Drugs, oil, and war : the United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

Resource Information

The work Drugs, oil, and war : the United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Liverpool. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Drugs, oil, and war : the United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

Title remainder

the United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina

Statement of responsibility

Peter Dale Scott

Creator

• Scott, Peter Dale

Subject

• Colombia -- Foreign relations -- United States
• Drug control -- Political aspects
• Drug traffic -- History -- 20th century
• Indochina -- Foreign relations -- United States
• Intelligence service -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• Afghanistan -- Foreign relations -- United States
• United States -- Foreign relations -- 20th century
• United States -- Foreign relations -- Afghanistan
• United States -- Foreign relations -- Colombia
• United States -- Foreign relations -- Indochina
• United States, Central Intelligence Agency
• Petroleum industry and trade -- Political aspects

Language

eng

Summary

Publisher's description: Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies. This strategy was originally developed in the late 1940s to contain communist China; it has since been used to secure control over foreign petroleum resources. The result has been a staggering increase in the global drug traffic and the mafias associated with it-a problem that will worsen until there is a change in policy. Scott argues that covert operations almost always outlast the specific purpose for which they were designed. Instead, they grow and become part of a hostile constellation of forces. The author terms this phenomenon parapolitics-the exercise of power by covert means-which tends to metastasize into deep politics-the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. We must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority, Scott contends, but also in so-called soft power. We need a "soft politics" of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is embroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq

Cataloging source

DLC

Index

index present

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

War and peace library