. Indeed, Prince’s private contractors, operating in a legally gray area in a functional conflict zone, could wreak further havoc — after a legacy of Western meddling that has undermined the country’s affairs.
Prince's Trump era return
The brother of Betsy DeVos, who served as education secretary in Trump’s first term, Prince has long been a supporter of Republican politics. He donated $250,000 to Trump’s successful 2016 presidential run.
But, concerned that Prince’s controversial private security projects brought unwanted scrutiny to their work, DoD and CIA officials essentially barred him from contracts in 2020.
And yet, Prince has been active in the rightwing-national security periphery and has resurfaced in official circles in recent months, even participating in group chats with State Department and National Security Council senior officials. And he’s been eager to showcase his usefulness through a barrage of pitches to the Trump administration as well as other relevant players in its orbit.
In recent months he has floated a scheme to Trump in which private contractors would assist the administration in hitting its deportation targets. In April, Prince also pushed for a plan in which his contractors would be in charge of a prison partly owned by the U.S. in El Salvador.
Prince brokered a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the same month, arranging to secure and tax the nation’s mineral wealth — just as the DRC and U.S. moved closer with their own minerals-for-security deal.
“Where was he during the (Democratic administration)? He was nowhere. He was hiding. So when Trump is in office, he comes out like a peacock and starts looking for contracts,” said Sean McFate, former contractor and author of“The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order.”
McFate pegged the Haiti deal as a case in which Prince was acting as “an opportunist aligned with Trump." Prince knows the Trump administration wants to stanch the flow of illegal migrants to the U.S. and to send back to Haiti those already here in the U.S. Right now, the security situation there makes it all the more complicated. While emphasizing much could go wrong, McFate said Prince’s initiative just might quell the country’s violence. “We’ll see,” he said.
“What's different this time…is that [Prince is] not really pitching contracts to Washington. He's pitching contracts in cooperation with what he thinks is Washington,” McFate posited. “He's finding clientele who are not Americans, but he's doing it with the blessing he thinks [he’ll get], or wants [from] Trump.”
Appearing to address Haiti’s gang-related woes, in other words, helps Prince align himself with Trump’s political goals.
Will Prince undermine Port-Au-Prince?
The Prince deal is occurring within the context of extensive ongoing American intervention in Haiti.
Currently the U.S.-backed, Kenyan-led multinational police force operating in Haiti to combat the armed groups is largely seen as a failure. Previously, a U.N. peacekeeping mission aimed at stabilizing Haiti from 2004 through 2017 was undermined by scandal, where U.N. officials were condemned for killing civilians during efforts aimed at armed groups, sexually assaulting Haitians, and introducing cholera to Haiti.
The cloud of American intervention dates back far more than a century, but more recently, the U.S. installed former interim Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry in 2021 following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. Henry himself resigned last year following pressure from the U.S., turning government affairs over to a foreign-backed transitional council — where council members had to endorse international intervention to improve Haiti’s security situation to join.
Before that, the U.S. was accused of ousting Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide after he proved obstructive to U.S. foreign policy goals, in 2004. (The U.S. denies this coup took place).
Now, experts fear a clumsy, profit-driven private mercenary touch could now push Haiti past the brink.
"Haiti's crisis was generated by the dismantling of democratic accountability structures, including the police, but also the courts, the legislature and elections. A sustainable solution to the crises requires rebuilding those structures,” Brian Concannon, founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, told RS.
“With a history of unaccountable, deadly violence and undermining governance and the rule of law in countries where they operate, Erik Prince's companies seem ill-fitted to building accountability structures,” Concannon added.
"Having mercenaries just go in and start executing people… is going to be just like the U.N. [intervention in the past]. It's going to continue to undermine the rule of law and the social fabric and lead to just more rebounds of more trampoline effects of increasing gang violence,” Concannon explained.
Practical factors regarding the deployment of foreign private mercenaries in Haiti are also at play. For example, the jurisdiction governing foreign mercenaries’ actions remains hazy, especially within the context of the weak Haitian government overseeing its deployment.
“It’s unclear to what extent, if any, the Haitian government is capable of delineating the legal structures that would be in accordance with whatever global arrangement…is appropriate for this,” said researcher David Isenberg, author of “Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq.” “It is just problematic [to suppose], in my viewpoint, that the Haitian government, whatever remains of it, is…even capable of setting that out.”
“Prince's professional fighters have never shown a great grasp of local social and cultural issues or discretion in using force,” Ambassador Daniel Foote, the U.S. Special Envoy for Haiti from July to September 2021, told RS. “If they wind up running autonomous operations in Haiti, there's a great chance we'll see similar bloodbaths from Prince's 'army.'”
The Haitian Embassy in D.C. did not respond to a request for comment. Rodenay Joseph, who owns a Florida-based security officer training company and was reportedly contacted by Prince about possibly collaborating on his Haiti deal, also did not respond to inquiries from RS.
But the New York Times reported Joseph’s discomfort about private American mercenaries working with the Haitian government without outside oversight. “We should be very worried, because if (were) from the U.S. government, at least he can have the semblance of having to answer to Congress,” he told the Times, calling Prince’s scheme “just another payday.”
“If it’s him, his contract, he doesn’t owe anybody an explanation.”
In a sign of hope for diplomacy over war, the U.S. and Iran began engaging in serious, high level negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear program in April for the first time since President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal seven years ago.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has fully empowered his team to negotiate, with one firm limitation: they cannot negotiate “the full dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.” So bold is Khamenei’s red line on not negotiating away the right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes that he has made it clear to past negotiators that “if Iran is to abandon its right to enrich, it will either have to happen after my death, or I will have to resign from leadership.”
Trump, though, recently posted that “Under our potential Agreement — WE WILL NOT ALLOW ANY ENRICHMENT OF URANIUM!”
An innovative solution for bridging this deal-ending divide has emerged. It is not clear who first suggested it. Iran’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, says that the Omani mediators made proposals that removed obstacles. Other reports credit Iran with the idea. Others say it was suggested by Oman and adopted by the United States.
The idea is that Iran joins Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in a nuclear enrichment consortium. In some versions, other regional partners are also included. Such a consortium could resolve the paradox created by the American demand that Iran give up its uranium enrichment and Iran’s insistence that it will never give up its uranium enrichment. Components of the enrichment process would be spread across countries with each sharing all but none fully possessing all. Iran could have its enriched uranium, but Iran could not fully enrich uranium.
The plan has the potential to satisfy two goals of the U.S. and its partners. Not only could a regional consortium prevent Iran from engaging in the full enrichment process, granting Saudi Arabia a membership in the enrichment consortium may assuage Saudi Arabia’s felt need to enrich uranium independently and, so, help solve the regional proliferation threat.
The idea of a nuclear consortium is older than the Islamic State of Iran. Barbara Slavin, distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, told RS that the suggestion was made by the U.S. to the Shah. It is often forgotten that it was the U.S. who first suggested Iran develop a nuclear power program. Secretary of State Kissinger said it would provide “for the growing needs of Iran’s economy and free remaining oil reserves for export,” and declassified documents reveal that the Ford administration “endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry.”
Princeton physicist Frank von Hippel told RS that there have been many versions of the nuclear consortium idea. Iran has even broached precursors to the idea in the past. In 2005, Hassan Rouhani, then Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, offered to share Iran’s enrichment technology with other Persian Gulf States. The same year, then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the U.N. that Iran was “prepared to engage in serious partnership with… other countries in the implementation of [an] uranium enrichment program in Iran.”
The modern incarnation is similar to an idea first proposed by von Hippel and former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian in a 2023 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that argued that a multinational consortium in the Middle East could ensure that uranium is produced only for peaceful purposes.
Von Hippel says that the idea was inspired by the 1971 URENCO enrichment consortium of Germany, the Netherlands and Britain and by the ABAAAC consortium of Brazil and Argentina. In the URENCO consortium, one country makes the centrifuges, one designs next-generation centrifuges and the third hosts the headquarters.
The advantage, he says, is that a consortium allows nuclear experts from each country to “visit each other’s facilities to assure themselves that the activities are peaceful.” He adds that “decisions that might have proliferation implications are made by the [partner] governments.” Saudi Arabia’s, the Emirates’ and Iran’s watchful eyes would all help the International Atomic Energy Agency ensure that the program is peaceful.
The key question has always been whether Iran will be allowed to enrich uranium on its own soil. And nothing has changed now. Mousavian says that nuclear negotiations with Iran have failed when its right as a signatory to the nuclear non proliferation treaty (NPT) to peaceful uranium enrichment have been denied, and they have succeeded when that right was granted. The key question now in negotiations is whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium on its own soil. Since the consortium story broke, the answer to that question has swung back and forth on a reporting pendulum.
The first reports, on May 13, said that Iran would continue to enrich uranium but accept a cap at the 3.67% enrichment required by a nuclear energy program.
Days later, the reporting had changed. Axiosreported that the U.S. wants the enrichment facilities to be outside Iran. The New York Times reported that the document the U.S. gave Iran “calls for Iran to cease all enrichment of uranium.”
By June 2, the reporting had become more nuanced. Axiossaid the U.S. proposal “would allow limited low-level uranium enrichment on Iranian soil for a to-be-determined period of time.” At the same time, Reuters was still reporting that the U.S. was demanding that Iran “commit to scrapping uranium enrichment.”
Reuters said that, as a result of the denial of their right to enrich, "Iran is drafting a negative response to the U.S. proposal.”
The next day, Axiosreported that, according to a senior Iranian official, “If the consortium operates within the territory of Iran, it may warrant consideration. However, should it be based outside the borders of the country, it is certainly doomed to fail.” According to Axios, “the proposal doesn't clearly define where the consortium would be located.” The New York Times agreed, but added that “the United States has said it cannot be in Iran.”
Part of the confusion was undoubtedly because the document the U.S. handed Iran was not a fully developed text but “preliminary ideas” to be discussed in upcoming talks. Furthermore, Iranian officials say the proposal is “vaguely worded on many of the most important issues.” Araghchi says that “a lot of issues… are unclear” and that there are “many ambiguities.”
But part of the confusion may have been because of partial reporting. As the parts are put together, a pattern emerges that seems to resolve the paradox. The reports of continued enrichment are reports of an interim period; the reports of no enrichment are reports of the final goal.
On June 3, the Times reported that while enrichment facilities were being built in other countries, Iran could continue low level enrichment, which would stop when the new facilities were operational.
The problem is that Iran is unlikely to agree to join a consortium that prohibits it from enriching on its own soil. One possible solution, proposed by von Hippel, Mousavian and their colleagues at Princeton, is to let Iran enrich but not on its own soil. In this plan, Iran would build centrifuges and ship them to a partner country where Iranian technicians would operate them.
Another solution, which was first proposed by von Hippel about a decade ago, and now, reportedly being discussed, is to build the enrichment facility on an island in the Persian Gulf. Iran would insist the island be one of theirs, allowing the U.S. to insist that uranium is not being enriched on Iranian soil, while Iran can insist that it is.
Iran is likely to refuse a proposal that insists it surrenders its right to enrich both because, as Slavin told RS, of the country’s well-founded suspicions about the reliability of external sources, and because, as Mousavian told me, denying Iran a right that is granted to every other signatory of the NPT “constitutes a national humiliation.”
The ability to negotiate this detail in the consortium will likely determine if the consortium proposal saves the negotiations or not.
At CANSEC, North America’s largest arms trade show last week, former NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson invoked the spirit of Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 speech: “Only by preparing for war will we be able to protect peace.”
Robertson described an era that saw the formation of independent post-Soviet states in Eastern Europe and the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 with Russia’s first President Boris Yeltsin that thawed relations after the Cold War and formalized an agreement of collaboration.
“The Chinese were in the shadows and we all thought that globalization was a wonderful idea,” he intoned.
Now, the NATO alliance is navigating a “grey-zone war without Geneva Conventions” in Ukraine and nuclear threats are normalized in the absence of “Cold War tripwires which prevented accidental and miscalculated Armageddon” as nuclear treaties hang in suspension," Robertson said.
Amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, he added, Trump’s rhetoric around the annexation of Greenland and Canada, and the looming threat of authoritarianism, liberal and democratic values are “all threatened as never before.”
With the NATO summit convening at the Hague this month, members are being called to increase military spending to at least 3% of GDP. The focus is on European re-armament, and what Lord Robertson described as “a new ambivalence of the United States President to the alliance.”
Hosted in Ottawa by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries between May 28 and 29, CANSEC certainly took advantage of the current moment with the trendlines for defense spending set on quantum and cloud computing, artificial intelligence, mesh networks and satellites.
As governments scramble to speed up procurement, CANSEC literally sold the military industry as a tool of foreign policy.
"Sovereign defense capabilities are not only economic drivers but tools of foreign policy that have been sadly underutilized by successive Canadian governments," said Christyn Cianfarani, the head of CADSI, in her welcome.
“If we are attacked, and if we are not prepared, then everything else doesn’t make sense. There won’t be any pensions, there won’t be any education,” declared Lithuania’s former Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, referring to his country raising taxes last year to pay for defense. Meeting ambitious NATO spending targets requires “rethinking of the social contract.”
Like others, he pointed to the looming threat of Russia as justification.
“The situation in Europe has never been more dangerous. Europe has not been preparing,” he said.
“For defense to be effective, the only person who needs to believe in Article 5 is Putin,” Landsbergis added, stressing that leaders need to communicate to their electorates the existential risk to NATO and the European Union. “The next war, if it comes, would look a lot like this one and it could again be against Russia.”
Invoking Canada’s historic wartime mobilization that built up the world’s third largest navy by the end of the Second World War, Canadian Defence Minister David McGuinty said that the government is taking “immediate and decisive action” on the global threats of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran “to ensure our military has the tools to defend our country and continent.”
“We simply cannot afford to wait a decade for the capabilities we need today,” he said.
Over the past seven months, Canada has been developing the country’s first national military industrial strategy and greasing the wheels for the private sector to more easily access Canadian defense contracts.
Wendy Hadwen, Assistant Deputy Minister on the policy’s development at Canada’s Department of National Defence, explained that reforms are based on the 2011 Jenkins report that proposed transformations for the Canadian military research and development sector, including placing higher value on Canadian intellectual property and technological innovation.
“We would like to create the conditions for financial industries to value investing in Canada’s defense industries,” she said. “In the ideal, our defense attachés would be champions of our defense industries. They are not today because we do not have a tradition of using our military to champion industry.”
In addition to simplifying procurement, Canada is working on securing supply chains and designating sovereign military capabilities. To do so, it is looking to other countries’ policies for inspiration, like Sweden’s “Total Defence Strategy” and the U.K.’s newly released review.
As Canada’s blueprint is being developed, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney signaled his intent to sign onto a $1.25 trillion European Union military financing plan called ReArm Europe by July 1, reducing dependency on procurement from the United States. The ReArm vision includes a European savings and investment union to encourage banks to invest in military companies.
The private sector’s growing role in Atlantic rearmament is also being facilitated by NATO-DIANA (Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic), an incubator for companies developing dual-use deep technology.
But while Canada looks at developing the domestic military sector and pivot procurement to Europe and other allies like Australia and South Korea, Trump is set on locking Canada more firmly into American strategy.
The Golden Dome missile defense project, announced in January, revives Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”), a Cold War satellite program designed to protect the U.S. from Soviet missiles. It was shelved at the time because of inadequate technology and exorbitant costs.
Equated in scale and ambition with the Manhattan Project, this plan is being resurrected at a breakneck pace to defend against hypersonic missiles. And while the Golden Dome is focused on the U.S., Trump’s executive order demanded a review of “theater missile defense posture to defend United States troops deployed abroad.”
Golden Dome relies on missile sensors, space-based interceptors to destroy missiles, and a satellite communication network. Modeled on the Israeli Iron Dome, it is more complex because it covers massive territory including polar orbits.
Expected costs are $175 billion, with Trump pushing for operation by 2029, though recent estimates expect up to $831 billion over two decades. Trump recently stated that if Canada remains a sovereign nation, the Golden Dome plan will cost it $61 billion dollars. If Canada is annexed, it will be free.
SpaceX was dubbed the “frontrunner” for the Golden Dome’s communications backbone earlier in April. Elon Musk’s satellite company has already made inroads into rural and northern Canada.
Canada has not yet committed to the plan, which has resurrected old debates.
“I do think that the strategic implications of such a system, including both nuclear and space arms racing, would make us less safe,” said Jessica West, senior researcher at Project Ploughshares, referring to the Golden Dome’s global strike capabilities, including those from space.
Defending against long-range missiles is difficult, and losing the deterrent value of nuclear weapons risks an arms race, she said, also referring to Star Wars as a “flashy, but failed, concept.”
The Russia-United States New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expires next year. The Russian Foreign Ministry has already acknowledged that Russia “may face the need for moving away from restrictions on nuclear and missile arsenals,” and the potential for space to become “another scene of military confrontation.”
Some have argued that Canada should commit to disarmament efforts for hypersonic missiles.
But this past December, former Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly called on Canada to be “extremely realist with the threat towards our Arctic” and to be “pragmatic” in the possibility of arming Canada with ballistic missiles. Should this materialize, it would overturn a 2005 decision limiting Canada’s capabilities to radar surveillance and detection.
With NATO rhetoric at CANSEC broadly leaning on Article 3, or the obligation for countries to defend themselves, Canadian missile armament has repeatedly resurged in public debate to defend against North Korea or more recently to protect the Arctic, dubbed “our future Panama Canal.”
Setting the tone for the NATO Summit, CANSEC made it clear that member states are keen on protecting democracy not through arms control and international humanitarian law, but by more closely integrating militaries with the private sector. To do this, they need to sell not just the wars of today, but the wars of tomorrow.
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