As part of our "What We're Reading Now" series, I recently read Erik Prince's essay “Too Big to Win: How the MIC and the Neocons Keep America Losing.”1 [Military Industrial Complex] [Neo-Conservatives]
When I discussed Mr. Prince's piece with some of my colleagues, I was surprised at how many were annoyed, dismissive, or disappointed that I "wasted" time reading it. If any of our habitual readers share that view, please suspend that for a bit and soak up some material you're uncomfortable with from writers you disagree with.
Being uncomfortable with a topic or disagreeing with some of their arguments should never stop us from considering someone else's point of view…
"Too Big to Win" is an engaging, well-written, and easily digested piece. I'm unsure if Mr. Prince wrote the piece or if he worked with a ghostwriter. Regardless, what shines through is Mr. Prince's evident passion for the subject.
Prince's essay is about 10–12 pages (depending on font and line spacing), but it doesn't read that long. It feels much shorter… probably because it is full of facts and analysis, all pushed along at a very rapid pace by Mr. Prince's dissatisfaction with the status quo regarding the US Defense Enterprise. The "vibe" of the piece is what I would call "21st Century Angry American" because it reads like a "populist manifesto" on our defense woes since the Reagan era.
I think there are a few curious inconsistencies in the essay. Still, Mr. Prince has a very tight message couched in accessible prose (not too many $2 words) and with relatively few (if any) factual errors. Without a bibliography, it isn't easy to find where some of his facts are derived from, but he provides an in-text explanation of the source for most of his data. In other words, I wasn't left scavenger hunting the dark web for the origin of alternative facts. It was all very clear and above board.
The Verdict? I recommend Mr. Prince's essay as a read. You'll leave smarter and either better educated about your viewpoint or better able to defend your opposition to his views.
The Nitty-Gritty
The amount of raw data and the fast pace of Mr. Prince's argument combine in a very seductive way with his populist attack on the military-industrial complex and political elites. The pace and populist style make the essay a bit of a rollercoaster.
-Instead of arguing with Mr. Prince in my head the first time I read the piece, I just grabbed some popcorn and enjoyed the ride. I recommend reading it that way first… then thinking it through with a second closer reading. It's much more fun that way.-
Mr. Prince doesn't dilly-dally around with any kumbaya unifying language to bring in the reader before he gets down to brass tacks. Utilizing a military BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) writing style, he provides his thesis with an immediate "knife hand" to the reader's chops:
"It is painfully apparent to anyone of sound mind and judgment that there's something gravely wrong with America's current military capacity and our ability to project power in the world."
In Mr. Prince's view, the United States is wasting blood, sweat, and treasure (in criminal amounts) in an effort to line the pockets of the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) and government elites. He feels this is occurring in direct opposition to the best interest of the United States and US taxpayers. If that is not egregious enough, Mr. Prince argues that their corruption is second only to their incompetence when it comes to defending American interests.
Prince believes that the Reagan administration's move from containment to a policy of outspending the Soviets started us down the slippery slope of ever-increasing debt-spending that "hooked" the US Defense Industry on the drug of government contracts for "forever war.” I found it interesting that Prince pinpoints the "root" of the problem we're facing back in the Reagan administration. However, his reasoning is sound if you've seen a graph of US debt and deficit over time.
For an outstanding explanation of US debt and deficit over time, I recommend the "visualization" of the US Debt created by James Eagle2 (linked here and footnoted below). Mr. Eagle's visualization makes Mr. Prince's point better than Prince himself can, with words alone.
Mr. Prince follows that revelation with 8 or 9 pages of US defense-related, tactical, operational, and policy failures, starting at the end of the Cold War and working up through today. It's hard to argue with these. Whether discussing the millions killed (1 million alone in Rwanda) or the trillions ($) wasted (in Iraq and Afghanistan), Mr. Prince makes a convincing argument that something is rotten in the state of US foreign policy. -Shakespeare just rolled in his grave-
Inconsistencies/Questions
The chief villains in Mr. Prince’s Legion of Doom are neoconservatives, who he blames for their corrupt, forever-war policies. I've always thought that Prince was more politically aligned with the right, so you can imagine my confusion when the views espoused in his essay seemed to be more aligned with the Carter Administration than with Jeane Kirkpatrick. Don't get me wrong… that is a defendable point of view but an unusual one (I think) coming from Mr. Prince.
Perhaps my confusion stems from the definition of "neocon" that Mr. Prince uses in this piece. His thoughts seem to align with common usage when he's accusing Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney of collusion with the military-industrial complex. However, he then lumps Republican administrations in with those of Clinton, Obama, and Biden.
Perhaps my "populist defense manifesto" theory explains Prince's broad usage of the term neocon. Maybe he is claiming that all "ruling class elites" are part of the same globalist agenda and colluding with big business. Perhaps they're all neocons in his view and just using the (D)s and (R)s to divide the American people?
My Thoughts
I need to start my thoughts about this piece with an off-topic aside.
For many in my generation, constantly referring to someone as "Prince" is disconcerting. Every reference brings to mind "The Purple One," whom I kept playing in the background while writing… Perhaps Mr. Prince feels that the world is about to go to hell in a handbasket, "like it's 1999."
But I digress…
My first (serious) thought about "Too Big to Fail" is that Erik Prince's populist message is so seductive that the reader really needs to step back a bit and read it a second time. There is an underlying sales pitch hidden in plain sight. In effect, Mr. Prince's message is, "Don't trust or hire the Military Industrial Complex. Hire me instead."
And that's OK. His sales pitch may feel a little self-serving and hypocritical, but if so, he is not an outlier. There is more than a bit of a Shakespearean stench floating around the government-industry relationship. Every day, very high-level US officials retire to lucrative jobs in industry or with foreign governments. Right or wrong… it doesn't look good. So, forgive me for not clutching my pearls at Mr. Prince's appearance of self-interest. That whole rocks and glass houses thing, right?
That said, there is a lot of undeniable "fact" in Mr. Prince's piece. We have made many egregious errors since the end of the Cold War. We should give Mr. Prince credit for pointing out that our "dance with indebtedness" to cover forever-wars started way back in the Reagan administration (and has no end in sight).
That brings us to the point where Mr. Prince and I diverge entirely. Mr. Prince believes that political and military elites are colluding with the military-industrial complex to suck (like a parasite) the lifeblood out of America and the American taxpayer. I disagree.
In more than 35 years of government service, I can say without hesitation or mental reservation that 99% of the government employees I’ve encountered are just doing their jobs, drawing their pay, paying their taxes, and trying to live the American Dream. They aren’t part of some vast “globalist” conspiracy. I am not saying corruption does not exist. I am saying that it is the exception, not the rule. And that one is more likely to find that at very high levels (the 1%) than among working-class bureaucrats.
Despite that, I agree that we have seen a lot of policy incompetence that has resulted in an embarrassing number of government failures. But surrounding the failures that Mr. Prince describes were actually a whole lot of good intentions. They were just short-sighted, ill-informed, and without strategic context—perhaps incompetent but certainly not criminal.
Even though he refers to its vague outlines, I believe that Mr. Prince misses the overarching problem. He would be better served looking beyond the tactical and operational issues to see the actual problem as national strategy failure. The genesis of those failures lies in the fact that we have had no discernible national strategy since the fall of the Soviet Union. Our external actions since the end of the Cold War have been unfocused and without purpose. We wander in the desert, looking for a pillar of cloud (or fire) to follow, and spend every day reacting to immediate needs by searching for honey and locusts.
In a recent post on strategy (Strategy for the Rest of Us), we discussed how misunderstanding the basic principles of strategy damages our nation. In the end, I think Mr. Prince shows an impressive ability to identify the symptoms and the damage caused by the sickness. However, he has misdiagnosed the patient. The true disease that “Too Big to Fail” points to is strategic failure.
Today, our preeminent national-level strategic document is the national security strategy. Ninety-five percent of that document is defense-related. In effect, we only have a plan for using a hammer… so every problem is a nail. If we were more strategic and not trapped in the “tyranny of the now,” the military would always be used as a last resort.
The use of force is not strategic; it is operational and tactical by definition. Military power cannnot affect strategic outcomes outside of larger whole of government lines of effort. Without a true national strategy we are stuck in a reaction paradigm, reeling from crisis to crisis with no purpose except to “act.”
IM — Too Big to Win (im1776.com)
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jameseagle_usdebtcrisis-economicreform-globaleconomy-activity-7205662891151093760-BGTp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Good article. You discuss one of my points I tried to make when I worked at WHINSEC. It is not the private, sergeant or mid level officer that is causing the chaos. It is those who speak English, invited to the embassy parties, wear a coat and tie, and frankly who look and act like us and we are comfortable dealing with that steal the millions, protect the illicit business that erode security and justice. We engage with them and promote them through our relationship with them. That was my argument against reestablishing the Hall of Fame. We don’t know how, in reality, they “earned” their influential positions, but the people do. So we indirectly and unknowingly promote the behaviors we say we fight against.