Suzanne Simons

I have to admit I was not that much interested in the Blackwater and baggage this name carries with it, but after few articles in recent days I became interested to see what is actually going on here and how did all of this started.

Author states that she was given access to lots of information from the Blackwater company, and that she had access to both Erik Prince and people he had around him, that helped him build the company and create the very contemporary condottiere organization (what it became, and lets not kid ourselves, what remained 'til current day).

What was eye opening for me was the vision Erik Prince had for Blackwater. It started as a training facility (with patented solutions for target practice) on a huge piece of land. Then it moved into the field of security, logistics (Presidential Airways is so modern Air America), private intelligence, direct action and (to make portfolio more rounded i guess) R&D for weapon system platforms (armored vehicle design, even design and plan for corvette-size patrol ship with helicopter carrying capability).

Just from the above it is clear why Blackwater had to go - Prince was aiming too high in a very short time period. Next phase would be armed aircraft (Super Tucano was already in use, jet fighters would be next logical step) and I would not take heavier armored vehicles out of the picture. And all of this is something that screams "Wait a minute" from every government office in the world. This is too much power (including firepower) to be placed into hands of private enterprise, no matter how connected it is with the government.

Erik Prince himself is not your regular guy, to say the least. If one takes into account his young age trips around the Baltic states, Balkans and other trouble-spots brewing in the beginning of 1990s it is clear he is linked to US government not just by the ideology and political views, but by upbringing and social position. He might seem as person not completely inline with modern times and that is true - he would feel more at home in early 1900's, running wild missions during the Great Game in Asia or in early 1950's running various guerillas and mercenaries around the world under CIA auspices.

He is a patriot (I do not doubt that for a second) but with a twist - he wants to earn money in the process. And this is not how things work, especially when ones company starts to grow in a way that it begins providing designs for armored vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles (blip project was extremely interesting), aircraft and ships. There is no government in a world that would tolerate that type of growth in capability and visibility, if for no other reason then because these types of companies are always used for low visibility, denial work. If somebody is so big that it grabs the attention of the world press how can you guarantee low visibility.

Recent rise of PMCs (from 2000's onward) opened the gates to Hell. All the talk about efficiency is complete BS - in case PMC gets into full contact with the opposition army (this explains why PMCs are usually sent to places with very low military threat), it would be regular army that would be sent to get them out (and this means commitment from the government end to enter possible high risk war). This is one of the reason why mercenaries were put into a specific law category and for all means and purposes banned. Now we can talk about fine print etc, but PMCs are mercenaries. They might act on behalf of the government, but so were Hessians, Swiss and Prussians, they were all controlled from their homelands and given documents to allow them to serve this or that master, but they had to send money back home. They weren't wandering companies of old.
Now imagine that a mistake on behalf of PMC actually brings entire country into war - for what?

Second, Prince ran the company as a business, but he slowly forgot who he worked for. I have to agree with the author that at the end Prince's comments were rather weird, criticizing the very administration that employed him by default (one more thing to keep an eye for - this clearly shows he was not just an adventurer starting the business). They employed the Blackwater but as a hidden arm, not as a reference for future job opportunities. Once Blackwater started to spend more time under the media lights, its usability for various government agencies started to diminish.

Third, if one wants to run business such as PMC, it needs to be run as a mercenary business. This means money needs to be paid by the customer but most importantly you want to behave in a proper way (as per requirements of the environment) in order to keep those very customers. You do not want to have heavily armed nervous guys wandering around, heading to a possible collision with local civilian authorities. If idea is to keep low profile why then use heavily armed and armored vehicles pushing max speeds and ramming through anything on their way? Looks good, is safe but then just get a tank or two and transport people that way, with a bulldozer running shotgun like in Mad Max movie. That will be super safe (for convoy), max power achieved and everyone else will be just pushed aside.

So, lots of things started popping up as Blackwater became more and more known in the media. It was just a matter of time when some catastrophic event would occur to bury the company.

Element that did not help at all was what I see as a complete disconnect with reality - even author mentions these lines few times - so it is required to make something clear: US did not liberate Iraq, nor Afghanistan. There was no liberation since not one of these countries was occupied and thus called for help (as was case with Kuwait in 1990s). These countries were occupied by US and allies, and friendly government set to power (how this worked out in the end is horror story but lets not get into it). And this is fine, US did not act in a way that different from any other state in the past when they wanted to take control over the area they were interested in. All clear. But until spade is called a spade these idiotic statements about "liberation" will be used to justify just about everything. Blackwater was called in as part of huge number of defense contractors to ensure friendly government remains in place and that international companies and representatives can do their job (wont go into this).

Very much like South African Executive Outcomes, Prince and Blackwater became too powerful too soon, allowed for mistakes (making the business lean meant using the approaches that work with what is at hand, but then this caused high probability of incident with enormous casualty list) and then instead laying low, their pride got hurt and as a consequence they literary shot themselves in the foot and slowly lost the government support.

Blackwater still exists, let us not kid ourselves, but it is more under the radar, working in a way that its employers prefer.

While I was interested to see if author will take sides, she did not. All of the information is pretty straight forward, and author manages to walk that very narrow path between understanding and condemnation. Book reads very much like a long article and provides a lot of information and author manages to remain neutral, pointing to successes and errors of the Blackwater, actions of its management (good, bad and very bad) and the way government tried to keep the company under the control, and because of media exposure be seen as doing something about these "gung-ho mercenaries".

Blackwater was an experiment and it succeeded - US government got its shadow armed structure, perfect for tasks where denial is required. They learned off their mistakes and I have no doubts that PMCs of various sorts are now more integrated into the US government structure, with less free space for their own free-action, tightly controlled and financed. As I said, 2000's opened the gates of Hell.

Interesting, recommended to everyone interested in modern day mercenaries and private military industry.… (mehr)

Dance With Me was written for the M/M Romance Group’s 2014 Love’s Landscapes event. It’s told in third person from Noah Walker’s pov.

Noah had been given free dance lessons from a mysterious person. He takes the lessons wondering who it’s from. Over time he starts to wish it’s from his best friend, Marco Olivares. The story culminates with Noah dancing with the man who paid for his dance lessons.

This is a very short and simple story. There really isn’t much of a build-up and the passage of time is very quick. If you’re looking for an extremely fast read without any angst, this fits the bill. I give this 3 Stars
… (mehr)