Drugs, Oil and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Colombia and Indochina (War and Peace Library) - Hardcover

Scott, Peter Dale

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 074252521X ISBN 13: 9780742525214

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003

Synopsis

Drugs, Oil and War This text illuminates the forces that drive US global policy, from Vietnam and Colombia to Afghanistan and Iraq. It brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been central to the larger workings of US intervention in Third World countries. Full description

About this title

Review:

Praise for the work of Peter Dale Scott: Coming to Jakarta Coming to Jakarta is the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time.--Robert Hass

Peter Dale Scott takes us for a controversial tour along the dark side of American foreign policy. The book builds a powerful case that Washington's War on Drugs is at best futile and at worst criminal. The overall target is the militarization of our foreign policy. The facts and conclusions are chilling.--Ambassador Robert White, president of the Center for International Policy

Praise for the work of Peter Dale Scott: Cocaine Politics For the evidence that narcotics . . . have been instruments of U.S. foreign policy, you simply have to read Cocaine Politics. This, one of the most enlightening books of the year, will redefine your usage of the silly term 'drug war.''''--Christopher Hitchens "The Nation "

No student of political science or political thinker dares overlook this thirty-year tour de force of the dark side of history and the para and deep politics that control so much of our daily lives.--Michael C. Ruppert, publisher/editor of From the Wilderness

Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and current English professor, analyzes an important aspect of U.S. foreign policy. Scott does point to sources and relationships that are often ignored by works relying on standard archival materials.--CHOICE

Praise for the work of Peter Dale Scott: Deep Politics and the Death of JFK Staggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy--of which the assassination, Scott says, is symptomatic....--Kirkus

This is a brilliant, compelling, and startlingly original exposé of American foreign policy as oil policy with an addiction to drug trafficking as its adjunct. It makes most academic and journalistic explanations of the dreadful paradoxes of our past and current interventions read like government propaganda written for children.--Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Praise for the work of Peter Dale Scott: The War Conspiracy A meticulous and fascinating analysis. . . . The great importance of this book extends well beyond the new understanding it provides with regards to past escapades. Scott exposes an element in the American system of global power that poses an increasing threat to the victims of this system....--Noam Chomsky, MIT

Synopsis:

Peter Dale Scott's work illuminates the underlying forces that drive US 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 US 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 US influence is grounded no just in military and economic superiority, Scott contents, but also in so-called soft power. We need a "soft politics" of persuasion and nonviolence especially as America faces the prospect of yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 074252521X
• ISBN 13: 9780742525214
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248