Erik Prince: Founder of Blackwater USA | Full Address and Q&A | Oxford Union

foreign [Music] thank you all for coming even during exam week uh it's a real honor to be back here and you know from perspective I think this institution is almost a thousand years old and it's based on the premises of free speech private property individual liberty and uh those um those values those uh those rights are under attack and I think we have a real competition of governance between uh people that are free to choose how they're governed versus living under a a more tyrannical or elitist dominated form of government and so as I see what has happened now in Ukraine uh the debacle that's in Afghanistan I just want to step back and think about what should have happened uh what needs to happen so that we return to a uh an actual form a legitimate form of deterrence because otherwise these things can spin out of control very quickly I think it's important to think as the United States went into Afghanistan you also have to think about how we got out and when you think about after 9 11 President Bush met with his National Security cabinet uh five days after at Camp David and president were the CIA director the Secretary of Defense the state department to the National Security Council people and while their headquarters was still smoldering right the pentagons was still literally smoldering from the from the 911 attack the best they came with right the most expensive military in the world they wanted to to do some bombs and missile strikes in Afghanistan they wanted to wait for another six months and do a very conventional invasion of pack of Afghanistan via Pakistan and the CIA said no Mr President give us money and the authorities and we'll get this done and that's exactly what happened and in a matter of weeks less than a hundred special operators some of whom were British uh backed by air power smashed the Taliban literally put them on the Run and that worked and then they you know the Taliban were very scared on the Run for the first six to eight months and then when the Pentagon really moved in and Bagram Air Force Base became a saluting Zone we kind of went into a same repeated Loop of the Soviet battle plan that failed for the next 19 and a half years at trillions of dollars of cost and failure and so by never embracing or never having the the serious introspection about how do we get here how do we get out of this effectively is extremely frustrating I knew Steve Bannon for a few years from a book event I did and so I've been writing uh policy papers for him before the 2016 election and he came to me in the spring of 2017 and said please write up a different policy for how to how to get out of Afghanistan because the president is serious about ending this and so I wrote an op-ed and um the president read it circled it called in the National Security advisor said I don't like your plan because at that point the National Security advisor had asked to send another 70 000 troops into Afghanistan um and he said do this and so it became an internal debate between kind of an unconventional approach for keeping the Afghan Security Forces upright and more effective versus the state of the course and just more money and more troops well eventually the more money and more troops thing ran out and and President Biden just ended it without any real uh think about thought about how fast it would collapse and in all I just want to reflect on on what I did recommend because it's Jermaine to um how to look at some of these problems and with an unconventional eye right if you think about at that point there was there was a hundred and some battalions in the Afghan Army and they've been losing terrain steadily because they didn't have reliable air support their their pay was stolen their ammunition was sold off and the diesel fuel was filtered away as well so there was a lot of corruption that that permeated the that Force and so all I recommended was to do what um the Special Operations Community had been doing effectively in training Afghan forces and replicate that and leave it behind using veterans right everybody loves the word veterans contractors are more controversial term but because the U.S and NATO had been through 31 different troop rotations they never had the continuity on the ground with those forces our model is we can send those veterans back and they can live with that Battalion for years and years and years the in with the unit for a few months and then home to see their families and then back in but always to the same Valley with the same unit that kind of presence and continuity that Brotherhood and arms living with training with and yes even fighting alongside their Afghan counterparts just five percent it's the actually the same model that the East India Company used next door for a couple hundred years second some reliable air power but again air power that showed up reliably no um no room for uh for the excuses of well we're out of Parts we're out of fuel when you need when you're when your men need help on the ground you have to go with no excuse but our again our motto was to use private uh sorry professional pilots flying the aircraft Afghan pilot as a safety officer Afghan pilot always maintaining the weapons release Authority so it's not a contractor taking that shot it is an Afghan service member and third is just to control the combat Logistics piece of it right if you can pay a man on time and feed him on time and you get them reliable Health Care when they're shot or they're wounded they're going to fight better more effectively an Afghan Soldier was seven times as likely to die if they were wounded than a NATO trooper and so that's just that's just wrong and so our approach was take over and manage the pay distribution get rid of the gold soldiers make sure they have food fuel Parts ammunition on time that's what systemically failed for all the smart people in Washington uh or in Europe that were saying wow we have no idea why the Afghan military collapsed so quickly it's because they stopped getting food and fuel and parts and most of all ammunition uh Afghan Air Force ran out of ammunition in June and July of that year already uh last year and so of course no pressure on the enemy now the Taliban can go from grouping at groups of 20 and 50. now they can do 500 and 5 000 and 10 000 and they rolled up the country so an example of what didn't have to be right because that stay behind Force I talk about cost less than five percent to what the US was spending alone in fact the U.S Congress uh dispersed four times as much as that program would cost just to pay for Afghan refugees for one year so again it's not a matter of cost it's a matter of innovation second on things like Ukraine uh I had a pretty good idea the Russians were going to do something we saw lots of indications outside of any other in the U.S intelligence sources and so I gave a plan uh through some Special Operations Command people that I know to get to the White House last December already and it's a simple version of lend lease and if you're British you know exactly what Lend Lease was right because in Britain's hour of need the US gave them valid equipment destroyers tanks aircraft guns to defend themselves against Nazi Germany and this year already planned the U.S Air Force is retiring 200 combat aircraft okay f-15s f-16s those are front line Fighters air superiority capability and 42 a10s the finest anti-tank aircraft ever made already planned to be retired this year this fiscal year literally flown to the desert and parked for eternity I said look take those aircraft take some of them fly them to Ukraine and you can repaint them in Ukrainian rondelles of course carrot and stick tell the Russians of course um Ukraine will never be part of NATO fine but they're going to have the means to defend themselves if they had any package of those aircraft and that kind of capability the air superiority dominance over their over their own airspace I don't believe the Russians ever would have invaded this whole debacle in Europe right because think about it the the peace and Tranquility enjoyed in Europe for the last 75 years is gone it is peaceful here now but it is not so peaceful uh not that far from here um two days drive at most um and so I want to talk tonight about how to how to restore deterrence and how to go back to a rules-based order as you think about you know Russia had been doing um kind of resorting to to to muscle and guns again they they in the last few years you see a lot of uh reporting about the Wagner Group which is a a Russian uh private military contractor the Russians actually pitched me in 2011 they invited me to Moscow this is during the Great reset during the Obama Administration and they said please come and build a Blackwater Lake capability in Russia I said well thank you but I can't do that and I went back and sure enough a couple years later they rolled the Wagner Group which employed a lot of Russian contract soldiers and they you know now Wagner group has grown into a real hybrid capability from doing propaganda media messaging to training capacity building up to full-on combat forces and they used them originally in 2014 of course When They seized the eastern part of Ukraine and Crimea they've used them in Madagascar in Central African Republic in Libya in Syria um and uh now again uh in in their assault on Ukraine so they are they're maximizing that um as as you think about the debacle that we're in with this uh the standoff at East versus West Russia has significant energy resources and they're going to find a way to sell them and I think I'm worried about the United States especially backing itself into a corner on this because of all the sanctions that we laid out only 30 of 166 countries have actually honored those sanctions and there's a real likelihood of a block right they call it the three R's of the ruble the rupee from India and the raminbi from China that they form a more a bigger trading block to trade energy outside the dollar zone that will have significant effects on the United States economy the United States military Etc because the you know the reason Congress can appropriate way too much money every year is because the dollar is the world's Reserve currency when you lose that status by other currencies growing more influence that will have a very severe severe effect in Washington so deterrence matters and preventing this kind of stuff from happening in China right you also have the the dangers of a of a rising power and a I would say a a declining or or static power in the United States if you think about China over the last 20 centuries China was the largest GDP in 19 of those 20 centuries okay just the 20th century was an anomaly uh some severe setbacks between the the Great Leap Forward and the cultural revolution uh and and those things brought on by the by collectivization and and the the real misdeeds of the of the Communist party but China is seeking to return to its normal status quo as the Middle Kingdom in the center of the universe and so there is real challenges for for uh the East and West as we as we Embrace that you know with the um in my travels in China I encountered uh I met the the CEO of the standard Enterprise that actually built all those islands in the South China Sea right because they they kind of sprought out sprung up out of nowhere and he acknowledged he said it was never even part of our wildest uh plan uh our wish list but we found the the Obama Administration didn't provide any deterrence we found them so vapid that we went for it and they uh they built all those islands and of course they said well it's just going to be for weather and for trade reporting no they're fully weaponized now they effectively built lots of little Malta type military bases all across the South China Sea I understand why they did that I mean every um every problem that came to China from 1840 until 1949 they called the century of humiliation uh right first the um the the Opium Wars with Britain and then some conflict of the United States and then the Boxer Rebellion and the problems uh in the late um 19 1800s and then of course the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy that invaded in the 30s and the 40s all those problems came by sea so just like they built the Great Wall of China uh to stop Mongol herdsmen uh Cavalry from coming south this time they built the uh a maritime Great Wall but again a lack of deterrence lack of consequences implemented by the West allowed them to uh to to do that and it shifts the balance of power away from a lot of those Regional allies and so as we as as these countries interact uh and if we don't have deterrence so we don't have normal rules that people expect and consequences a lot of conflict can result so with that I will take questions and uh talk to Charlie thanks very much thank you [Applause] that was that was very interesting um just to touch on something you said at the end there in terms of lack of deterrence um and linking it back to how you started with talking about Ukraine do you think there is a discernible line that can be drawn between Georgia 2008 Crimea 2014 Ukraine 2022. I think it's a consistent path look love them or hate him people at least those foreign leaders viewed Trump as a wild card they weren't sure quite sure what he was going to do and I think the um the lack of response in building those islands in the South China Sea the lack of anything on on the first invasion of Ukraine right there was really no consequences uh for any of the so-called red lines in Syria when when Assad was dropping uh chemical weapons on his people again no consequences and so unless you can manage consequences um the deterrence breaks down and and I think um uh the Chinese uh Communist Party relationship with America was kind of one where they were moving their fence into our yard about six inches a year and uh and Trump said it was at least one to say hey knock it off let's uh let's let's negotiate trade deals fairly stop the intellectual property theft there wasn't nearly enough done on all those things but um look the the the the free trade and capitalism works great as long as both sides are agreeing to a common set of rules but if it's state managed capitalism on one side and and a free market not supporting the other side that's going to cause these kind of imbalances which is why you have so much of the the U.S manufacturing Heartland that's been that's been decimated and outsourced to China I'm getting buying reworks we'll quickly wait until this is moved before we continue uh save our live stream and YouTube audience thank you so obviously you've put part of the blame there on the Obama Administration and the lack of deterrence results from that do you think it's not not just it's not fair I would say it's the same tenured um so-called smart people that we have in the National Security apparatus that rotate sadly between Republican and Democrat administrations uh most of the people that Trump had in his National Security apparatus were the same tenured qualified class and and my frustration is the lack of innovation the lack of um of spine is what got us to this situation do you think there's some of the blame for this lack of deterrence lies as much with Europe as it does with America um I had a speaker a couple of terms ago who was talking about the evacuation of Kabul and was saying how there were concerted efforts at least made by the United Kingdom to stay in Kabul for a while longer after the United States decided to withdraw but there was no appetite for um staying from other European nations do you think that it complete lack of spine from European leaders has resulted in Europe being no Force for deterrence on the world stage well I'd say that the fact that the Germans decided to still close three nuclear power plants last December to keep to some some other some green deal mandate that they'd opposed on themselves making them further dependent on Russian energy was not a very good step towards deterrence it's not a I can't imagine Moscow determining that as a as a serious step to say uh they want to maintain their flexibility to not have Russian gas of course so and they've continued to buy I know there's talk about sanctions against um or an embargo against Russian gas now but uh that's still not done and there's still enormous amount of Euros flowing uh in the direction of Moscow paying for that energy the fact is any country that the the program the stay behind program I laid out could have been sponsored by any European country because it wasn't that much money it was a couple billion dollars right that's a lot of money of course but relative to what was being blown in the effort there it was a it was a pittance and so that's something Denmark could have afforded if they wanted to do that but no one uh I guess there's there's the danger in um in all sitting in a community is that uh it would depend on uh maybe it falls to the lowest denominator instead of rising to the to the to the highest I mean look NATO of 28 countries only five of them were spending two percent of their GDP on defense so yeah there is a bit of a freeloading factor of of a lot of European countries Germany uh one of the most egregious about it not taking their defense seriously when Germany doesn't even have um a couple hundred tanks that still function when their operational Readiness of their aircraft is is in the almost single digits it is a really really bad look and it's just not a serious they're just not taking their own defense seriously do you think twitch 22 will Mark a turning point for this so Japanese announced that it will meet two percent spending on GDP on defense uh they're building main battle tanks like we know Germany can do you think that this will Mark a turning point no I I don't think their bureaucracy is even I don't think the politics and their bureaucracy has even swung into motion yet um and look I for all the talk that the U.S has been doing the sad the ugly fact is that about five percent of all the weapons promised to Ukraine from the United States have been delivered five percent for all the talk of all the M triple seven long range howitzers from America actually great ones made in Britain owned by the US Military shipped to Ukraine can't use them because there's some key parts that are missing right so again there's a big gap between talk and reality and that's my frustration with the National Security apparatus if it's just plain politics it's it's it's awful because it's it it undermines credibility of of the United States and of any Western Country that says yes we'll stand behind Ukraine look we don't have an obligation nor any NATO country should have an obligation to send troops to to back up Ukraine but as imperfect as their democracy might be corruption and all the rest the fact is Ukrainian people voted with their bodies to show up and defend the country and that's admirable and um you know I've also heard that the bite administration had signed off already in March on a deal to let the Russians keep all the East and all the South including Odessa of Ukraine it is uh to me that's every bit as egregious as Neville Chamberlain selling um the sedaten land to uh you know trying to buy peace with Hitler it's a really bad look and a really bad move and that is the opposite the inverse of deterrence do you think the post-invasion response from NATO is what Putin expected um I think no the the biggest problem I think the Russians had was they because they kind of believed their own their own nonsense they believe their own Intel and they thought they'd be greeted as as Victors and they rolled in very quickly um well they thought they would roll in very quickly and that there would be systemic collapse the fact that zielinski opted to stay and um and and kind of uh rallied the Ukrainian people was uh not expected even their Air Assault uh into the Antonov airfield on the west side of Kiev uh and all the Hallmarks of a of a debacle and it was kind of a smaller version of what the the US and the UK tried in uh in Holland in 1944 with um the Arnhem Airborne Invasion which is also a debacle so looking at that do you think that the there will be no consequences in the long run of the invasion of Ukraine for NATO and Western defense or do you think that the moves made by for example Sweden and Finland to make net applications will result in some long-term shift in the alliance's focus and motivation I think I think the Border countries all take it very seriously now that the Russians can make aggressive moves against them I think they'd you know they saw it in Georgia in 2008 maybe it didn't really apply to them they saw it in 2014 maybe they thought that was just a one-off now they know it's real and so whether you're the the fins or the swedes or the or the polls all those people on that Frontier take it very very seriously and so they're going to wake up whether Germany does or not but I think uh you'll have you could have economic leaders of Europe and you'll have military leadership in Europe and it's probably not going to be Germany it'll be the countries that are taking it seriously and preparing so in terms of the military unpreparedness of the European United States this is something that you've been talking about your entire career at least since the founding of Blackwater where do you think other than um rule by bureaucrats the big flaws lie in anglo-american military preparedness I think it's uh any any bureaucracy becomes becomes thick and syrup-like right and and the failure to adapt to new tactics or new tools and I look at what Azerbaijan did uh the fall of 2020 right they had a long-standing conflict with Armenia over the negrono-karabakh The Armenian sees it from them in the early 90s and finally uh the aziris after a long negotiation willing to buy it back decided they were going to take it back and uh it worked and it was the first time in uh in Warfare that uh you had nearly that extent of armed drones going after armored vehicles and and they uh they went through a lot of that high dollar Russian equipment like a knife through butter and uh it was very effective it was a 44 day 40 44 day campaign and it led to a decisive Victory that's the kind of lessons that that Western military still have to wake up and learn that that reality is is in the Here and Now now and that preparing for a folded Gap 1960s 1970s era of ground combat is probably past the last year the United Kingdom passed the National Defense review which pivoted defense spending away from the Army and towards particularly the Navy but also the RAF and parts of drone Warfare in the same year that the UK commissioned to new aircraft carriers project was taken 15 years and cost billions and billions of pounds I think that represents a do you think the focus on Navy and air is a step forwards or do you think that it represents being stuck in the past and seeing things like aircraft carriers as status symbols um there well as you're as we saw any any ship is a very expensive Target and when you have um uh the fir the muscular right the the Black Sea Flagship taken out by two ukrainian-made missiles the Neptune missiles and the second ship that was taken out largely by a drone by a a small tb2 drone shooting a small anti-tank missile that made a strategic shot to ignite Munitions on board uh the danger of operating any large vessel that's not stealthy in a an aero Precision weapons makes it a very expensive Target the same problem the US Navy has with those carriers so I would probably argue for more of a uh a submarine capability because I think as we're seeing on on today's modern battle space where everything is videotaped from satellite synthetic aperture Radars Airborne Radars all the stuff the enemy has lots of targeting data um and and your key your gemstone type systems are are extremely vulnerable moving on then from military specifics and the last few years I was talking about Blackwater and your sort of experience of founding it so you left the Navy Seals in 1995 six and then founded Blackwater the following year right what was the process that led to UA leaving the seals and be found in Blackwater well I joined the seals um after uh after college and it was a great experience um I I love the seals I'd planned to stay in longer but my father died and my wife got cancer all within six months of each other and so I um I got out to help my mom sort out the business and obviously uh attend to my wife but the seal teams have been using private facilities since the 1970s small ones right and no one had done it on Industrial scale and I kind of knew what the SEAL Teams needed so I knew nothing about business or Government Contracting or real estate development but what could go wrong so I you know went for it and built it and you go back to the same well that you know I hired some of the guys I worked with from the SEAL Teams my training officer and Firearms instructors and built the facility and our first um our first big government contract was actually uh after the Navy uh had a ship attacked in Yemen uh attacked by a suicide boat we ended up training almost 100 000 Sailors how to protect their ship because the Navy had really gotten out of the business of doing Firearms so that was our first one and then uh when Iraq and Afghanistan Afghanistan and Iraq happened we were uh we just served our customers wherever they need us to go do you think that Blackwater prompted a long-term change the role of private companies within U.S foreign policy and Global military policy no what what changed the need for contractors was you went from a massive Cold War standing military to a one with much reduced Manpower and so you still had a lot of support services that had to be done whether that's as mundane as as male service and laundry and food and fuel and that kind of stuff but even a lot of the niche training applications and the need for our kind of support was especially accentuated because when you go from a conventional military Invasion right rolling into Iraq and then re-tasking an armored combat Brigade into being a peacekeeping brigade taking a guy that that does chemical warfare or Air Defense Artillery that's his specialty in the army hard to make that guy into a bodyguard or to a police trainer and so finding companies that can find Niche private sector talent and apply it to areas of government needs that's what we did um you said when asked a few decades ago about the founding of Blackwater that it was partly prompted by the Ramadan genocide um and the quotation I think you said was that seeing it really bothered you and it made you realize that one can't just sit back and pontificate on these things do you look back on the last two decades and think that Blackwater has made a distinct and positive impact to stop things like the random genocide uh well I had uh I had friends in executive outcomes which is a South African uh private military contractor that could have stopped the Rwandan Genocide uh they'd been very effective in uh in ending the war in Angola they had ended the uh the slaughter in Sierra Leone by the Revolutionary united front I mean guys that masterminded uh long sleeve and short sleeve amputations and and burning churches and just terrible Mayhem they stopped that with 250 people okay and they and in 200 in six months after they went in um uh the fighting was done and another six months later there was free elections in the country again so yes the private contractors could have stopped they run or want to genocide uh there's a lot of other applications I mean after I sold Blackwater in 210 um advised on a counterpiracy program right because Somali piracy was raging off the coast all over the Indian Ocean 80 to 90 ships taken per year Crews held for a year two years at a time um and that program was stopped for less than the Pirates were taking in Ransom per year okay it's funded by the UAE they they a maritime trading Nation they want to see it done and it was done and so with all the drama from the UN and the I would say the forces of status quo I would say protecting the incompetent ways to do it right the same U.N that let the Rwandan Genocide happen that let lots of other Slaughter and Mayhem happen in Africa the same ones that were actively working against us trying to stop the counter the to stop piracy from Somalia that's my frustration with those kind of forces because there's a there's a hugely entrenched bureaucracy that is comfortable uh with the way things are because people make a lot of money off of it and I would rather put the fire out rather than just manage manage fires because there's the the suffering of millions of people goes on uh for way too long put those fires out if that was the sort of thing that drove you to found Blackwater and grow it across those 13 years how does it feel to know that it is now associated in people's minds with war crimes and with being a mercenary group well there's a there's a great lack of understanding from most people that have not served the military or served in combat zones and you know the problem in America you have one half of one percent serve in the military another three or four percent that know the person that served the military leaving 95 percent of the people with no idea of what happened actually happens in combat or in or how dangerous it is nor know anyone that actually serves and so uh seeing how grossly distorted the media portrays things in the world it is what it is I know what the truth is uh my people that were working out there know what the truth is um the people we've rescued hundreds if not thousands of times know what the truth is and it is what it is but that's I think uh Battlefield contractors have been maligned for centuries um but they're still necessary and people still call them when they're uh when they're needed one of my favorite parts um knowing this uh knowing that um uh it would be controversial doing a counter piracy program in Somalia we sent a film crew along and they filmed everything the training driving to the missions Etc and it's called the Somalia project and it actually won a prize at the Toronto Film Festival uh but my favorite part of that movie and there's a there's an Indian kid in his 20s who's interviewed and he'd been held captive for a year and a half on a ship and um and he said one day we heard shooting and we heard a lot of shooting and then we heard a helicopter and we knew someone had come to rescue us and he said we prayed to God and God finally sent the pmpf the Portland Marine police force after all the noise all the spending all the other nonsense by the EU the US government um Chasing Pirates all over the uh the Indian Ocean that little unit the Portland Marine police force got it done and rescued that crew and lots of other Crews like that and ended piracy that unit went active in 2012 and you really don't hear about piracy off the coast of uh off Somalia in the Indian Ocean after that so moments like that make it very very satisfying so however grossly mischaracterized Battlefield contractors are mercenaries if if we were allowed to put out the fires raging in in um Northern Nigeria right when you see 300 girls kidnapped for the mere crime of going to school or the people blown up constantly in southern Somalia for going to a hotel going to a uh going to the the wrong mosque or whatever or if we could have prevented the debacle the embarrassment of Western Civilization that happened in Afghanistan you call me a mercenary all you want give us a chance to do that and I'll I'll take that title all day long do therefore reject claims that pmcs need further regulation internationally say say that again do you reject claims that pmcs need further regulation sure they can regulate all they want um it's um that's like saying um you want um you want Isis regulated in the sense of you want people behaving well in the battlefield you do that by sending honorable people that have the right experience with the right leadership and the right Mission and the right incentives um for the for the people that say PMC should be regulated they can make lots of noise about the Wagner group the Russian pmcs who are doing all kinds of things in a lot of countries with complete impunity unless there is consequences unless there's an enforcement mechanism to actually stop the Wagner group or Isis Isis in that case acting as a as a surrogate of um of other interested countries in the area of the Middle East or funded by them unless there's consequences you can't make that stop right I remember taking my kids to um to Dachau right the first concentration camp in Germany and on the front gate of Dachau there's a there's a plaque to the first Armored Division and the 29th Infantry Division okay 29th interview division came from Virginia which is where we used to live and I said to my kids look this this horror that happened in this concentration camp stopped not because of international conventions not because of the Red Cross complaining it happened because men with guns and tanks came to this concentration camp and made it stop and so if you're going to let contractors do that call The Mercenaries or if you're going to send some internet an actual qualified U.N peacekeeping Force to actually do it or if you're going to send a division of the British army fine but send one of those but put the fire out people that want to throw stones at contractors it's it's not a fair argument because sending people to put the fire out you know like my friends from from executive outcomes when they arrived in Sierra Leone in the early 90s and they heard gunfire right outside the city because the Revolutionary united front had taken over the entire country when the first 60 of them showed up the people of Freetown Sierra Leone showed up in a parade because somebody was finally coming to defend them do you think the people of Rwanda would have cheered anybody contractor 82nd Airborne from the United States or the U.N would have showed up to cheer somebody that came to stop and to defend them from being slaughtered in Rwanda the United Nations for all their Bluster allowed a million people to be killed by farm tools in four months that is a that's that's a staggering number so there's talk is cheap put your boots on the ground and make something happen and then have a and then have a conversation about who's doing what and where if you were Chief the defense staff in the United Kingdom will come out in Chief United States where would you deploy boots on the ground right now where what why would you deploy boots around where would you intervene where do you believe we have a responsibility so there's a difference I'm not saying send forces to all these countries against their will I'm saying if you provide a Continuum of of capability to support National sovereignty of those countries right I'm not going to send forces to Nigeria to invade no but if you provide them the means to stop the kidnap gangs that are grabbing dozens or hundreds of girls regularly to put that fire out or you know um Somalia for example raging now for 20 years a truly an Islamic criminal gang al-shabab lots of ways to put that fire out again Somali government wants help the U.S has sent more U.S forces but they're going to be very very impaired from from going outside the wire and and actually getting after those terrorists one of the real problems even with the with the I would call it Western Government support has been an obsession with trying to kill terrorist leadership instead of looking at ignoring the fact that if you if you take out the head there's always another there's always another snake head that regrows and instead if you look at you going after their Logistics their finance and their personnel making it unsexy to be a a a terrorist or Guerrilla in that environment that's the ways to to reinforce that natural sovereignty not in an intervention this way always voluntary supporting a legitimate government that wants to improve the livelihoods of this people it's either lots of things that you're proud the black quarter has done or could have had the opportunity to do across the last 20 years is there anything that you regret being part of or ashamed that Blackwater is done not ashamed I'd say hindsight for the betterment of the business I never would have worked for the state department I don't think they really wanted to be there they never appreciated the work we did we did more than a hundred thousand missions no one under our care ever killed or injured and when uh when things got difficult they threw us under the bus so if I could send a note back to myself in 1996 say avoid the state department they're just not worth the trouble um you know the other the dod the other federal agencies we work for no problem but uh with that one I would uh I would I would definitely take a different path and on a personal level um you've spoken quite a bit about um Kabul the evacuation and also about money as a motivating factor in Conflict so I'm sure you know this is going for questions to one of our members um you famously advertised in September August last year that you were selling chartered flights out of Kabul for six thousand five hundred dollars each um do you think it was right to do so what was your thought process behind doing so well again we're not an NGO we did not have any donor money to fund uh the the loadout of an aircraft and so uh if people wanted to buy partial loads of a chartered flight that was uh far below what most people were charging for uh for hauling people out of an aircraft look I don't own any 300 million dollar c-17s so we have to rent a a 737 or a 757 or something like that and pay the pilots enough to take a risk to Flying to Afghanistan and you have to have to pay the insurance for the operator uh multiple millions of dollars to take the risk of flying their their aircraft into an active very active war zone that's just been taken over the Taliban um people that scoff at that number truly have no understanding of of how costs of these things work that was a fraction of the of the number that um of the costs that were entailed very quickly before I opened up questions to the audience a few more questions on uh the world order going forwards rather than over the last few months um Joe Biden said in the last few weeks he reaffirmed the United States commitment to defend Taiwan in case of invasion do you think that if China was to launch a naval invasion of Taiwan next week NATO had defend it NATO would defend it or the United States um both well here's the thing the fact that Joe Biden has talked about all these defense articles that they're providing to Ukraine but they've only provided five percent of the headline that's been announced I would be worried if I were Taiwan now the difference um these are the things standing in in taiwan's favor uh amphibious invasions are hard probably one of the hardest military Endeavors to to do you heard a lot of noise maybe about a river crossing that the Russians tried that did not go well they made some other River Crossings work that did not get the press as well but crossing a river is One Thing Crossing 70 miles of open ocean is difficult I checked the wind today it was 23 knots in those straights which will make for some serious waves and so um you know logistically getting troops over the beach into Taiwan for the for the CCP difficult resupplying from the United States everywhere else also difficult the tyranny of space and distance and time and weather and uh and the deterrence of all those Precision Chinese missiles the uh the d21s um if I were Taiwan first of all they need to take their defense seriously before the U.S should ever send any troops and they don't even spend two percent of their GDP on defense either um they should own their defense and take it seriously they should do a very serious Home Guard um uh because amphibious invasions are a math problem it's industrial problem right you have to get a lot of manned materials over the beach and sustain them and support them uh if you can provide the variability of not being sure that you're going to succeed in those first two days or three days advantage to the fender second I would complicate the undersea efforts that that would an Invader would face with proper submarines and mines and third they have to uh to find some solutions for deterrence in the air but um I would not I would not if I were Taiwan depend on a U.S president any U.S president of any party sending thousands of Americans to defend Taiwan that's just I don't think that's realistic would you be in favor of a permanent U.S military presence in Taiwan I don't think it's necessary I think Taiwan can defend itself they can if they're serious about it they can spend the money for the tools and train their people and um you know this island managed to defend itself for uh for many uh centuries in Millennia uh they can too one final question before I open it up which is I suppose a global strategic question which will also help with my essay next week um nuclear proliferation do you think that going forwards the next few decades the the P5 powers that is legally able to have nuclear weapons or Waning in global status or at least three of them are do you think that that will Usher in a new age of nuclear proliferation and do you think that has positive impact of Global Security I think that um with the mou that was signed um with Ukraine I think in 97 where Europe promised to guarantee Ukraine's border security border Integrity in exchange for them giving up their nuclear weapons uh has proven to be a huge error on Ukraine's part and countries of nuclear weapons tend to not be invaded and so it will be a huge incentive for countries to figure out how to go nuclear even if it's small to have that deterrent Factor so I would say the lack of deterrence that's been demonstrated over the last 20 years uh will inevitably Point more people to getting nuclear weapons because that's the only real deterrence that matters uh ladies and gentlemen if any of you have any questions please raise your hand or your membership card and one of our committee members will come and bring your microphone please stand up and ask your question do we have any questions for Mr Prince I have plenty more if you don't know the gentleman in the front room thank you um I was just wondering um with uh with Russia and the us we don't have as many like I guess economic ties as we do with China or Taiwan I'm American by the way and um um I'm guessing like with Taiwan we also have like the they have the leading semiconductor Industries and we have a trip shortage and I guess like you know giving up Taiwan would give up the technology to China and there's so many more economic implications if uh China was to try to invade Taiwan and I'm just wondering your thoughts on um you know would that cause like the American response to be greater than um or and I guess more serious than we've done towards Ukraine well of course I mean our economy is is hyperlinked to uh to China's and uh it's not just chips out of Taiwan that would that would cause that but the the secondary and tertiary effects if China if if the uh the CCP were to move on Taiwan and to take it remember China Imports about 90 of their energy okay gas and uh and uh crude uh coming through pipelines out of South north northwest Asia uh through xinjiang Province uh from the north out of Russia uh through burp through Myanmar and a lot by ship all of that immediately becomes vulnerable and able to uh to be uh interdicted and so the the second and third order effects of that kind of conflict uh drives China uh mainland China that if they're going to do something they have to do it they have to know it's going to be fast and has to be successful and if it's not then the CP the CCP is kind of betting all of it they're betting all their cards on that being successful and so that's a that's a pretty high high level bet that being said uh seeing the the lack of aggressive response by this Administration uh regarding Ukraine right because there's rhetoric and there's reality and there's a big gap there uh that I wouldn't be surprised if the if the mainlanders move on Taiwan sometime before the 2024 election next question remember in the fundraise thank you well if I may again just another question about the um you started your talk um re recalling the successful in Invasion and execution of a very small um force in Afghanistan and back in 2001 and I do wonder whether in the sense Russia intending to do something similar in Ukraine at the beginning which then obviously backfired thanks to things that are still to be analyzed Heralds that conventional Warfare is still the rules of the game in a sense instead of relying on these small surgical strikes that obviously didn't work out for Russia or is that just because Russia doesn't have the similar capabilities for surgical strikes that the U.S possesses sure significant difference one being the Taliban were far a far cry different than the Ukrainian military capacity if if Putin had done this what he's doing now in 2014 it'd be a very different uh outcome because for the last eight years the ukrainians have been in training camp seriously training camp because they managed to stop the Russian invasion as far as it got in in 14 but that's been a very raw fight since then and very real and so they have trained and equipped uh somewhat obviously well enough to stop a a full-on Invasion with uh with dozens and dozens of of battalions so yeah it's a it's a it's an apples and oranges comparison to say a hundred special operators against the Taliban backed by air power that's a very uneven fight and so you want if you're in a special operations world you want to pick uneven fights because you have so few people uh but for you know the Russians do conventional grinding combat extremely well and and they uh the the German Army the Vermont was a better Army in the 40s but the Russians still destroyed it by sheer mass and power and combat power and they just ground through it and um uh if if they can still manage their they're winning now so far um the the weather Advantage has been to the defender right and and I I don't know why Putin went decided to go in February when if he had waited until July he would have had dry fields right the Battle of Kursk started July of 1943 the ultimate tank battle biggest in history uh that would have given him let all his forces get off the roads and disperse and be less prone to all those uh Precision anti-tank missiles lining up along the roads they were the way they were so the the this this will probably grind on for quite a while yet I have a follow-up question on that which is what weaknesses do you think this shows about the Russian army and about large-scale conflict in general I mean the Russian army deployed to invade Ukraine was three times the size of the British setting Army um and yet has been humiliated and has suffered a huge number of casualties do you think that shows that large conventional Warfare large-scale professional Warfare is doomed or just a rush was ill-prepared like I mentioned about Azerbaijan with the Advent of precision weapons that puts significant asymmetric advantage in the hands of people that have the Precision weapons that you don't have to to fire 10 artillery shells to kill a tank you can fire one missile uh that changes the math um but it um uh there's still a place for True conventional ground combat capability and um you know people that say that that era is gone are mistaken just like people that say the tank is dead there will be ways developed quickly to provide more um more defense more more capability to defend those tanks and uh you know we've not seen the end of those either um any more questions from the audience thank you the second question um I I remember reading something today on like um On The Wall Street Journal that Russia has expended around 20 of its military capabilities and um just you know I think a lot of us think about like the kind of the the situation where Ukraine is um going to be uh defeated by like the constant mass of Russian Force keeping um grinding through um towards like Kiev but um I guess in the alternate situation where Russia is really continuing on this path where it's just grinding through and it's not really getting progress I think to what extent do you think that Russia will expend its military forces you know when we'll stop and you know ultimately if Putin fails like what what is his um his fate I guess well Ukraine has been playing defense largely so far and they've yet to show that they can Marshal a a maneuver offensive combat capability and sustain it logistically to take back a lot of those forces now there's you hear a lot of reports about how exhausted the Russians are getting all the rest I would never uh I wouldn't bet against the the the Russian Bear uh just yet um for um I think it was um sanctioning all the oligarchs the way that was um I understand what the goal was but by taking everything away it kind of forced them all back into the arms of Putin I would have sanctioned half their half their money and said you get the other half back if you help make a change um so I think um lots of reports of whether he is ill or not who knows but um but that is a very very uh high-stakes game and and the other thing is assume uh Mr de Putin departs uh from a leadership position what comes in his path someone better or someone worse and so uh that's a that's a very unknown unknown as well remember in the black shirt so given sort of your uh desire to promote more sort of strong deterrent efforts but also the fact that a lot of these nations have sort of somewhat incompetent military strategies if you look at the you know withdrawal from Afghanistan and sort of the fact that only five percent of what's been promised to Ukraine has actually gotten there are you sympathetic to those that you know say that we should cut military spending if it's not going to be used effectively or do you think that the opposite needs to be done oh I will loudly promote cutting military spending absolutely the United States military is like an obese triathlete okay I'm not the latest guy I still run Dr athletes I would be better if I weighed 10 kilos less I'd be faster the US military would be much better off if we took 40 percent of the budget out okay because when you throw a lot of money at a problem you cut you create lots of other dumb ideas and dumb problems that that drag you along that detract from your core mission if you think about the Continuum of statecraft right you have diplomats and embassies on one end and you have the Strategic nuclear Triad and aircraft Carriage on the other but 80 of the middle 80 percent of it is the intelligence world and so yes you should have a fantastic military highly capable trained huge deterrent factor that you hardly ever use right because most of these things should be fought uh by the intelligence community when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980 the U.S policy had been NATO's policy the West's policy towards the Soviet Union had been 35 years of containment okay and he was the first one that said we're going to f the commies enough we're going to go at them economically politically culturally socially in every way we're going to attack the the roots of this Soviet communism all over the place not with our military but everywhere else and there is 20 covert action findings that were signed one of whom you ever one the one you heard about was the Iran Contra which after Congress went through all its noise reauthorized that program okay but those worked and worked and worked okay because remember 35 years of containment 1976 to 1980 were a bad time in the West Afghanistan lost Iran hostage crisis stagflation just bad bad economy bad military setbacks all the rest Reagan said enough we're going back at them and that worked and so uh I would argue for a spectacular military that never has to come off the bench because most of these things should be solved by the intelligence world or special operations with a very very small footprint kind of like the first six months after 9 11 that you saw in Afghanistan and leave the conventional military as a true deterrent factor and it's much cheaper that way too two final questions before we finish up one that we ask all of our speakers and one specific to you what are your predictions in the next say two years for the state of Global Security less Global Security if it was a stock I would short it so I know I think uh um there is going to be uh increasing spin-offs from the lack of deterrence I will commend Britain for standing standing tough and Standing Tall with Ukraine the Brits have done a uh the best job in all of Europe uh in in helping the ukrainians much better than the United States has um but I'd say uh the the time of misdeeds by the Russians by the um by the Iranians and uh and even by the Chinese uh we have not seen the last of so a final question that we all School of all speak is if you um could give two three sensitive advice to all of our members what would it be to the members yes the students uh read well read good history talk to people that are practitioners not just academics don't equate don't equate a degree and a particularly an elite degree with experience and competence I think the National Security apparatus in America has all the people stopped with all kinds of elite degrees that have led America into some great disasters and so congratulations for studying here and learning well but but make sure you're practical in your application of that knowledge ladies and gentlemen Miss Eric Prince thank you thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: OxfordUnion

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Id: Lkg4kN6pC6s

Length: 58min 45sec (3525 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 09 2022