Transcripts For CSPAN2 Peter Andreas Killer High 20240713

Humiliation that began about the opium war but at the same time it is easy for a lot of people including myself to think of Something Like the opium war like an anomaly or something very particular to very particular timer and place and i have to stand guilty of thinking about the opium war thatbo way. But great scholarship, truly great scholarship like killer hi, a lot of work that is done at the Lawson Institute forces us and me to see the world in a totally new way. This book has forced me and enforces all readers to really focus on the internal and incredibly expansive relationship between drugs and war. That relationship extends from work conducted by people who were often on a form of drug, some kind of psychoactive substance and it extends towards an conquest of drugs or the raw material for drugs and it extends to wars for markets and for outlets of drugs and of course were all familiar with wars against drugs. But as peter argued so effectively, this phenomenon, this interaction between psychoactive substances is in conflict is least throughout history and right up to the present. Peter makes a number of interesting questions and raises a number of questions. We will have an opportunity with a fantastic panel to dive into the questions which will emphasize this entirely new lens that peter gives us to see theti world. Let me quickly explain how we will proceed. Im going to ask peter to come up and speak for ten minutes about the book and then i will ask her panelist each to comment for ten minutes on the book and then well open it up to questions and answers. If you let me briefly introduce peter in her panelist, Peter Andreas is a professor of International Studies in the department of Political Science. He is the author and coauthor of 11 books including a killer i but also the 2013 book smuggler nation how trade made america were quite relevant today we talk about we live in a world of trade friction and talk about piracy and make claims about a variety of countries and listed activities. Chris who is a New York Times novelist. Im a big fan. He worked at the New York Times since 1999, his career as a Foreign Correspondent has esfocused on conflict region spanning afghanistan, the palestinian, libya and syria among others. Chris also served as a marine corps infantry men in combat veteran in the persian war. Next to speak will be angelica drawn martinez, the university of massachusetts, she is a 2013 phd recipient from brown and she is a noted expert, latin american and comparative politics with a particular emphasis on organized crime and criminology, illicit market and the relationship between state actors and nonstate actors, often are nonstate, she is the author of the awardwinning 2018 book the politics of drug violence, criminal cops and politicians in columbia andwi c mexico. That was from Oxford University press. And Stephen Kinzer the senior fellow at the Lawson Institute and an awardwinning journalist who over the course of his career covered more than 50 countries on five continents. Stephen spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times in a Foreign Correspondent and bureau chief in among his numerous claim books include the 2019 volume poison are in chief in the cia search for my control. Obviously topical for the discussion today. With that, let me turn the microphone over to peter andre andreas. [applause] thank you all for coming. If you are here because you think this is about the madefortv dvd, killer hi, sorry to disappoint you, im sure that dvd has and will outsell my book, the genre for that listed on amazon is horror comedy. [laughter] so my book is deathly horror, there is not a lot of comedy in it. In the title killer high has grown on me, my choice was the subtitle, history of war in six drugs. Let me give you a few highlights of the book, what i tried to do in the meal 300 some pages is retell the history of warfare through the lens of drugs and retell the history of drugs through the lens of war and hopefully for those of you who end up reading the book, you b will not quite think of warqu again in the same way and you wont think of drugs in the same way. In fact invite to convince you that drugs and war live together ted over time became quite addicted to each other. One would be drugs made more and war made drugs. These two things tend to be treated quite separately and when literature on work and drugs is systematically trying to tie them together across time, across place in a crossed psychoactive substance. The motivation for the book was not history, it was to bring history into what i consider a policy debate that suffers from a severe case of amnesia, a debate about the socalled nexus between drugs and conflict. We talked about narco state and the first thing that comes to mind is afghanistan, we think about narco insurgents or narco terrorist and we think about columbia and maybe afghanistan. But look at this issue from a much deeper historical state going back not just yearsca b ad decades for centuries, the first true narco state is probably Great Britain, in fact Great Britain is probably the first narco empire if you think about the sheer importance of alcohol taxes, the importance of a tea tray, thats a powerful drug, im addicted to, can think, not nicotine. In the importance of the opium trade for the rise of britain of maritime power. In fact, narco insurgents, yes its the taliban but its also george washington, why do i say george washington, that conflict very much depended on revenue generated by tobacco. In the loan from france based on tobacco revenue and the brits were so upset they burned tobacco fields whenever they found them. Including tobacco fields owned by thomas jefferson. So what i tried to do in the book is systematically unravel interrogate and unpack the relationship between drugs and war. I actually find there are five relationships, what is war on drugs literally combat drug use in wartime not just combat but also on the homefront as well, drug use by civilians dealing with coping with wartime. Obviously war is stressful work, no surprise that drugs help soldiers cope and help them celebrate victories and prepare for battle, they give them liquid courage after all. I also talk about war through drugs, totally different than war while on drugs. Using drugs primarily to fund war that ranges from tobacco taxes to cocaine and opium revenue, the full gamut from illicit to illicitt drugs. Natural to semi synthetic to fully synthetic drugs. From the most benign to the most dangerous psychoactive substances. There are four drugs which is distinct from the two, going to war over drug markets and is and mentioned the most famous case of this are the opium wars of the mid19th centuryhe were britain forced opium onto china through the barrel of a gun. But it goes all the way up to the present if we think about what is going on in mexico, more people died in mexico since late 2006 that have died in iraq and afghanistan combined. Drug violence that although security analysts are reluctant to call it war, if you actually look at the sheer number of casualties, if you look at how well armed the perpetrators are using military grade equipment, the actors themselves are often militarily trained in defectors from the military and in one case u. S. Trained antidrug force turned into a drug hit squad for Drug Trafficking organizations and then you think about the state itself has deployed his military in a frontline world infighting drugs, the mexican military is essentially antidrug force at this point. Many states not just mexico but columbia to some extent and also brazil and even the United States since the 1980s has loosened which restricted the use of the u. S. Military for Law Enforcement purposes. Now very much embedded in the war on drugs at the border and beyond and also militaries policing in our swat teams, swat teams were invented before the war on drugs but took off, this is using military technology, x military personnel and approaches to fighting the substance. There is a war against drugs which is closely related but distinct than war for drugs, war against drugs started with a metaphor. Nixon declared war againstin drugs, he actually sent in troops to fight drugs. But since 1980s it is become progressively more militarized so we can actually call it an outright war and last but not least, this is probably the research that most surprised me is drugs i after war, how much were itself left a Lasting Legacy of trafficking l regulatn drug taste had been fundamentally altered thanks to wars and ways that we often dont give more credit w for. Just to give you a few examples, why are we coffee drinking the tea drinking nation. Because we won the American Revolution. Th the brits went on with tea, we turn to coffee. Not only do we turn to coffee, we turn to whiskey rome was the drink of choice before the American Revolution and distilleries which have rhode island going including massachusetts and whiskey became the alcoholic beverage of choice and was a national drink and no longer needed imports and it was considered patriotic and turned to whiskey turned against the british drink tea. So the very taste that we take for granted are a result of war. The very criminalization of cocaine is a product of world war ii, very few people remember that cocaine was legally produced by japanese pharmaceutical companies. The destruction of those fields in the destruction of the japanese pharmaceutical is part of the u. S. Victory in world war ii, the u. S. Turned against cocaine much earlier but it was not only with the victory of japan when the u. S. Was able to globalize its preference for cocaine prohibitions. Cocaine was one of the biggest losers of world war ii. Illegal cocaine, decades later was arguably one of the biggest winners. Those are the five relationships, now i want to tell you in the few minutes that i have what the six key drugs, averted giving you hints because they mentionon some. The oldest most multipurpose and double edge of the drugs is alcohol. It goes back to beer and wine and then the distilling revolution did revolutionize things. Think about why france is the worlds most famous wine producing in the world, is a conquest what brought wine to france, urdu was set up by the romans and after the romans retreated or pushed back wine indoors in france. The distilling revolution is absolutely essential to the conquest of the new world, think about the importance of alcohol as a cleanser in the westward expansion. In fact hard alcohol became so important that it was actually rationed on both sides of the market revolution, after the revolution whiskeyafaf became pt of u. S. Military rations and infect the british believe it or not had rum rations until the early 1970s until th on their nl ships. Second drug tobacco, arrives much later than alcohol but once it arrives equally potent and in fact none of the doubt sit downf alcohol, alcohol you can a raise revenue but you might have a drink military. But they were able to finance the largest army in europe with vodka revenue but his soldiers were drunk, tobacco is the ideal war drug, highly affordable, fights anxiety and boredom, relieves highly taxable and does not impede performance even though if it might eventually killll you. The globalization of tobacco is intimately also about the spread of warfare. Soldiers mobilize warfare in the very motive Tobacco Consumption was closely influenced by war, so why do we turn away from pipes and who because two cigars and cigarettes to increasingly portable easily to produce, to move, this is the intimate story of war and in fact cigarettes by the time world war ii came around was the most value ration in soldier rations. Third, caffeine. My drug of choice, im completely addicted to the stuff. Its the most popular psychoactive substance but certainly far from a benign relationship to war, arguably stimulated in expansion and i mentioned the British Empire of tea but then we have the rise of caffeinated soldiers, its fascinating in the case of u. S. Civil war, coffee is mentioned in soldier diaries more often than gun, cannon or c rifle. Coffee is a central ingredient to keep soldiers going. Instant coffee was an instant hit on the battlefield in world war ii and outlived world war ii. But the coffee break was actually w introduced for defene workers during world war ii and then outlived world war ii and institutionalized in the workplace in the 1950s. And then all the way up to today the favorite beverage at the military bases are hyper caffeinated beverages like red bull and monster and so on. Opium, as i mentioned opium wars are an extreme case of the relationship between war and drugs which is war for drugs, imperial wars but also Japanese Imperial occupation of china. There is no way that japan in the late 1930s could fund its occupation in china without narcotics. Amphetamines in extreme case of war while on drugs, some said speed is the essence of war, he did not mean amphetamines but he would be impressed of how important and feta means were to keep soldiers on many sides going during world war ii and last but not least,g cocaine. The extreme case l of war againt drugs which i early said a few things about, i will stop there and turn things over to chris. [applause] thank you peter. I will open with complements. If you look at my copy all the way through you can tell i was engaged, when i get to the end of the book and used up two ink pens is probably a sign its a hell of a s book. I was a lucky reader, peter got me a copy over christmas and i spent the holidays with it. Its a work of history as you just heard, history is an act of making diverse and sometimes divergent sources cohere to an understanding and a set of narratives that are relatable and analyses that can make you as you said reimagine the world and understand it. This case the world of war, that was my experience but i dont want to talk about history, at least not distant history, i want to talk about now in more w observation since the persian gulf war of 1990 and 91 in the socalled as the military calls the global war on terror since 2001 and bring the events that peter has related up to the present time. Are there any recent veterans in the room . Any . One, hopefully there will be someone cspan and you can fact check me, i will welcome you to comment afterward. We talk about peter talks about in the book and in his remarks the place that very substances have on the battlefield. The battlefield of this arrow that we live in now have changed a bit from modern conventional military, wars become so technical and the military commands have become and so politically insensitive that some of the longstanding drugs on the battlefield are now prohibited. Alcohol most notably. For a variety of reasons although the military is a heavy user at the personal level of alcohol, at the individual in the unit level when deployed, alcohol i market to call it nonexistent because it is not but its almost invisible, it is quite rare and very unusual to see alcohol on the battlefield. Some is because of the wars as we had since 2001 in the gulf war have often played out among islamic population. And there is a sensitivity to having the military make the social justine alcohol in a country where they have been in some cases invited another cases occupied hoping to get along with the population better than what they otherwise might. There is still alcohol on the battlefield but you will not see much, you have to look. When i was in the 80s and 90s there were among the troops, i was in the marine infantry, there were snakebite kits which was a euphemism, a joke and people would set shampoo bottles with bourbon and it but it was quite guarded, it was very obvious as you know because most everyone here has some sort of relationship with alcohol, its very hard to hide alcohol use, the odor. I remember one snakebite kit being broken on the worship but they lock l the doors and someoe said i just got bit by a [bleep] snake and pulled out a bottle and everybody got a couple of shots and that was it. And a ten month deployment. There was not much alcohol there at all. But there are many other drugs outth there. There is a a deep hypocrisy that you would see in how the military and western militaries in general relate with drugs in their own forces versus into their allied forces and what i mean by that sense of failed hostage attempt in the Carter Administration in which drug use was given part off the blame for the failure, the mechanical failure of the aircraft, there was a story in the years after that the sailor had been smoking pot and a hanger deck and cause the small fire in ait garbage cn and it said activated this spengler system in considered a culprit on the mission and whether the story is correct i havent done the research to tell you but it was widely trafficked and as a result it had gone through a service that coming out of vietnam i use marijuana very heavily and now had drug testing routines, sometimes randomized and they would do things like take a unit and pull numbers out of a hat to in savior Social Security ends in five or seven then you have to report for the first sgt for urinalysis. It was not quite zerotolerance, you were given two chances but you would be crossing under prosecuted on the first hit and discharged on the second with a negative discharge that could affect you for the rest of your life. So the use of marijuana really fell off in the 80s and in our force , and the western forces, when you go to the battlefield now, you would find them maybe heavily using and you said your book is horror over comedy, some of the scenes i saw in afghanistan they would qualify, there would be tense alongside each other with americans in one of the Afghan Partner in the other and the americans would be dippinge copenhagen which is tobacco stuff that taste like how stric entering how [bleep] s very popular in handsfree and smoke was so they could take it on patrols and operate a vehicle or rifle in a radio hand you dont have to fumble with matches. It is immensely popular. Everyone in the american tent like to use tobacco and they were immensely popular. In the afghan time, literally smoke billowing out from his sheesh marijuana. It was universal among the afghan units, maybe not among all of them but every unit it was impossible not to smell it, not to see it was openly used and they were going into the tent and getting high. And episodically, depending on which province in the Service Member might be assigned to the agriculture, afghanistan has many different climates so theres many differente Agricultural Products and in some areas and some regions marijuana is grown extensively and so if youre in the mountains, you would not see the marijuana growing but if you are down in the spear gated step you would see massive marijuana fields and troops would patrol it and picket and many wood smoke and i know some units had heavy marijuana use, so heavy that the commander had to wink and be careful about not having drug test because they would had to discharge the entire unit or punish the entire unit in onestory related from a close friende of mine who is in the core, i was a journalist with the marine corps at this time but the former marine was a urine donor when the test came along, he was clean and would donate urine to his friends, particularly in the mortar pit where it was high all the time basically a baked mortar unit and he would donate his urine so his friends wouldnt get hammered by the rules but hash and pot, while they were very common on the w battlefield were mostly isolated to the afghans and this created situation of hypocrisy and we had a zerotolerance policy for force butter allens are extensively using it marijuana has a significant place. They have a set of policies that dont align with the human behaviors of the population the government serves and what i mean by that coming veterans come home and go to the va and many veterans have a number of problems in which substances whether illicitly obtained or legally prescribed as seen as a common remedy. In the va will prescribe all manner of drugs to the former rank and file, the veterans, antidepressants, stabilizers, opioids for pain, but because marijuana is a scheduled one controlled substance, federally the va cannot administer marijuana even though jurisdictionally many veterans live in states like rhode island that have medical marijuana programs that make marijuana assessablele legally. The va will not deny care to someone who is using marijuana but they cannot be involved in the prescription which creates pretty disheartened circumstances for many veterans. I know many who live in states who dont have medical marijuana and they risk legal action going and getting on the street, im not here to say that marijuana is necessarily universal for many of the afflictions that veterans suffer when they comean home. Because i think the science on that is mixed in individual experiences vary. Some people find it helps and others dont. So prescription has its pitfalls and its hard to get regulated so consistently produce pharmaceutical product more easy to regulate because the product is the same from event to event from dose to dose. So im not here to advocate the marijuana position but i am here to say that its deeply confusing for veterans that they are f have very prescribed with opioids and other drugs but do not have any formal counseling on the use of medical marijuana with many of them alleviating their symptoms and i would add the opioids and veterans and some studies have shown they can lead to twice the rate of overdose on them veteran population. Its a fair question to say how responsible this policy is for the administration of the medical care of our veterans when they have this access and you can argue encouragement to use opioids which they feel is justification in their corner and much more dangerous than marijuana in my ten minutes are up. It is your turn. [applause] first of all i have to say i am very happy to be here today, i graduated here and its fantastic to be home. I am honored to be coming to speak to h people today keith is an intellectual influence on me for the work that i do so needless to say i like his book. I have enjoyed his other books but ive always admired peters reader and how he could tackle Big Questions that in a simple language. And if you sell the book is very clear, this is how they present for a wider audience and i think like paul says in the book, this is a work of an intellectual and i think that is something that characterizes your work and makes it fabulous. I think this book also builds on and continues things that he explored in his previous books in history, his work and i will say naturally he mentions at the end of the book but theres three main blocks that i think are in this book and appear in the rest of his book, the first one is the call to go back to history to think all of problems of violence in markets. I think that is a big in such an important thing because we tend to exaggerate anything that has to do with violence and illicit markets and drugs. So peter goes back to history and shows us that we tend to have deep roots history is very important. The second point i think part of his work and appears here again is how history plays an Important Role in creating and recreating the problems. So the state is very important in this book. It is essentially important because only think of a sui illt markets especially today we think of nonstate actors in the state tends to follow something that is isolated in peters work has been influential for many people like me who think about the state as deeply emerged in illicit markets and violence. I think the third this book has been, hes left it simple with ideas and elegantly and very effectively. Those other elements are present in the book and i think this book is taking on another conventional wisdom and peter mentioned att the beginning whih is historic and how we think of new wars and i think he is taking with the literature and im sure in Political Science and outside of Political Science, the influential leaders are talking about new wars and how it the end of the collapse of the soviet union we have seen the emerge of these wars that tend to be brutal intent to be unregulated, irrational and mostly by profit in this whole debate which is basically an idea that many of the wars that we see inside the state are mostly motivated because of profits. I think peter is telling us that this relationship between illicit drugs is not just state actors, and its not just about crazy in the developing countries. I think that the key part of the book. Peter is showing us that these connections between wars and drugs is very old andis multifaceted and of drugs today and of course the drugs that we will admit that coffee is a drug. And peter really challenges us to think coffee alongside before negatively seeing drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine or opium. In some ways coffee is like the always bargain this book because just because we think about alcohol, nicotine, method vitamin and cocaine those are drugs that have psychoactive effects in their most widely used, but i think peter is able to convince us that coffee belongs in this group. And that it does belong because the way that he expanded is connected to war into warmaking in the history of war that the coffee or drinking and becoming widespread after work is fascinating. The history of cocacola is fascinating how basically the brand really becomes much more popular because of war and i think that is a fascinating story and one that pushes a us o think coffee does belong in this because of the psychoactive substance that has expanded through war in the behavior of people in wars. I think thats very interesting. When i was in Central America, i think thats important, showing in certain places the way that these drugs are being produced in the way of the profit on the drugs can also be a source of war what he calls the war through drugs. And i have to say in that regard one of the most fascinated state. Why do you think that is the case because i dont think theres some potential there is some potential explanation but its not straightforward. Theres more influence from the pharmaceutical the Pharmaceutical Company played with cocaine especially the beginning of the century. That is a really interesting question that came up as i was reading the r book. I think a Common Thread throughout the book and again, this is something that echoes peters previous work is the role of the state regulating these markets in intervening. I think it shows really well that there is in the stories and its always useful thinking and illicit markets. He chose the many ways how their very unsuccessful and we think of the bands or the war on drugs is more than that. He chose the to the 1600s and michael king turned to second 65. For different reasons. Almost ended up being successful because there is strong pushback from the user and from the people are profiting from. And of course it takes us to today and thinking there is so much every form but we talk mostly about marijuana and i think theres a reason for that and the fact that there is more widespread use, it is so different and as much as i would dream and say we have an entire history of bands failing to do what they intend and that can be nice for the war on drugs today but the same time it does not seem that it can be applied for the hazardous drugs to heroin and cocaine today. Again another idea for thinking about this history of war and knowing what we know about what happens is there is a push for them to move forward because there is not enough forces to keep them control. But the does not seem to be the case. It will be interesting to hear about it. I think, i dont know how im doing on time but i will be close to finishing here. Another thing that is very interesting from this book, i think peter openly tends to do but he does not for a reason which is the focus on major powers and history. But a major power. There are some differences to developing countries throughout the book but really a history of how major powers in china, russia, the major powers in the world have been a central part of the story. I think this is essential because it is really what challenges this narrative that we have that is driven by what is happened in the last two or three decades. It is nonstate actors and countries but in the long run of history its about major powers a major words between states. I think that is a driving force of how peter chose the cases that appear in this book but im curious to hear more about how you ended up choosing the stories that appear in this book because im sure you have a lot of stories to choose from and one thing that is fascinating in this book is that im highlighting ideas but im also highlighting stories because the pieces of stories that appear in this book are the things they dont want to tell you and to say this is what will lead you to seem different, the relationship between wars andhe drugs. So yeah, i think i will have to say that i love Great Britain and the state. It is a statement and i think its a very important statement. I want to close with one last question and one last reflection, as i said at the beginning and major contribution from peters work is a push to look back to history to really rethink in question some of the ways we take about current problems. I think personally i see how will we go back to history and see the things that we think are new and not so new give us a lot of elements to think what mistakes must we make again or lally provides a lot of food for thought but a lot of elements to rethink how we think today. At the same time, i face skepticism from some people at times, like we can look back to history but we dont care about history, we care about the future and you look back to history but youre engaged and policies and i just want to hear a little bit about how people react or how you try to connect this and what youre talking about and what youre asked to provide for the recommendation or ideas. I will stop there. Thank you. [applause] i am eager to hear more from peter as im sure most ofm you are so let me make a few brief comments. What i was most impressed about from this book goes beyond the subject matter which is the whole approach of trying to look at history and a new way. That is one of the most exciting parts of the business that we arewa in. Facts do not change, but we understand facts differently as time passes and we get to rearrange facts. That is a thrilling part of our job and that is the great category of research into which this book fits. It gives us a newes way to understand where we have been and where we are now. We understand from this book that drugs are both a tool of war and also a reason for war. I think the combination of those two highlights the importance of this theme. I want to pick up on something that chris said, he used the wordhe hypocrisy. That is a theme that shines right through this book in so many different ways. I would build on what chris says and say theres a tremendous hypocrisy in the way the government deal with drugs onhy the one hand denouncing and commending them on the other hand in using them as tools for their own political purposes internationally. We use those drugs not only as motivations but as inspirations for what we can get, what is out there for us and how we can get it. This hypocrisy extends to our tolerance of drug traffickers from other countries. Just as we decide which countries we dont like and we forgot that must be a terrorist and we find to makem it wait ino a terrorist and other terrorists would likely go bend over backwards to pretend there actuallynd democracy. The same thing happens with drug wars. I had a visit experience i will never forget with one of my favorite drug lords in one of the only ones i got to know and that was emmanuel, the panamanian leader in the 1980s. Ill never forget having an interview with him and telling him a little bit uncomfortably, thats my job as a reporter that many reports that you have been deeply involved in Drug Trafficking and therefore i have to ask you how do you respond to those reports. He smiled and he gestured over one of his aides and his aid had a briefcase and he looks and he pulls out from a folder a letter and he hands itls over to me and the letter is on the letterhead of the Drug Enforcement administration and it says dear general, we want to thin thank o much for all the help youve given us in controlling the drug traffic and the caribbean basin signed john long director of the Drug Enforcement administration. If we all knew he was a drug traffickers the dea and he had a great game going, he was working for one cartel and one the other cartel would try to use panama, he would find out call the t de. And it was a big bust, at them meanwhile he was finally large amount of cocaine with the full knowledge of the dea through other channels. In the 1980s i remember sitting in nicaragua and there was a lot of reports that they refinancing their war in part by shipping cocaine and they were doing the same thing. We did not have thehe detailed information to speculate or to report but when we spoke among ourselves as always, how could they not, it is a poor country, you have a fantastic market with just a few miles away on illicit lane flight so i have no doubt that was a substantial contributor to the wars in Central America and i think for those who have seen combat understand that work is much more chaotic and when youre reading aboutin it. The act of going out and participating in a war violates so many deep instincts and impulses and principles in every human being. And the reality of war is too awful to face so these drugs actually help people and then the normal life you dont want to face and they will be able to face them and a that helps wipe away any directions that governing forces might have to the use of those drugs. And its absolutely true that was a turning point in the u. S. Military when we not only went from very drug fueled military and one that was drug control through the analysis and not coincidentally the time when we moved away from a volunteer army from a draft army to a voluntary one. This is another big result of drug use in the military. And we have another volunteer army will be enabling factor for a government when it wants to prosecute wars because its a lot easier to do so needless to say when people are not worried about the draft and when i first started the book i was wondering why peter did not use sugar as one of his drugs but when i got to the rampart i said yeah he did use sugar but it wrapped up in a larger drug. My last book i wrote about the u. S. Army efforts to develop lsd as a weapon of war and they had the idea that they could dump huge amounts on enemy population love themody would and they would think their rifles were hydrangeas and the enemy was there blood relative but actually it turned out not to work thats reason on the book and the actions teach on and to be used effectively as a weapon of war. I also think that the combination of factors that peter has so brilliantly highlighted still play out today inll many ways to very small to very big. Ive been told by Intelligence Officers that work in afghanistan to pick out which are the hot that they have to migrate against because somebody is living in there that they want to get. One of the things they tell them as the intelligence walking through the village look and see if there is no cigarette butts outside. That is probably somebody and thee taliban. And distributors to drop outside their homes, that was a factor and i want to go on and mentioned the fact that our principal Foreign Policy now has been for several decades our sanctions, we like to sanction governments so they cannot freely export or import their economy and greatly conflicted, i have lived personally through episodes and yugoslavia and then again in iraq. Those were both situations in which governments were pressed to move towards illegal sources of income and because of sanctions those governments turned in part to Drug Trafficking and no better example than north korea. Which is a Major Industrial exporter of Illegal Drugs and it does so largely because it is not able to have other kinds of economic activity. We certainly would not want to ignore the role of opium and other drugs of building up new england and our economy and the trade from new england merchants that provided the capital to other factories that may new england a world power. So from this book i take away a new lens and looking at history to give one example, i spent some time writing about my run, why does arod have a government like it does today but it was all revolution 40 years ago. Why did that revolution happen, they felt that the they were not respecting their democracy. It came from the 19 06 constitutional revolution and iran. What set off the constitutional revolution and iran, the tobacco result. It was when the british insisted and being brought by the british agreed to my novel and give the British Company a British Tobacco Company Monopoly control over the entire Tobacco Industry and for bid every iranian from growing or producing or selling tobacco that an explosion happened, even the women refused to smoke as a result of them handed down by the figure and around. As you trace it all back the entire crisis in iran was set off by rebellion about tobacco, once you begin to realize you understand how much of history remains to be explained in the new way and how valuable whose insights are that they allow us to find a new lens to understand circumstances that we thought we already understood and that i really applaud you. [applause] floor is open. No one mentioned that it was illustrated. No one told us on the panel that it was lavishly illustrated through pictures but this is a point that several people mentioned implicitly an incredible irony, complexity history is that you want us to take, message, the only message i can get our do not go to war and stop the hypocrisy. But you might have something a little bit more. What would you advise countries having learned in study so peacefully this history. Right to the policy implications. I have to say of all the things i have written this iswr the book where i am more stumped than usual for what the actual direct explicit policy recommendation is because the radical ones would be if you actuallyly take seriously that u do not want illicit drugs funding terrorist and insurgents, traffickers who have private armies is drug legalization. That is a logical conclusion one can reach from this book. I do not go there but its an understandable avenue of inquiry because the source of the funding today is illicit drugs, drugs that one point in our history were i not listed but te more illicit the drug becomes the more domain of profiteering by nonsuit actors and less by authorities. Historically authorities have you drug revenue to pay for armies in all sorts of things but now the taliban and so on. If that is your priority, the word on terror, the one traffickers, legalization the obviously the legalization debate is much work obligated thanus that. Of massachusetts and elsewhere it helps but its not the major funder of violence and insertions in the way that cocaine and opium is. Is there a second one . Im sorry, go ahead. I have not read the book so i dont know everything that is in their what i do want to congratulate you on parsing the myriad of ways in which wars and drugs intersect but i have a commentt and a question but comment, i wasnt surprised nobody mentioned the basis of the word assassination which is [inaudible] and its probably in your book but my question goes back to how often, the opium wars are a prime example but how often are drugs either overt or covert reason for a particular war . Not talking about nonstate entities but actual nationstates or equivalent. Just on the first thing you mentioned, [inaudible] and possessions. Theres a famous story and i dont include it probably because there is debate over whether its pure myth but its just part of folklore and so i dont go there because its the evidence in much of the discussion of the use of its mythical story that people like to tell but the second question or actually your main question is one of the relationships i unpack and identify as war for drugs and this is where i think its important to distinguish between war for drugs versus war through drugs because in the current policy debate and this goes to jims issue in policy discussions. I thinkol war through drugs overwhelms the importance of war for drugs, both historically and today. Y. There are always exceptions and it varies but for the most part drugs have been this extraordinarily potentr literay potent facilitator of warfare but the cases where you can really point to an explicit that that is why they went to war was drugs are much more rare so that the opium wars are the first thing that comes to mind but theres a reason we always fall back on the opium wars is this prime, historical example of this but all the way up to the present i think today the war for drugs is largely in the realm of illicit drugs and its in places such as mexico. Peter, i have a question about wars. Not the china side of it as much as the tea opium connection in your description that british maritime was mobilized to support a private company so theres an interesting combination here between state power and private power. And for the two opium wars. My impression is this, and emerged from the economic history over the last 40 years and most of it out of economic history as a subdiscipline in america is dead. Economic history continues to be a vibrant discipline in europe. There are new estimates that have emerged about the proportion of manufacturing in different parts of the world and every culture data for 1700, 1600 is virtually impossible but manufacturing has been estimated so here is what we have about what happened to china after opium wars. Im not claiming that opium worms led to the decline of the chinese economy but just to give you some sense of what the correlations are, not causality. Until 1800 china produced one part of the worlds entire manufacturing output. What we call the west today had only one fourth of the World Manufacturing output. By 1860 which is one of the second opium war more or less is ending china is down to 19. 7 and then theres a speedy decline after the opium war. China shared the worst manufacturing out point at sixpoint to. This is down from 33 in 1802 6. To in 1900 the rises [inaudible] the question is this, are there other examples you know where wars they either lead to or correlated with such steep economic declines as we saw in china . Notice in the Chinese Literature or popular discourse this idea of 100 years of humiliation. And the decline that china saw after the opium wars. Are there other such cases of steep economic decline correlated with, if not caused by, wars or drugs . There may be but i cant think of a case that is remotely close to as extreme a case. Having said that i am wary of pointing to a unitary causal relationship between those outcomes that you point to and opium. The correlation as you know is not causation. Opium is a culprit but one of the lessons of this book afte after the book hits you over the head of the importance of drugs in relationship to orbit at the end of the day there is a warning to readers saying id to drug b want to analysis. Its not drugs, drugs, drugs. I am wary of basically saying look what happened to china during the hundred years after the opium wars and its all because of opium. Its a lot more completed than that but opium is a culprit and an important culprit and one thing fascinating about the opium wars is that after the second opium war china through in the china towel so much that it basically did substitution industrial and basically became itself the largest producer of opium in the world and said wege cant beat or we cant keep out Indian Imports of opium so we will legalize the stuff and produce it ourselves so at the turnofthecentury by 1900 china was the World Largest consumer and producer of opium but the economic decline that you point to first of all, you know, its relative to other places rising. That is also problematic. La opium certainly is a big culprit but i would say the most important impact of opium on china is chinese identity and this psychology of thinking of being poisoned by an outside world and anti imperialism was basically paved the way for the Chinese Revolution in a substantial way. I should add one of the biggest losers of the Chinese Revolution is opium. China led the most sweeping draconian and most effective war against drugs the world has ever seen, basically wiped out opium from china given its previousio hundred year history and precisely for that reason the drug move south into the Golden Triangle of southeast asia. Thank you all for sharing. I personally immediately jumped when i started hearing about killer high to the 60s and the role of a specially lst and the antidrug movement and i think today we are seenn a resurgence of those ideas of the 60s especially when it comes to hallucinogenic drugs. Both marijuana, through Breakthrough Status on mushrooms as well as on mdma and i love your perspective from how do hallucinogenic drugs, 60s and all the way up to today, fit into that discussion. Great question. You know, i explained in the introduction why i picked a certain drugs and why i largely ignore other drugs. History of war on drugs, not six, not seven, eight or nine but hallucinogenic drugs dont make the cut. For all sorts of reasons some of which you might imagine they are not particularly effective on the battlefield and states never figure out how to tax them and make revenue and they tend to be niche drugs and as you mentioned in some cases considered and antiwar drug and that was certainly true of cannabis in the 60s. Steven kinzer showed in his most recent book most brilliantly, research and experience it on the mindin control dog and as a weapon of war by the cia but ruthat is still did not rise ito the status of a globally commercialized mass consumption popular profit profitable drugs the way these others are. One thing that i think is going to grow in importance is chris mentioned returning gis and turning to various drugs and coping with the aftermath of war while there is growing Research Showing that one of the most effective treatments for ptsd is basically micro dosing of mdma. Theres a push to get the da to reschedule it and be able to use it for medical purposes. I dont know how far that will get or whether we can project in the future but frankly, sitting here ten years ago no one wouldve predicted the legalization of marijuana so its possible n that actually we will see a proliferation of what you just described in the present moment. Peter, its such provocative work, i really love it. Let me ask you to make some comparisons to other kinds of addictions that dont involve psychoactive substances, as far as i know. W. We do talk about the addiction to oil and conflicts surrounding oil and what are the parallels and maybe they dont exist between drug wars and oil related wars but they are both resource related but im interested in those parallels but alsoy may be a different kid of addiction. Social media, facebook the juice you get from this stability of that kind of commerce to manipulate people and we are seen cause conflict potentially between countries. Can you drop parallels between psychoactive substances and war and energy resource, oil and more in a different kind of commercial product . Great question. I dont go there in the book. I perhaps could in the conclusion make these linkages and perhaps i should have. E. One dimension of the relationship between war and drugs is when i emphasize war through drugs and war for drugs and those are the two dimensions where you can most clearly see its another example of resource wars. Oil we are for oil or through oil. In that regard its part of a larger universe of using profitable commodities to generate revenue for wart making, not a particularly unfamiliar story but a hugely important one. Right . So, as Steven Kinzer said in Central America its the most profitable thing going so thats what they use in the 1980s so why wouldnt today. In that sense theres a pragmatism, use whatever revenue on whatever commodity is available regardless of legal status of the thing so comparing it to the other things you mentioned, social media, i think theres a terrific [inaudible] [inaudible question] i will say david cartwrights new book, one of the more betterknown drug historians has a new book out over the last year called the age of addiction. It basically does take this big ambitious sweep and you know, the modern world in terms of various things we are addicted to including video games and so on. I dont go there but its provocative reading and i certainly recommend it. I do conclude the book and one thing i do go out on a limb a the last page of the book is to say that ive talked about these relationships in war and drugs but maybe we should also think of war itself, war as drug. Because some of the psychoactive effects of war can be considered drug like and the adrenaline rush. Has anyone seen hurt locker . That is a case of addiction and basically at the end of the movie hes back in suburbia shopping and then go and reenlist. War journalists who have gone out, chris hedges, literally describes the rush of war as a drug and there are plenty of memoirs and diaries from soldiers to generals describing the effect as the equivalent of addiction. May be one, two more questions. Thank you. Okay, so i guess the question i was holding onto was is there anybody that was doing anything with addiction science, if you had to name one person doing something revolutionary there that would be where would you find Something Else . Like some other approach to the idea that they would find clinically or generally written about, i guess. That might be mr. Court two. David cartwright. Hes in the story and it takes all back two centuries but brings it right to the present. I would not point to one person as the addiction expert. Theres an enormous literature on this. I do know that there is a considerable amount of Research Going on and there should be a lot more funded in terms of the nature of addiction and the very idea of an exit diction vaccine interesting enough for some drugs is a possibility down the road but i dont have a name for you unfortunately. I meant to recognize and its been answered in the last question which is satisfying but very grateful for that. There was one other bit and the effect of the opium war on china in looking at the causality of opium is common but there seems to be like more if anything it was the cause that would event the war and wouldve been warned not drugs would have been the cause and war through drugs and then it seems that most drug war in the last lasted by saying war is a dog instead of saying i remember it coming like try not to [inaudible] thank you. I wanted to ask you, im curious [inaudible] oh yes, maybe we should conclude by letting the panel say something. I appreciate you pushing on that. Your question, why cocaine did notio take off on the battlefied the weight methamphetamines did . And made an appearance in world war ii and there is pony of evidence of this but then major states turned against cocaine led by the u. S. But britain did to so basically move against cocaine, including with the soldier use. Sigmund freud was a big fan of cocaine and he beats basically first became aware of it because the germans were testing it on soldiers. They thought it was this magical wonder drug. Its a perfect example of its much easier to identify how something changed and that it changed factually versus why exactly because cocaine basically, because it becomes more criminalized status with the 20th century therefore much less used for functional purposes on the battlefield. In fact, now that you asked me about this there were efforts suggestions that the u. S. Military studied the positive effects of coca on basically the raw material for cocaine but basically its very mild stimulant. The u. S. Was such an anti drug that it squashed any research on coca even though for many centuries peruvian soldiers found it to be Incredible Energy boosting and hunger reducing. So, it does open the door for amphetamines because basically amphetamines in fact, whats imteresting is when amphetamines become criminalized in the u. S. In the 1960s that is when cocaine takes off because people do turn to cocaine recreationally when amphetamines become much less available. My one comment is something you mentioned in itsom the bk has a high point on the last page and are great with that observation that war is a drug and i would say from my perspective it is a drug and it is addictive for some people on the battlefield, including people that are fighting and watching the fighting a but i ao think its addictive at a higher level. Its addictive for the generals and addictive for the politicians in such a great political benefit, it pays off in so many ways the promotion of war. So, i feel that that addiction to war and at that level is more pernicious even than the individual addiction of war two people that are seen it unfold. It all depends how we define addiction. In terms of policy two. [inaudible] [inaudible question] its easy for students to [inaudible] your last comment to my question made it seem that geopolitics plate essential role in why cocaine ended up the way and because methamphetamines did because ultimately [inaudible] im not a historian but im am an observer and chronicle a monitored military activity and this book is very valuable for that and underline some of my own experiences and you want to see as many angles of inquiry to observe and document the failures of the modern American Military and one of the surefire places though to do this in one of the themes to look at is in its work against drugs in afghanistan. It was astonishing and one of the surest ways to get in a gunfight in afghanistan was to go out in the unit doing counter narcotics work. This was not ideological but practical because if you go try to burn a poppy field was to essentially impact a hillbilly economy with top cover. The American Military realized this pretty quickly at the operational level down in the field commanders and they stopped doing it and they tolerated it although there still was officially an effort to reduce the amount of opium poppy production but at the most practical units knew better than to try. They do not want to lose a lot of people and there was a doctrinal contradiction in that counterinsurgency you are supposed to get along with a local publishing but if youre attacking the local populations wartime economy which is often opium based because opium, unlike tomatoes or melons, is an enduring product that you can hold onto until the road is open and its not perishable and naturally in a war comment opium was being grown very heavily in areas that could grow opium because of climate and water access. The americans left it alone or they would engage in, as the American Military often does, activities that look like a common cement but actually are not so you could go see opium fields being burned but the fields already wouldve been harvested and then they would pay the farmer to let the field be burned but he would had already removed his product so youre burning the stubble and i was safe and it was also a farce. Absolute farce. It was a common one. You can also find very reliably in the areas where it was being grown, places where it would be almost certainly grown now was inside the grounds of an Afghan Police station. Thats just how the way it was in this book brings it home really well and i commend and recommend it. Thank you. The books are outside cut back. I want to think everybody and remind you there is a reception outside so again, chris, angelica, and of course peter and steven. [applause] weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs, showcasing whats available every weekend here on cspan2. Tonight, we feature authors of history books starting with professor on the 1770 boston massacre. Then its history professor benjamin park who wrote about the founding of illinois by mormon leader, joseph smith in 1839 but that is followed by Gretchen Sorin on her book driving while black on how the automobile impacted the lives of africanamericans. Book tv all this weekend, every weekend here on cspan2. Good evening i am the associate and i like to welcome you to tonights programming. To our members im so glad youre here and its your ongoing support that makes