By John Kennedy
May 25, 2026
Introduction
The economic influence of the United States can be seen in every continent on this planet. Its companies, financial institutions, military presence, scientific facilities, and tourists taking family trips remind nations all over the world that America, no matter its political troubles, will continue to operate. Although it would be an understatement to say that the image and capacity of America and its economy have come under hardship in the last decade, few truly understand the foundational principles that hold the entire American Empire together on the world stage. In the previous essay, "Trust Me to The Bitter End: The Consolidation of Power in A Contracting System," the essay identified the major factions at play in America, both past and present, their goals, and their tactics. The Northeastern "Yankee" class, the Southwestern "Cowboy" class, and the West Coast "Technocrat" class, as well as an intermediary fourth power, which can be identified as "Organized Crime." This essay will continue to put America under the microscope to identify the gears that drive the United States both domestically and internationally, as well as discover smaller factions within the country that are independent from the main regional factions, such as the Mormons.
However, no matter how these groups identify themselves, or whether their goals are a stronger trans-Atlantic alliance or an expansionist "Manifest Destiny" foreign policy, they sit on the same economic foundation together, as do all their business dealings and the entire population. The four cornerstones that make up the foundation can be identified as follows: The industry, to include the manufacturing of cars, the Military Industrial Complex, and the oil industry. The financial institutions, the large banks that manage investments and assets, lend money, and maintain the petrodollar. The Enterprising Masses: These include the small business owners, skilled labor, and white-collar middle class. Finally, there is the most violent, diverse, competitive, and stable cornerstone of them all, the international trafficking and sale of narcotics; to include opioids like fentanyl and heroin, and methamphetamines like crystal meth and cocaine. There are also the "Highway States," states in which money is siphoned out of the poorest areas through the welfare system and drug trade and used to support the economies of wealthier areas of the same state, other state economies, and even separate countries altogether.
Industry- Just Enough, Just on Time
As the decades passed since the end of World War Two, each cornerstone has become more reliant on government intervention. American industry is perhaps the most visible example of this. While many factories and production lines have moved overseas to avoid everything from taxation, regulation, and unions, present American industry is nearly completely dependent on the American state. This has caused the non-MIC companies that produce for domestic needs, such as the American automotive industry, to become docile to market conditions; they merely survive. Car brands such as Chevy, Ford, Lincoln, Cadillac, GMC, are seldom found outside of the United States. The roads in Europe and Asia are too narrow. Ford has shut down assembly facilities in Brazil and India because they simply cannot sell their vehicles. The size of the engines, the wide dimensions of the vehicles, and the consumption of gas; American cars simply cannot be sold outside of the US or Arab states. The vast highway systems, spaced-out cities between large parking lots make it so that while other countries' vehicles can easily be sold in America, any reform of the way American cities are laid out would mean the complete collapse of the American automotive industry.
But at the core of this cornerstone is America's Military Industrial Complex (MIC) which has access to a budget of around $900 billion every year. This is the spine of American industry, an exclusive ocean of government money that defense companies can draw from no matter how efficient the company might be. Recently, companies like Sig Sauer had won a $20.4 million contract over a ten-year period to replace the M4 carbine with the XM7. General Dynamics, earlier this year, began a $15.38 billion contract for Navy submarines; this company has a further $988 million modernization contract and a $1.5 billion IT modernization contract. But most recently, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth rolled out a new spending plan and a vision for the future of America's war industry. He proposed a $1.5 trillion investment, a generational down payment he says, in America's MIC. He explains in his infographic :
"America is not in decline. We remain the strongest military on Earth, but that power requires renewal. And with global threats constantly evolving, it's time to make a $1.5 trillion investment, a generational down payment. Far too long, bureaucrats have allowed America's defense industrial base to fall apart. During President Trump's first term our military was rebuilt into the greatest fighting force on the planet. The execution of Operation Midnight Hammer, Southern Spear, Absolute Resolve, and Epic Fury are testaments to this restoration of strength. () A historic $756 billion of the defense budget, more than half of it, will be allocated to investments in new capabilities. That means factories, technology, and jobs. It also means spending $102 billion to advance the next generation of American air power, advancing the largest ship building request since 1962, including $10 billion into our maritime industrial base. We're committing $18 billion to operationalize the Golden Dome for America to defend the homeland."
It is right to call this a generational investment, as Americans for decades to come will take on the entire cost of this proposal. But before talking about the cost and consequences if this proposal were to be passed, it should be asked what justified even the past spending on defense, let alone a $1.5 trillion budget. In 2001, the defense budget stood at $331.8 billion; it reached its peak in 2011 at $752 billion, its lowest in 2015 at $633 billion, and jumped to $916 billion in 2023. As now seen with President Trump, it will only increase, especially with the onslaught of AI data centers. In the end, from 2001 until 2022, America spent around $8 trillion on its defense. Has this mattered ? The formation of the American military relies primarily on its air and sea power; its numerous aircraft carriers and extremely advanced and expensive bombers and jets project American power throughout the world. But its land power does not reflect this spending that makes it seem like America is in another world war. The formations of elite units like the Army Rangers, Green Berets, Delta Force, and Navy SEALs, plus any special units within the intelligence services, number around 70,000 personnel. Conventional units within the army either sit in their bases for years on end, such as the case with 2ID in Fort Lewis, who are unofficially banned from deploying because of war crimes committed in 2012, or rotate brigades yearly through small bases in the Middle East, such the 10th Mountain Division, and National Guard units. These brigades themselves are small, numbering to a couple thousand men and women of various MOS's, the battalion and the companies often vary in size and are scattered throughout the CENTCOM area. It is common for one battalion to have companies scattered across multiple countries, such as Kuwait, Iraq, and Syria. This was done to maintain the balance of power in the Middle East, oil flowed; troops received combat pay despite open firefights becoming rare, and American-aligned nations had protection, but this changed when Trump launched Operation Epic Fury.
This operation had cost $2 billion a day. America has lost 42 aircraft during six weeks of operations, which included 24 MQ-9 Reaper drones, seven KC-135 tankers, four F-15s, and an A-10 among many others. The American Navy could not open the Strait of Hormuz; Iran's cheap Shahed drones brought havoc on American bases and Israeli air defenses, and still the American government doubled down on this new spending plan. The core strength of the industrial cornerstone of the American economy now, is the MIC building a war economy, where the high-tech bombs and interceptors can be produced just enough, just on time. The technological wonders of the MIC clearly cannot defeat a nation like Iran. The German Wehrmacht faced this same dilemma when its superior tanks were swarmed by lesser-quality T-34 tanks in the East and American Shermans in the West, but American industry didn't have a choice. This spending does not come without a massive cost: The men, money, and resources that will be drawn away from other parts of the American economy will lower the standard of living, as it has done since the Vietnam War. Ludwig von Mises explained this cost in his book "Human Action" he explains the cost the average American had to face so the government could fight in World War Two. Professor Mises explains (pg. 821):
"What America needed in order to win the war was a radical conversion of a11 its production activities. A11 not absolutely indispensable civilian consumption was to be eliminated. The plants and farms were henceforth to turn out only a minimum of goods for nonmilitary use. For the rest, they were to devote themselves completely to the task of supplying the armed forces. The realization of this program did not require the establishment of controls and priorities. If the government had raised all the funds needed for the conduct of war by taxing the citizens and by borrowing from them, everybody would have been forced to cut down his consumption drastically. The entrepreneurs and farmers would have turned toward production for the government because the sale of goods to private citizens would have dropped. The government, now by virtue of the inflow of taxes and borrowed money from the biggest buyer on the market, would have been in a position to obtain all it wanted. Even the fact that the government chose to finance a considerable part of the war expenditure by increasing the quantity of money in circulation and by borrowing from the commercial banks would not have altered this state of affairs. The inflation must, of course, bring about a marked tendency toward a rise in the prices of all goods and services. The government would have had to pay higher nominal prices."
Out of the four cornerstones of the American economy, industry is the second weakest because of its servitude to the American state. But the recent American-Israeli-Iranian conflict paints a new, confusing picture. The oil industry has suffered greatly in the Gulf; facilities have shut down under threat of drone attacks, European nations cannot move through the Strait of Hormuz, and despite the bragging of Texan and Venezuelan oil, gas prices continue to rise in America. All of this threatens the hegemony of the dollar as the world reserve currency: if nations begin to buy Russian and Gulf oil on the yuan or the ruble, it would threaten the end to American hegemony in the world. So why do the MIC and oil industries continue to support Trump and his Manifest Destiny policy ? Perhaps they hope for a multipolar world in order to increase their production into a true war economy; perhaps it is revenge for American finances gutting American industry during the 1980s. No matter what the case is, it's also very likely that the Trump administration, the MIC, and other members of the political class in America simply do not understand, that in order for Secretary Hegseth's budget plan to work, relies upon the very basis of the American Empire that they are trying to destroy, the financial cornerstones economic strategy since the full removal of the gold standard in 1971. This strategy, which in simple terms, allows for the entire world to pay for America's military budget.
Finance- Basis of Empire
By the 1960s, the United States was facing the same problem that had faced the European Empires before it, a deficit in their balance of payments. During the first two world wars, the European empires were forced to sell their overseas investments in order to pay for the war, and Britain had spent its gold reserves in order to pay for the Lend-Lease program offered by President Roosevelt. After the end of the war, these European nations had sought to regain their colonies, and by the 1950s, France had found itself embroiled against rebels in its Indochina colonies like Vietnam; Britain too found itself fighting against rebels like the Mau Mau in Kenya. By 1960, the Third World nations had gained their independence, and France and Britain found themselves in austerity trying to pay off their deficit. Now comes America, the holder of three quarters of the world's gold reserves. The Bretton Woods agreement allowed the dollar to become the world reserve currency with a $35 per ounce convertibility rule. But America too was driving up a deficit to pay for its overseas adventures to contain communism, first in Korea, then in special operations in Latin America and Africa, and finally in Vietnam. Combined with an expanding social welfare program, American deficits were running beyond the amount of gold it had in reserves. This had caused a run on the dollar in 1960, where the aggressiveness of the two candidates, Kennedy and Nixon, worried the European nations that the deficit would only continue to grow. By 1968, the situation had deteriorated further; America was all in on its war in Vietnam, which was increasingly looking too expensive to win, or as the Europeans saw it, too expensive for the American hawks to lose. There was also an increase in American tourism in Europe that same year, so when these dollars began to be converted into gold, President Johnson, in his State of the Union address, had urged Americans to stop traveling overseas and asked Congress to repeal the last gold cover. There was $12 billion worth of gold currently in the US; by ending this last cover, Johnson made it so that $10 billion of that would be used to back the dollar, leaving $2 billion for convertibility. This was an effective suspension of the American gold standard system before Nixon's full ban in 1971, three years later. So how has America been able to continue its overseas adventures that would've bankrupted the empires of Spain, Britain, and France many times over ? The answer is the U.S. Treasury Bill Standard. While many know about the petrodollar, few know about this vital mechanism, the creation of a dollar surplus in the balance of payments in a foreign country's central bank. Through this mechanism, the American deficit, instead of being a source of strain or weakness, would allow for foreign countries to pay for all of America's expenditures. The American economist, Michael Hudson, provided an outline in his book "Super Imperialism" on how this new system operated, albeit it was developed by mistake (p. 18):
"Foreign central banks received dollars from their exporters, who, needing domestic currency to pay their suppliers and workforce, turned over their dollar receipts to their central banks in exchange for domestic currency. The central banks had little choice but to lend these dollars to the U.S. Treasury. Running a dollar surplus in their balance of payments became synonymous with lending this surplus to the U.S. Treasury. The world's richest nations were enabled to borrow automatically from foreign central banks simply by running a balance of payment deficit. The larger the U.S. deficit grew, the more dollars ended up in foreign central banks, which then lent them back to the U.S. government by investing them in treasury obligations of varying degrees of liquidity and marketability."
With the implementation of this new system, the burden of the cost of war, Great Society welfare, and other forms of spending were spread from the American people onto other industrialized nations. The bigger the deficit grew, the stronger this became; Europe and East Asian nations paid for American hegemony. From this point on, foreign governments would recycle their dollar surplus into the world market, which has aided in the numerous financial bubbles that have occurred over the decades. The trade-off that Americans have suffered was, of course, the destruction of American industry; China, over the twenty years, has capitalized on this. Chinese industry and American factories that have moved to China do benefit from this system; the more China grows its industrial base and exports to America, the more dollars re-enter the American system to finance its hegemony. In this same way, however, past Russian exports to the US now aid the war in Ukraine; this goes the same for Iran and China; they finance the American military through this system. America has gained other benefits as well, including special veto power in the World Bank, IMF, and the UN Security Council and a monopoly on the sale of world oil that was established in 1974 and guaranteed after the assassination of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia in 1975. This brings us to the present trouble of Trump's war in Iran, Rubio's anti-European diplomacy, and Hegseth's grand MIC production budget. The anti-European sentiment is unsurprising in this administration, as seen with President Lyndon Johnson's attitude towards Europe, who shared many of the same backers that Trump does. What Trump and Rubio do not understand is that Europe does pay into NATO through the monetary system discussed above. By attacking Europe rhetorically, they threaten their greatest asset, their European colony. The only thing keeping this relationship together is the war in Ukraine, because without American weapons, money, and intelligence, Ukraine would've fallen a long time ago. Iran's closing of the Strait of Hormuz has put Europe between a rock and a hard place: either lift the sanctions on Russian oil or give in to whatever Trump demands; either way, the pride of the European elites will be hurt. China could make a move to push other countries to buy oil in the yuan instead of relying on the dollar, but why would they ? America may be a nuisance to Chinese-Taiwanese ownership, but China does not need to invade the island to gain control over it; they also know that Trump is unlikely to succeed in actually toppling Iran. The IRGC is too embedded within the technical apparatus; the US military is not structured for a large land invasion because they have opted for a structure where an aircraft carrier can send a jet to drop an expensive bomb on one individual or, if needed, send a small team of elite operators to dispatch the problem. China's greatest move is patience.
This just leaves Pete Hegseth; as of now, his budget, if approved, would be paid by the monetary system that was developed after the end of the Bretton Woods agreement, that is to say, by Americans and the rest of the world. But if this administration continues to kick the very foundation of the empire they inherited, they will not only fail to create new military equipment, but they will also quickly lose what they already have. The MIC is the only strong source of industry in America, but it is completely reliant on this financial system; if they lose it, the cost will consolidate over America instead of being spread over the world, and the weight will be dropped directly on every citizen. This would mean America would actually have to pay its deficit like France and Britain had to, which would be the end of American hegemony.
The Tax Cattle
He who says "organization" says "oligarchy." There isn't much to say about the enterprising masses; they're the most numerous, but they're also the most disorganized and therefore the weakest of the four foundations. These could be called entrepreneurs, serfs, workers, or just normal people. It's not the fact that, as Marxists might say, they're simply exploited, because within in this foundation are small business owners, skilled technicians, the white-collar middle class, and landlords. Collectively they may make a lot of money, even if it is a drop in the bucket compared to the other foundations. But this is the tax base; their income and property provide for the system, which ultimately hurts them. The loss of industry, AI taking their jobs, or, as will be discussed in the next section, fueling drug addiction. These people will always be taken along for the ride; they face family problems the leaders of the other foundations do not care about, they're separated by petty differences, or they're limited because their liberal, Christian, or patriotic morality tells them to maintain the status quo because they can do nothing about it except vote. However, the American system, especially this large bureaucratic system in existence, while often hated, offers some of the best opportunities to make money, such as through Section 8 housing vouchers, which will be discussed at length in the final section. Or, individuals who do not wish to wait decades for a promotion in whatever industry they work in can enter the highest risk, highest reward foundation in the American economy. That being the international trafficking and sale of narcotics, which needs a lot of explanation.
The Stability of Narcotics
The trafficking of narcotics by organized crime, in whatever shape or form it takes, is an essential piece of not only the American economy but also the economy of China and the colonial European powers in the early and mid-twentieth century. Unlike the other foundations, change is slow; it rises slowly and declines over decades unless politics forces a shift in operations. This is unlike the drug trade. Violence in this foundation is a way of life; innocent people are murdered, leaders are assassinated, and drug routes are raided, and yet this foundation is not only the strongest foundation, but it is in a strange way the most stable because of the violence. Past essays have alluded to the idea of the "Living Organism of Revolution," which in any particular country at a given time finds itself ready for a great upheaval and to change its ruling class. Russian films on their 1917 revolution, like the "Chekist," talk about this organism as if it's alive and craves blood in order to shock and renew the world. The deaths of Russian peasants by the Chekists in 1917, the Robespierre beheadings in France, and the IRGC hanging of Kurds and communists in Iran's 1979 revolution were not only inevitable but also necessary for the revolution to be complete and an age of stability to endure. America is also an example of this; the Founders, leaving the problem of states' rights to future generations, ensured an unfinished, simmering revolution that boiled over into the bloodiest war in American history, the Civil War. Applying this framework to not only drug trafficking but also military operations can paint a proper picture of how this world works. Every time a leader of a crime family, or a cartel, is killed, whether by government forces, a rival gang, or his own men, the system it operates in grows stronger. El Mencho, the cartel leader of CJNG, may have been killed in a joint US-Mexican effort, but nothing will change as a new leader will rise to the top and adapt to the new situation, and if he can't, someone else will. This constant renewal is as natural as a forest using fire to cleanse itself. Pablo Escobar was killed, and yet the cocaine industry in Columbia is as profitable as it ever was. Angel Felix Gallardo operated the biggest drug cartel in Mexico in the 1980s, but when he was imprisoned in 1989, the cartels went on. In American Mafia history, Cosa Nostra did not grow weaker with the repeal of prohibition and the jailing of Al Capone; it grew stronger with more able leaders. Leaders like Meyer Lansky, Charlie Luciano, Carlos Marcello, Sam Giancana, and Santo Trafficante took the mob from low-level street gangs and into an arm of the American state, and this arm is immensely profitable. The money earned from the trade of opioids and methamphetamines has not gone unnoticed by the governments in the world. Going back to the late 19th century, we see the East India Company pushing opium into China to turn a profit.
But the East India Company had disappeared by 1874, but the trade of opium, and later heroin, would only grow. The full scope of this trade is enormous, but the present-day situation of narcotics and its importance to the American economy can be broken into three key operations and one early goal of the American hegemon in post-war Europe. The early goal being the capture of the American and Western European technical apparatus from the national communist parties, the ports being the most sought-after structure early on due to the American Marshall Plan and later narcotics trafficking. The first of the three operations that was undertaken to accomplish this goal was known as Operation Underworld. It began on February 9th, 1942, when the SS Normandie caught fire in New York Harbor. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), who already feared attacks from German U-boats, would gain an unlikely but very powerful partner, Meyer Lansky. Lansky had approached the ONI and made a deal with the Roosevelt government: the Luciano crime family would secure the harbors from sabotage and, as Lansky put it in a 1982 interrogation, "help Italians to be more patriotic." In return, Charlie "Lucky" Luciao, who has been in prison since 1936 on charges of racketeering, would be released and deported to Sicily. This partnership of the National Crime Syndicate and American intelligence would expand throughout the war, because while in Sicily, Luciano was able to make contact with the local Sicilian mafia, and together, they would aid in the 1943 American invasion of Sicily and ensure the entrenchment of power for organized crime in Sicily for decades until the Maxi Trials in 1986. Carl Oglesby, in his 1976 book "The Yankee-Cowboy War," explains both the early benefits of this alliance to the American war effort and its long-term consequences, saying (p. 33):
"When General Patton landed on Sicily with the Seventh Army's Third Division in 1943, he came with instructions to fly Luciano's black and yellow scarf along with the Stars and Stripes and to seek out the tactical support of local Mafiosi, who would offer themselves as guides and informants. () With Operation Underworld, Roosevelt made the Mafiosi all but official masters of the U.S. East Coast docks and gave implicit protection to all their activities everywhere. With his instructions to Patton in 1943, he restored the Mafia to power in Sicily. When he sent Lansky to Batista in 1944, he paved the way for the spread of Syndicate influence throughout the Caribbean and Central America. When he directed the CIA to use Syndicate thugs at Marseilles in 1945, he licensed the heroin factories that would be feeding the American habit into contagion virtually unchecked over the years of the Cold War."
Although Roosevelt had died in 1944, his successor, Harry Truman, would utilize his predecessor's connection with organized crime in order to gain control of European docks and elections. In the years after World War Two, the Italian pharmaceutical company, known as Schiaparelli, would use its labs to process heroin from Turkish poppy fields. In 1946, members of the National Crime Syndicate, including Meyer Lansky, Charlie Luciano, and Tampa mob boss Santo Trafficante Jr., convened in Havana to discuss this new operation. The heroin exported from Sicily would make its way to Trafficante's drug labs in Cuba and finally to East Coast docks owned by Luciano's unions. This was especially lucrative because heroin, created and sold by the German chemical giant IG Farben in 1898, was initially used to fight morphine addiction, and considering all the American GIs who were wounded in the war, there would be no shortage of addicts. But the Sicilian mob would prove itself to be incompetent, so by 1950, a new middle man was sought after and found, as well as a new supplier. This leads to the second operation, a French intelligence operation known as Operation X. As previously mentioned, the old colonial powers who sought to maintain control of their colonies after the war found themselves handling rebellions in the colony, as well as domestically. The French had sought to regain control of this territory in 1946 but were met by guerrilla fighters led by Ho Chi Minh. The war proved to be very unpopular in France. Ho Chi Minh helped establish the French Communist Party in 1920, a party that was growing in popularity among the French working class, particularly among port workers in the southern French city of Marseilles. So when port and factory workers went on strike across France in April 1947, it prompted the US to take action against what they saw as an attempted communist takeover by utilizing their control of a key structure in the technical state. In the short months following the start of this strike, the U.S. approved multiple key policies: the Marshall Plan was approved in June of 1947, and the CIA was created that September. Along with the French Socialist Party and the Corsican Mafia, known as Unione Corse, the CIA organized the systematic beatdown of French communists and striking workers. But it wasn't until the US government threatened port workers by utilizing the newly developed Marshall Plan; the threat was simple: unless the strike ends, no Marshall aid would enter France. The strike ended on December 9, 1947.
But this wasn't the end of the problems facing the French; guerrilla fighting continued in Indochina, the French National Assembly was increasingly relying on US financial and military aid, and worst of all, another strike occurred in 1950 for the same exact reasons it broke out in 1947: low pay and working conditions. With low funding and supply chain problems due to strike workers refusing to load military equipment, French military and intelligence officials began to work with the local Thai, Burmese, and Laotian warlords, as well as the remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang and the Shanghai Green Gang, to begin using the vast poppy fields in the area known as the Golden Triangle. So French officers now in charge of fighting this war laid the groundwork for the tactics that will be used by American special forces in the decades to come, unconventional warfare. Captain Antoine Savani, head of the Dueximi Bureau, and Captain Robert Trinquier, a special forces officer and author of "A French View of Counter-Insurgency," developed relationships with the local tribes and factions in Indochina in order to fight the Viet Minh. They had hired Catholic militias, mercenaries, and poppy planters from the hill tribes and even Mekong Delta river pirates to attack and spy on Viet Minh troops moving across the country. All of this came at a cost, however, an extremely large cost that the military did not have, and the National Assembly was not willing to give. Historian Alfred McCoy, in his book "The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia," explains how these French officers obtained the necessary funds:
"The counter insurgency efforts were continually plagued by a lack of money, the war was tremendously unpopular in France and the French national assembly reduced its outlay to barely enough to the regular military units, leaving almost nothing for extras such as paramilitary or intelligence work. Moreover the high command itself never really approved of the younger generations' unconventional approach and were unwilling to divert scarce funds from regular units. Trinquier still complains that the high command never understood what he was trying to do and says that they constantly refused funds for his operations. The solution was Operation X. A clandestine narcotics traffic so secret that only high ranking French and Vietnamese officials even knew of its existence."
This operation coincided with the final defeat of communist control over the dock union in Marseilles, which once again went on strike. So once again the CIA would employ the help of the Unione Corse to regain control of the situation; this time, they would ensure the docks would be completely relieved of communist influence. "The Great Heroin Coup" by Henrik Kruger continues on their tactics:
"A rugged fiery Corsican named Pierre Ferrie Pisani would recruit an elite criminal terror squad to work the docks. Surrounded by his gangster hirelings, Pisani stormed into local communist headquarters and threatened to make the party's leaders"pay the price."() When control over the docks was compounded with the political influence the milieu gained with CIA assistance, conditions were ideal for Marseilles growth as America's heroin laboratory. The French police later report that the first Marseilles laboratory opened in 1951, only months after the milieu took over the waterfront."
All of these operations were to be perfected over the next decade, and these operations, among others, were just smaller parts of a larger operation known as Operation Gladio. This money laundering operation, aided by the CIA officer Paul Hellywell and Meyer Lansky through shell companies like Sea Supply Corp in Thailand and Castle Bank & Trust in the Caribbean, as well as the Vatican Bank, allowed for a secret fund to establish anti-communist groups throughout Europe. Eventually, this operation would shift again from a French-run operation until their 1954 defeat to an American operation. By the time America had entered the Vietnam War, the CIA already had connections to the Thai and Laotian warlords from the previous years; this also included connections to numerous Chinese gangs from when the CIA was still the OSS. This connection was established in the years before and during World War Two, when Chiang Kai Shek's Kuomintang broke the general strike in Shanghai with the aid of the Chinese Green Gang triad, led by Du Yueshang. What America had accomplished during its ownership of the Golden Triangle was the establishment of high-grade heroin labs with the help of the Pepsi company and Richard Nixon. The main consumers of this new high-grade heroin were American GIs fighting in Vietnam. The National Library of Medicine suggests that some 34% to 43% of American GIs had taken heroin at one point or another, their addiction being fueled by both the government they were supposed to protect, South Vietnam, and the government that sent them there, the United States. In the final quote to be used from "The Great Heroin Coup" again:
"In August 1971, the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs announced the location in Southeast Asia of 29 drug refineries, 15 of them allegedly producing heroin. Among the largest was one in Vientiane, Laos, which was camouflaged as a Pepsi Cola plant. Richard Nixon, representing Pepi's interests in 1965, had promoted its construction. Though it never capped a bottle, it continued to be subsidized by USAID for International Development."
This plant developed high-quality number 4 heroin with the help of Chinese chemists from Shanghai and sold it to American soldiers serving in the country, this addiction would continue stateside. But this connection, this particular point in history for the drug trade, would come to an end with America's exit from Vietnam and the collapse of South Vietnam. Furthermore, the Corsican Mafia, an organization that actually prevented large-scale addiction in France, would lose their Marseilles monopoly, and the heroin would begin to flow into France as well. Eventually, Afghanistan would become the world hub for heroin in the 1980s that would fund the Mujahadeen fight against the Soviets. Poppy plants would then be banned by the Taliban during their rule only for the Americans to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and increase production of the poppy plants to cover 810,540 acres by 2017. One thing that did not change, however, was organized crime's control of the East Coast docks. The Genovese crime family, formerly the Luciano crime family, is currently being run by Liborrio Bellomo. In 2005, the DoJ accused Bellomo and others of racketeering within the Longshoremen's Union (ILA). Included in this case was Harold Daggett, a member of the union who, as Genovese soldier George Barone testified, was "controlled by the mafia." Daggett, who would become union president in 2011 and in 2024, right before the November presidential election, had called the first ILA strike since 1977. This was done in seeming coordination with another union president, Sean O'brian, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Now seeing past examples of the Mafia's use in political elections, combined with President Trump's extreme interest in toppling Cuba, it could be theorized that the coalition that was backing Trump in 2024, those being the Technocrats of California and Jewish interests on behalf of Israel, managed to utilize the remnants of the Mafia by paralyzing the technical state in a general strike in the final months before the election, a tactic discussed in Part 1, and return Cuba to the mob as a reward.
The economic foundation of narcotics is perhaps one of the most important pieces to the American economy; its initial development has allowed the American government to obtain ownership over important technical and political structures both at home and abroad. The money obtained by the sale of these illicit goods is free to be used in whatever way its handlers deem fit without congressional approval. Just as well was the rise of the present world narcotics system created by anti-communist efforts. While Trotsky and Mussolini had used armed soldiers of their own party to capture key technical structures, the liberal governments relied on organized crime. The inherent violence in this foundation allows for constant renewal in leadership, advancement in tactics, and new opportunities to make money, making this bloody system the most resilient to attacks by both guns and written law.
Highway States
Supporting the foundations of this economy are certain states that can be called 'Highway States'. Whether purposefully or accidentally, these states are used to support the economies of other states, the monetary policy of the United States, and other countries altogether. The first highway state is New Mexico. New Mexico serves as an entrance into the United States via Mexico through I-25 going up to Colorado, I-10 into Arizona, and I-40, stretching east to west into Texas through Arizona and, more importantly, straight to California. Sitting directly in the middle of this highway system is a city nicknamed "The Warzone", also known as Albuquerque. This city, and indeed the entire state, has been deemed a transit state by the DoJ. In a 2002 DEA report, they determined that most of the narcotics seized in the state happened on the interstate highway system, with only around 1% of all seizures being conducted at the Point of Entry. Twenty-three years after this report, it seems nothing has changed. In a May 2025 raid across five states, police in Albuquerque seized $610,000 in cash, 49 firearms, 396 kilograms of fentanyl pills, 11.5 kilograms of fentanyl powder, 1.5 kilograms of cocaine, 3.5 kilograms of heroin, 7 pounds of methamphetamine, and a Ford Raptor and GMC Denali, two vehicles valued at approximately $140,000. New Mexico and Albuquerque continue to be a central hub for the opioids that enter the United States, with the most lucrative being fentanyl, a favourite choice for the many addicts within the city and demanded widely across American cities. To understand the role New Mexico plays in supporting the economy of America, it will be good to start regionally and how it supports the states of the American West. This is because the four corner cities such as Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Denver, as well as Las Vegas and California, benefit from the destruction of New Mexico and the city of Albuquerque, a city that, by all rights, shouldn't exist.
Starting with the hegemon of the West, California, this state with its massive economy, numerous inner factions, and large drug trade centered around the drug hub of the world, LAX, also dominates the most precious resource in the region, water. The success of the cities in the West was determined in the 1922 Colorado River Compact, a treaty to settle the dispute over water allocation to Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, and Mexico. But the Colorado Basin has seen better days, as seen in a congressional report:
"Consumptive use plus other water losses (e.g., evaporation) on the Colorado River typically exceed the basin's flows. This imbalance, coupled with a long-term drought dating to 2000, has stressed basin water supplies. Reclamation closely tracks the status of two large reservoirs-Lake Powell in the Upper Basin and Lake Mead in the Lower Basin-as indicators of basin storage conditions. Since the onset of dry conditions in the early 2000s, storage levels at these reservoirs have fallen. To alleviate these trends, water releases from both lakes have been tied to specific water storage levels. Since 2020, Reclamation has conserved Lower Basin storage in Lake Mead through reduced water deliveries to Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico. In the Upper Basin, dwindling supplies in Lake Powell could jeopardize hydropower generation and Lower Basin releases from Glen Canyon Dam. As a result, Reclamation has transferred water from upstream reservoirs to Lake Powell while also reducing releases to the Lower Basin."
The shifting battleground in the ongoing water wars can be seen in the growth, or decline, of certain cities, and California is the director in this respect even as people leave the state en masse. The way Californian foreign policy seems to play out is by lending its numerous technological companies to certain surrounding states, while also relying on the decline of certain cities in both the lower and upper basin. The lower basin states that have received reduced flows include California, Nevada, and Arizona. Las Vegas has seen itself in a steady decline and in 2026 lost a third of its usual tourism. Many of the top casinos, such as Caesars Palace and MGM, have struggled to break even, and some are beginning to face losses due to the lack of revenue. Phoenix, Arizona, meanwhile, has become a major tech hub and manufacturer in MIC technology, AI, and semiconductors worth nearly $200 billion. The two important upper basin states, Utah and New Mexico, are complete opposites in standards of living, but Utah seems to rely on New Mexico. The Mormons own the state of Utah; both U.S. Senators John Curtis and Mike Lee are members of the Latter-Day Saints, as is Governor Spencer Cox, as is the Salt Lake City Chief of Police Brian Redd. Because of this control, Salt Lake City is not only the new sprawling tech metropolis and one of the fastest-growing cities in the country; it is also the lowest drug-use state in the entire country, despite its proximity to New Mexico and Mexico proper. Salt Lake City is also home to 15 of the 23 industrial banks in the United States. Harking back to the Corsican mob's control of French ports, it seems that both the Mormons and Unione Corse were able to prevent the flow of drugs into their territory but not into others. While it is possible that the strict adherence to Mormon beliefs restricts the market of drugs in this state, this does not include the newcomers from around the country looking for work. The May 2025 police raids across five states also paint a weird picture. While large amounts of guns, drugs, and money were seized in raids across Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Las Vegas, the second largest amount of money was seized in Layton, Utah: $740,000 in cash but no drugs or guns. It seems that the traffic stops through Utah consist of large sums of cash, but the drugs continue on elsewhere.
What all of this suggests is that the drug trade in New Mexico helps to prop up the state economies of the Western U.S. and the U.S. monetary system. As addicts from across the country somehow end up in Albuquerque, the money spent in the local market plus the money returning from markets from around America will make its way back to Mexico. These dollars will fill the coffers of the cartels and Chinese chemists working in Mexican cities to produce fentanyl. As this money is cleaned through shell companies and bank investments, the central banks that end up with these dollars will have a surplus in their balance of payments, and so this money is stashed in the U.S. Treasury, where the U.S. government can then use these new funds in their technological projects. The generous spending in welfare programmes is also a source of generous income for the people who own them, which includes the billions of dollars in funding to drug rehabs and Section 8 housing. Connecticut is a prime example of this. Nestled between New York City and Boston, the state boasts high drug use and the highest income inequality in America. In 2024, the state received $535.8 million for money towards Section 8 housing, where rents are paid to the landlords directly, alleviating the costs for the poor tenants. In 2024, $98 million went into New Haven's funding, $55 million in Hartford, and $43 million in Bridgeport. This has been a free lunch for landlords in Fairfield County; Jewish real estate moguls from New Jersey and NYC; and the recently arrived Indian diaspora. These hundreds of millions of dollars are not reinvested into the cities and are instead being sent to other states or even wired to other countries. But who can blame them ? These cities have an immensely high crime rate, and Section 8 tenants are notoriously hard to work with. So when cities like Hartford demand landlords reinvest hundreds of thousands of dollars into dilapidating buildings, it will be better off to just abandon them.
Conclusion
Many simply see America as a fight between Democrat and Republican, Massie against Trump, Newsome against California, but none of these men or their parties are sovereign. The numerous factions in America are in constant competition and pressure the politicians in order to gain political power. The economic foundation that all of this operates on is primarily based on the exploitative monetary system of running up the deficit; this, of course, destroyed American industry and yet has created the most technologically advanced military on the planet. The trafficking of narcotics not only allows for illicit funds to seep their way into the monetary system and secret deposits used for covert operations around the world, but it also allows the American security establishment control over its own and other countries' vital infrastructure. The American people absorb the cost of this system; their loss of industrial jobs, high taxes, and drug addiction allow this system to operate, a system recently inherited by American technocrats. In the next essay, we will analyze the political, economic, and military capture by this new ruling class, as well as their inevitable downfall, by analyzing events like Watergate. We will also analyze the formation of the American empire overseas that was developed by the CIA's connection to the SS and White Czarist Russian exiles and artificial countries that are simply carbon copies of America and survive through an illicit system of narcotics and corruption, such as Ukraine, Taiwan, and South Korea.