The Geopolitical Foundations of Blackwater
By George Friedman

 

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Blackwater, KBR and all the rest are the direct result of the faulty geopolitical assumptions and the force structure decisions that followed. The primary responsibility rests with the American public, which made best-case assumptions in a worst-case world. Even without Iraq, civilian contractors would have proliferated on the battlefield. With Iraq, they became an enormous force. Perhaps the single greatest strategic error of the Bush administration was not fundamentally re-examining the assumptions about the U.S. Army on Sept. 12, 2001.

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This is a very fair indictment of the Bush Administration. As is usual, the last war’s assumptions are paid for with a lot of blood and treasure. When the “leaders” are blind to the flaws in the assumptions, people perish.

Perhaps a President Ron Paul will cause a fundamental reevaluation of assumptions. No other candidate promises to do anything other than “more of the same”.

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