Erik Prince is the founder and former chairman of the notorious private security firm Blackwater Worldwide—now called Academi—whose activities in Iraq and elsewhere led some observers to term it a modern-day "mercenary army."[1] Prince's track record includes being an important financial contributor to the Republican Party, backing various conservative causes and rightist groups in the United States, and serving as an informal adviser to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, where he has assisted efforts to train mercenary desert armies.

Blackwater has been the subject of numerous criminal and congressional investigations related to weapons trafficking, corruption, and using excessive force, among other charges. Though he sold the company and moved to Abu Dhabi in 2010, Prince has continued to defend it against these charges. "The government chose to prosecute my people for doing exactly what was asked of them," he complained in early 2013.

Later that year, Prince published Civilian Warriors, a personal memoir dedicated in part to dispelling what Prince claimed were misperceptions about the Blackwater record—particularly concerning its employees' behavior in combat, the company's secrecy, and his own political connections.[4] "Civilian Warriors is an angry book," opined a Bloomberg Businessweek write-up of the memoir, "and some of Prince's contentions have made immediate headlines: He argues that ill-conceived State Department regulations led to Blackwater's many firefights in Iraq; he has accused former CIA Director Leon Panetta of blowing his cover as an intelligence asset; and he contends that, had Blackwater still been providing security for America's diplomats, Chris Stevens, the ambassador killed in Benghazi, would be alive today."

The book is also a screed against government incompetence and a paean to military contracting. According to Businessweek, Prince wanted the book "to prove two things he strongly believed in: the dynamism of the private sector, and that some of the world's most frustrating problems—piracy, warlords, genocide—could be solved by small groups of highly trained men with guns."

In interviews, Prince admitted that publishing the book was in part about making money, claiming he "didn't make a whole lot of money out of the whole Blackwater experience" after paying out legal fees from its various imbroglios. But he also took the opportunity to expand on his own political views, including on the military budget and social spending. "I think it's very important to bring some budget sanity back to how America spends its money on defense, on intelligence, on everything, including social programs," he told Talking Points Memo in December 2013. "I want to take away the notion that it's unpatriotic to cut the defense budget because there's plenty of room to do it to make it more efficient," he added. "You know, can the right and the left then cut the grand bargain to do social programs, reduce defense spending, just cut everything, and have the country live within its means and really unleash the entrepreneur?"

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