Could you tell me some about what your relationship with this administration is like and particularly if you’ve had any conversations with new national security adviser John Bolton about your Afghanistan proposal?
No, not yet. I’ll tell you, I have just made an op-ed and it’s being submitted to various publications because I’m getting ready to make a big push on that again because the president gave the Pentagon what they wanted, more money, more troops, and what we’ve got is more death and more carnage and clearly we’re not winning. And since the last op-ed [in The New York Times, arguing for a new war strategy focused on using contractors], I’ve certainly done homework and research to the point where the White House was asking last summer for a very detailed concept of operations and budget, how to do this differently and far more cheaply. And so having let that bake for a year, we have a very different plan that would save the taxpayers well north of $40 billion and it would tie off the conventional involvement of the Pentagon from Afghanistan.
This is big news. Erik Prince just gave another interview to the Daily Beast and dropped some big news about a new plan for Afghanistan. Now that HR McMaster is gone and John Bolton is the new National Security Advisor, there is reason to believe that Prince’s plan for Afghanistan might get a fair hearing. If folks remember, the Prince Plan was shot down by the last NSA and Erik didn’t even get a place at the table at Camp David.
Another element to consider is that the President is in a better place for trying something different in Afghanistan. There is no doubt that he is getting briefed about Afghanistan and how the Taliban have made huge gains and that must piss him off. The question remains, is Trump losing faith in the military’s Afghanistan strategy and is he willing to go with a unconventional approach to that war?
Below I have posted the interview, and that clip above is the one that most interested me. When Erik posts his new plan, I will write a new post about that. We will see how it goes for this new ‘big push’, and expect to see Erik in the news again. –Matt
….This is Prince’s first on-the-record interview in months. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
There’s been a lot of reporting that Mueller’s interested in some of the meetings you had in the lead-up to the campaign and after the election and I was just wondering if you could tell me if you’ve heard from anyone on Mueller’s team?
I certainly understand the intense interest in the investigation and certainly some of the wild-eyed reporting in the media. I have spoken voluntarily to Congress and I also cooperated with the special counsel. I have plenty of opinions about the various investigations but there’s no question some people are taking it seriously and I think it’s best to keep my opinion on that to myself for now. All I will add is that much of the reporting about me in the media is inaccurate, and I am confident that when the investigators have finished their work, we will be able to put these distractions to the side.
You told the House intelligence committee that the Seychelles meeting [with Dmitriev] was unplanned, but ABC reported that George Nader briefed you on it beforehand. What do you make of that ABC reporting?
All I can say is, there’s been a lot of media reporting about me over the years and most of it is wrong. They get it wrong way more than they ever get it right.
What do you think the United States’ posture toward Russia should be? Do you support the president’s rhetoric about trying to thaw that relationship?
Absolutely. As I’ve said before, if Franklin Roosevelt can work with Joseph Stalin to defeat German fascism, Nazi fascism, national socialist fascism, then certainly Donald Trump can work with Putin to defeat Islamic fascism. And I think good statesmanship could even start to drive a wedge between Russian policy and Iran policy because we can disagree vehemently on their policy in Ukraine but we don’t have to be, certainly, their enemy in the Middle East. And even from a NATO perspective, I mean look, remember, 400,000 Americans died in World War II. Twenty-two million Russians died breaking the Nazi army. And from a Russian perspective, there are more unfriendly nations aligned on their borders now than at any time since May of 1940. So I don’t think we have to be provocative with NATO and I think it’s a good idea for the president to reach out diplomatically. I mean for heaven’s sakes, he’s sitting down and talking to Kim of North Korea. Putin is a much more rational actor and I think it’s totally appropriate for the president to sit down and try to thaw the situation.
Could you tell me some about what your relationship with this administration is like and particularly if you’ve had any conversations with new national security adviser John Bolton about your Afghanistan proposal?
No, not yet. I’ll tell you, I have just made an op-ed and it’s being submitted to various publications because I’m getting ready to make a big push on that again because the president gave the Pentagon what they wanted, more money, more troops, and what we’ve got is more death and more carnage and clearly we’re not winning. And since the last op-ed [in The New York Times, arguing for a new war strategy focused on using contractors], I’ve certainly done homework and research to the point where the White House was asking last summer for a very detailed concept of operations and budget, how to do this differently and far more cheaply. And so having let that bake for a year, we have a very different plan that would save the taxpayers well north of $40 billion and it would tie off the conventional involvement of the Pentagon from Afghanistan.
What do you make of how Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is handling the Afghanistan war?
Well here’s the thing, what worked after 9/11 were a few CIA case officers and special forces guys backed by air power working with the locals. When we went to a conventional Pentagon battle plan, we’ve gone backwards ever since. The Pentagon has largely mirrored the approach of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, with the same results. Secretary Mattis inherits the momentum of a big machine going in one direction, and that machine will continue, like Newton’s first law, an object tends to remain in motion until it’s acted upon by a greater force. Hopefully Donald Trump is that force to change course, to put us on a winning strategy. Look this year the United States will spend $62 billion in Afghanistan, the OCO [overseas contingency operations—the Pentagon’s war funds] and all the money they have for all the overseas basic support for that theater. More than a million dollars a week while we are $21 trillion in debt. And now there are American kids dying there who were toddlers when the Twin Towers came down. We don’t need a multigenerational war in America.
Do you worry that Mattis is a countervailing force against the president’s arguably better instincts on Afghanistan? Do you worry that he is a voice for the status quo?
All I will say on that is that the president asked for options last year and the only options he was given by his then very conventional national security adviser, a three star honor officer and the Pentagon was more money and more troops or pull out. And there wasn’t a whole lot of innovation presented to the president. I’m going to make a hard push again because I think the president was close to listening to an unconventional approach but given it was right around the time of those terrible race riots in Charlottesville and I think the president took a pounding for that and I don’t think he was ready to do something unconventional in Afghanistan. But with the makings of a successful summit in Singapore, perhaps the president’s ready to try a different approach.
Do you think John Bolton is going to be more open to your proposal than his predecessor H.R. McMaster was?
I think so. If past performance is indicative of future performance, that’s probably the case.