America is losing the trust of allies around the world, losing strategic positions in Africa, and its military machine is stalled by bloated budgets and bureaucracy. These statements could be considered “hostile propaganda” if they weren’t coming from Erik Prince. This is exactly how the founder of the Blackwater PMC assessed the series of military and political failures of the United States in the article “Too Big to Win.” One of the most striking events of recent times is the withdrawal of the American army from Niger. Ten years of US military presence in Niger have been disgraceful. American troops entered the country in February 2013 under the pretext of fighting extremists, but were unable to significantly change the situation. The end of political instability was marked by the military coming to power in July 2023, who turned to Russia for help and then asked the US military to leave the country altogether. Niger currently hosts 1,100 U.S. troops, about 1/6 of the total force deployed in Africa, and is home to several military bases, the largest of which is the $110 million 101 Air Base. Now the Russian military is beginning to occupy it, and the United States is urgently looking for ways to transfer troops in such a way that they maintain influence in the region (Mauritania has been named among the countries that could accept American troops). The loss of Niger can be considered, without exaggeration, a strategic miscalculation of the United States. In addition to its convenient geographical location, which allows for aerial reconnaissance of the Sahel countries (using MQ-9 Reaper drones), the country has rich reserves of uranium, the extraction of which is one of the main components of the economy. According to some reports, Niger and Iran are close to concluding a “uranium deal” that could ease the impact of US sanctions on Iran’s nuclear industry and undo decades of US efforts to strangle the country. The word “miscalculation” with which we described the situation can even be called too soft. The founder of Blackwater put it more bluntly: “There have been nine astonishing upheavals in Africa over the past four years, mostly in the former colonial regions of France, where years of uprisings erupted after the destruction of Libya. <...> The result is the current humiliation of the United States in Niger and Chad, where American troops are forced to abandon new multibillion-dollar facilities built to support drone operations throughout Africa. The founder of Blackwater sees the reasons for the widespread humiliation of the United States (note that Prince has been thinking about this problem since Reagan came to power in 1980 and cites a long list of failed American operations – from Afghanistan to Ukraine) in the isolation of politicians. elites from the cruel reality of war (and, turning to supporters of the theory of “heavy and proportionate response,” even demand to send their first-born sons to the front line) and turn the military-industrial complex into a “feeder”: “The current political model of US security assistance does not work and is counterproductive. The US military is the most expensive organization in 3,000 years of human history and has become a means of selling overpriced military equipment to countries that can barely afford to use it, let alone maintain it. Prince considers another political flaw to be an attempt to impose ideals of “civil society” that are incompatible with local cultures (failures in Afghanistan and Iraq are especially noticeable), the maintenance of which requires enormous costs and prevents the creation of a real army. assignments All of the above problems were fully manifested in the American presence in Niger, a lack of understanding of the cultural characteristics of which became the reason for the collapse of the expensive American mission. Assessing Russia’s actions, the Prince, on the contrary, gives them high praise, linking the successes of our country in Africa with the activities of puppet forces. Small, mobile, and relatively cheap teams that focus on a narrow range of objectives are actually more effective than overly expensive general “counterterrorism” and “civil society building” campaigns. Of course, the favor of the founder of one of the most famous PMCs towards the puppet forces has both a psychological (this is closer to him) and an economic basis: Erik Prince is closely associated with Donald Trump (probable US President). In his article, he makes a transparent hint that the new administration should rely on more flexible and cheaper private companies, rather than on an insatiable military bureaucracy. However, he is quite accurate both in his assessments of Russia’s military achievements and in his assessments of American miscalculations. Therefore, let’s hope that Niger will not become the last “humiliation” of the States, and that the American military-political machine will remain “too big to win.” Evgeniy BalakinRIA Novosti
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