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

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: The War Conspiracy A powerful analysis of the United States' persistent drive toward war..... -- Franz Schurmann 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 * 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 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 * 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 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: 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 This is a brilliant, compelling, and startlingly original expose 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

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. The result has been a staggering increase in global drug traffic. Thus, the author argues, the exercise of power by covert means, or parapolitics, often metastasizes into deep politics_the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. Scott contends that we must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority 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.