Customer Reviews

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an outstanding and revelatory book, a brilliant account of a drug-trafficking empire. He shows how US protection for their drug-runner allies has led to the huge increase in drug trafficking in the last 50 years.

The US strategy of opposing national self-determination involves alliances with drug-traffickers like the Sicilian Mafia, the Triads in South-East Asia, the Contras in Nicaragua, the Kosovo Liberation Army in Europe, the death squads in Colombia and the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. As President Johnson's Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, the USA "should employ whatever means ... arms here, opium there."

From the 1870s to the 1960s, the British rulers of Malaya farmed the opium franchise to the Triads. The US state first copied this strategy in 1949, when it armed the defeated Kuomintang's drug networks in Burma and Laos, after the victorious Chinese revolution began to eliminate Chinese opium, then the source of 85% of the world's heroin.

The US state encouraged its allies to enrich themselves through drugs, while it blamed the communist enemy for the evils that its allies were committing. From 1949 until at least 1964, the US told the UN Narcotics Commission that China was responsible for drug imports into the USA. In fact, the drugs were trafficked from Burma and Thailand, under the protection of the Kuomintang troops backed by the CIA. The Hong Kong authorities stated that they "were not aware of a traffic in narcotics from the mainland of China through Hong Kong" but "quantities of narcotics reached Hong Kong via Thailand."

The US state assaulted the whole region of South East Asia between 1950 and 1975, just as it is attacking the Middle East today. An earlier effort at regime change in Laos in 1959-60 was a disaster, putting drug traffickers in power. Opium production soared during the years of US intervention, the 1950s and 1960s, and plummeted in 1975 after the Vietnamese people kicked US forces out of the region.

US military interventions lead to bigger drug flows into the USA. After the US intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, the Afghani-produced proportion of heroin consumed in the USA went from zero in 1979 to 52% in 1984.

Later, the Taliban government cut opium production from 3,656 tons in 2000 (90% of Europe's heroin supply) to 74 tons in 2001 (US State Department figures), wiping out 70% of the world's illicit opium production. US forces, in alliance with a drug trafficking network, the Northern Alliance, defeated Al Qa'ida, another drug trafficking network. The US funded the Northern Alliance warlord and terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, making him the world's biggest heroin trafficker.

Under US occupation, Afghan opium production has risen from 3,700 tons in 2002, to 3,400 tons in 2003, to 4,200 tons last year. The Financial Times wrote, "The U.S. and UN have ignored repeated calls by the international antidrugs community to address the increasing menace of Afghanistan's opium cultivation." It is now the world's leading producer of illicit drugs, producing 90% of the heroin sold in Britain and Europe. President Karzai of Afghanistan has made Rashid Dostum, a warlord, drug runner and terrorist, his military chief of staff.

According to the Colombian government, the antigovernment guerrillas of FARC (the supposed target of the `war on drugs') had 2.5% of Colombia's cocaine trade; the government's allies, the paramilitary death squads, had 40%. Drug production in Colombia and its drug imports to the USA have now doubled to a new record.

A hard-to-follow structure and a dry, academic writing style make this powerful and much-needed book less accessible than it should be.

Spurred in part by the near-unanimous 5-star acclaim among the Amazon reviewers, I bought this book. I was a bit disappointed. Not because of the content: Scott's authority comes through strongly as a concerned, longtime, and deep observer of the deliberately hidden dimension of U.S. foreign policy operating in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina. Writing since the time of the Vietnam War, he has dug and dug into these things, and we are the beneficiaries of his spadework.

My issue is more with the structure and presentation of the book. As other reviewers have noted, the book is in fact mostly a reprinting of some of Scott's earlier writings, with some new, brief introductions. This means the book is not really unified, but more a collection of essays with some overlap and repetition which I found sometimes confusing. Counterintuitively, it moves backward in time, starting with a discussion of Afghanistan in 2002 and progressing to Colombia in 2001 and Indochina from 1950 to 1970. The book is not a single narrative or a single argument, and its unity suffers for this.

Scott delivers what should be the most sensational pieces of information--such as that presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon all had strikingly intimate ties to organized-crime figures--in a dry, unemphatic way that makes for a strangely subdued, scholarly tone (with copious end-notes), and thus a less engaging read than it should be.

Also: if you are not thoroughly familiar with things like the progression of political and military events in Indochina leading up to the Vietnam War, you will find the book heavy going, since Scott assumes this knowledge on the part of the reader.

All of that being said, this book is very important, and Scott has done a huge service to us all in writing it. In the nature of things, he can't create a seamless narrative of American skulduggery in its wars since World War Two, since this has been kept secret. But he presents a host of suggestive and damning evidence of systematic, covert wrongdoing by American intelligence and military operatives working opportunistically with drug traffickers and organized-crime figures, often without the knowledge of the administration they are ostensibly serving. These people have taken the adage "the ends justify the means" to the extreme--although what the desired "ends" actually might be is often far from clear.

So: five stars for content and its importance; three stars for presentation. We need more Peter Dale Scotts--a lot more of them. His ideas need to be popularized, but it seems that Scott himself is not the guy to do that.

Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina is an eye-opening journey into the deep politics of U.S. intervention in developing and third-world nations. Scott illuminates the connection between American business interests and American foreign policy with a factual depth that leaves little room for doubt. Scott also documents the CIA involvement--often via drug proxies--in furthering covert American interests. The details and references contained within the text add immeasurably to what is already an incredibly valuable and insightful history. This book is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the motivation behind American foreign policy and the military conflicts that have arisen out of American business interests on foreign soil.

Peter Dale Scott illustrates clearly that one of the main aims of the US foreign policy is control of oil, because the US is heavily dependent on foreign oil and oil markets.

The Vietnam war was based on the Southeast Asia domino theory, which raised concerns about the Indonesian oil assets. The war was all about preventing communist regimes from taking control of oil reserves.
Other examples are Iraq, Afghanistan and Unocal's oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea, Colombia and Occidental Petroleum's oil fields or Kossovo and the Balkan oil pipeline.

In order to control oil resources the US backes armies and governments that are heavily involved in drug trafficking. The end justifies all means.
This kind of powerplay is exercised by covert means (parapolitics). Unfortunately, those policies tend to metastasize into deep politics. As the author states: 'they become an interplay of unacknowledged forces on which the original parapolitical agent no longer has control'.
The result is that the US and the world are inundated with drugs. One cannot find one dollar note without drug traces.

This book is partly a rewriting of an older book of the author 'The War Conspiracy'.
Although it is more confusing and lesser deep digging than his Magnum Opus 'Deep Politics', it is a disturbing and impressive report.
Not to be missed.

Drugs, Oil, and War:

In this brilliant book, Peter Dale Scott shows how since World War Two the CIA has recurrently used drug-trafficking allies against its enemies in oil-rich areas of the Third World, and how this has contributed to a staggering increase in the global drug traffic. He traces this practice back to the surprising connection in 1950 between the responsible CIA officer and Meyer Lansky's chief money-laundering bank. He warns that America's recent restoration of the drug traffic in Afghanistan will help fuel an increased wave of terrorism in the region and the world.

Like veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, whom McCarthyites dubbed "prematurely anti-Fascist" for fighting against Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Peter Dale Scott has long been ahead of the pack on the parapolitical underpinnings of US foreign policy. Those desiring to catch up - and thereby plug the mega-gap between Bush II rhetoric and reality - will be wise to start by reading Scott's latest book, "Drugs, Oil and War." Though he focusses on Indochina, Colombia and Afghanistan, lessons Washington learned there - and forgot - are being retaught today in Iraq.

The previous 'reviewer' must be regarded as somewhat suspect, as his 1-star review attacks the book on the basis of a spelling error I did not come across when reading the book. In fact, this book is highly recommended, particularly for those new to the field of CIA geostrategy & covert shenanigans as they relate to energy resources & the drug trade.

Peter Dale Scott starts out with some definitions in the book.
Parapolitics-"describes the intentional controlling behavior, mostly executive and bureaucratic."
"Deep politics can refer to any form of sinister, unacknowledged influence."

Every chapter is loaded with notes at the end.

Scott emphasizes the monumental influence that oil interests have had on American foreign policy actions. This is often hidden from public view.

He mentions Nugan Hand bank which was a suspected CIA proprietary that combined drug financing with arms deals. Jonathan Kwitney also wrote an excellent book on Nugan Hand.

The CIA connection to opium and other drugs predates Air America and there are fascinating ties to the Corsican and Sicilian Mafias and even some famous American mafioso.

The material on BCCI bank was an eye-opener!

The author updated his material about the Indochina operations and war from the 1960's and 1970's. He examines the oil companies and their lobbyist's interests in former war areas like Cambodia.

One of the quotes that accurately reflects the point of this book is found on page 199. "The apparent involvement of CIA proprietaries with foreign narcotics operations is paralleled by their apparent interlock with domestic institutions serving organized crime."

"Drugs Oil and War" is a thoroughly documented book about foreign policy and the history of war, the part that oil and drugs often play in the matter.

Delivered as promised. Completely satisfied with the distributor. The book delivers the naked truth about our foreign policy. There are pages of footnotes backing up the content. I would recommend the author finding an editor to create an easier read for the material. But the truth is where and how you find it. Compared to the standard fare of feel good news it is a refreshing wind on a hot day.

Peter Dale Scott is a highly regarded author with a long history of outstanding work. To this end, I bought this book because of my strong interest in Colombia and was attracted by the title of the book, "Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina." I would have never bothered to buy this book if I knew that nearly half of it is a rehash of Scott's 1972 publication, "The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War."

Part I, "Afghanistan, Heroin, and Oil (2002) and Part II, "Colombia, Cocaine, and Oil (2001) is good. Scott makes some excellent observations about paramilitary relationships.
Moreover, he carefully explains how paramilitary forces in Afghanistan and Colombia are heavily involved in drug trafficking. Nevertheless, the narrative of this book is coated in left of center rhetoric...and as a political moderate I found some theories lacked intellectual merit. To his credit, Scott's provides professionally prepared footnotes and bibliography.

Bert Ruiz