Thursday, March 25, 2010
"Bullets from the Drug War" - Dimitry Orlov (kollapsnik @ ClubOrlov) On America's Border Drug War
Bullets from the Drug Warby kollapsnik (Dmitry Olov)
[One-year update: I posted this a year ago. Right now, the Secretary of State, the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other American top brass are in Mexico City trying to spin this. Let's see if any of what I said a year ago needs to be revisited.]
* The US has lost the "War on Drugs"
* The losing side is usually not the one to decide when a fight is over or how it ends
* Unlike other recent defeats, this lost war is a defeat followed by an invasion
* Mexico is the natural staging area for the invasion (inconvenient though it is for the Mexicans)
* New franchises are being set up to service the North American drug market (which is the biggest in the world)
* The CIA has to eat, and all they know how to do competently is run guns and drugs and control thugs; they get a seat at the table
* The narcs have to eat too, and all they are trained to do is deal (with) drugs; they get a seat at the table too
* As the federales grow weak in the US and Mexico, the battle lines will advance north of the border, leaving Mexico a quiet and largely intact backwater
* This is an inter-US conflict, because Americans are the most avid consumers, sellers, and prosecutors of drugs
* Life in the USA gives everyone a pain that is for many people simply not survivable without drugs: either alcohol, pharmaceuticals or illegal drugs
* Illegal drugs are far more cost-effective than either pharma or alcohol — government-licensed industries which are either excessively lucrative or taxed heavily
* As Americans give up hope, they will need to self-medicate in ever-larger numbers
* They will be far more able financially to afford illegal drugs than either pharma or alcohol.
* Illegal drugs (and moonshine) are two very large post-collapse enrepreneurial opportunities within the USA [Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century, Orlov 2005]
* This is no longer a war against drugs; it is now a contest between alternative drug distribution systems
* One alternative is a centralized, paramilitary organization run by CIA remnants, former military, and former police
* Another alternative is ethnic mafias, which will diversify into many other kinds of trade.
* The third, nautrally most cost-effective alternative will be provided by informal, local distribution networks based on barter, which will be all that is left once the dust settles
* The downside of all this is that it will be hard to find anyone sober enough to operate a light switch
* The upside to that is that the national electrical grid goes away, so there will be very little demand for competent light switch operators
[source]
Visit Dimitry @ ClubOrlov, and if you haven't, be sure to check his (2006) presentation "Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US" at energybulletin.net and a recent update: "Collapse Gap Revisited"
Labels:
CIA,
ClubOrlov,
Drug Trade,
Drug Wars,
Economics,
Mexico,
Narcotics,
War On Drugs
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