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I don't like falling in the same camp as the 'China is the source of all evil' people but there is a good chance that the Chinese state is smiling on people exporting fentanyl precursors to the US. "Try to wreck our high-tech industries with sanctions and keep us in the middle income trap? Plant COVID on us (note that China also has an official history that the US used bioweapons against them in Korea)? We will bury you in narcotics, we'll wreck your high-tech industries with IP theft and industrial policy."
The key thing is that they're not that strong militarily. Drug dealers are pretty manly I guess but that won't help them if you whisk them away to have their organs harvested like China does. Police >>> drug dealers. But the key thing is mobilizing the will to crush them. El Salvedor proves it's not about material capacity but about will, that's what I'm fixated upon.
If the US went in with the will to win, no matter what, they would find wiping out the cartels to be easy and quick. It truly would be shock and awe. Britain and the Soviets casually partitioned Iraq and Iran during WW2 while they were fighting much more serious battles elsewhere, it was trivial for them. Conquering Iraq would be easy in military terms for the US. But it's impossible politically because the necessary will to win doesn't exist. These poor US soldiers were constantly capturing jihadists and sticking them in prison (where they exchanged tips with other jihadists) - then releasing them only to capture them again. There was no will to fight seriously and no proper campaign objectives. They rushed far too quickly to elections and democracy.
The US conquered the Philippines back in the day, it's really not that hard to squelch opposition with force. But you have to do imperialism consciously and confidently, you can't go in thinking 'I'm going to liberate these people with freedom and human rights to form a liberal democracy', you have to be serious about controlling the food, water and fuel, about appointing the puppet government (or maybe just a military governor) and crushing dissent. You have to have the credible threat of massive retaliation looming behind you as you restructure and create a new government.
The US can't bring itself to put on the face-covering villain helmet with the glowing red eyes and do this kind of thing. That's the key lesson of Afghanistan IMO, if you want to win you have to go in and make them play your game rather than try to appeal to the natives. Force them to stop raping children, force them to stop planting opium, forcibly relocate them, force them to respect you as the stronger party, not a pinata full of cash to be siphoned away with tricks and wordgames. That's what the US did to Japan and Germany, they basically razed and raped two powerful countries into submission.
Their beef should be with Britan, we didn't do the opium wars, no fair!
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