How fighting drugs became America’s pretext for regime change

Kua Kia Soong

The recent wave of US military air strikes on suspected drug-trafficking vessels off the coast of Venezuela and in the wider Caribbean under US President Donald Trump’s so-called “narco-terrorism” campaign has reportedly killed more than 80 people in just a few weeks. 

The Trump administration frames this as a righteous war on drug trafficking.

But to many observers, this looks like selective justice – a show of force against low-level traffickers or small smuggling crews – while decades of covert history suggest that powerful drug networks once tolerated or even supported by US agencies were instrumental to US covert wars abroad. 

This ‘golden history of drugs’ in CIA-funded anti-communist wars – from Southeast Asia to Latin America and Afghanistan – can be gleaned from Mahmood Mamdani’s Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (2004). [Mamdani, a prominent postcolonial scholar at Columbia University, is the father of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.]

The Golden Triangle

In the 1950s, after the Chinese communist victory, remnants of the Kuomintang (KMT) fled into the borderlands of what are now Burma (Myanmar), northern Thailand and Laos – the area that became infamously known as the Golden Triangle.

US covert operations, via the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), supported these exiled forces, hoping to use them against communist China.

As these forces settled, they turned to opium and heroin as a means of finance.

Over time, the Golden Triangle became the world’s largest opium-producing region.

In the 1960s and 1970s, during the Indochina conflicts, the CIA facilitated drug cultivation and trafficking as a side-business underpinning its anticommunist operations.

Thus, during the height of the Cold War, the US – in pursuit of anticommunist proxy wars – effectively helped nurture a vast narco-economy in Southeast Asia.

Laos and the Hmong

In parallel with the Golden Triangle network, when the US waged its clandestine “secret war” in Laos (1961–75), it relied heavily on ethnic minority groups – in particular the Hmong – as anticommunist proxies.

Because many of these communities had long depended on opium cultivation as their main cash crop, the CIA’s backing effectively preserved – and sometimes protected – their opium production as a means of sustaining those proxies.

Far from cracking down on drug production, the covert war helped institutionalise it – embedding drug cultivation within the very structure of anticommunist insurgency.

Latin America: Cocaine and Contras

The US record is no cleaner in the Western hemisphere.

During the 1980s, the CIA – via support for the Nicaraguan Contras – has been credibly accused of tolerating and even facilitating cocaine trafficking to fund the anti-Sandinista insurgency.

Notably, investigations (including by the CIA’s own inspector general) conceded that while no high-level official overtly ordered shipments of drugs into the US, the CIA did work with individuals and networks deeply involved in the narcotics trade – and at times dissuaded drug-enforcement agencies from pursuing them. 

The 1996 “Dark Alliance” series by investigative reporter Gary Webb thrust this reality into public view – alleging that cocaine traffickers linked to the Contras helped precipitate the crack-cocaine epidemic in US inner cities while funnelling profits to Latin American guerrilla forces.

Whether or not one credits every detail of Webb’s claims, the undeniable fact remains: US covert operations often engaged or tolerated drug-trafficking networks when these served anticommunist and geopolitical aims.

Afghanistan’s transformation

After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the US initiated Operation Cyclone – a covert programme in which the CIA supplied arms, training and funds to Afghan mujahideen fighting Soviet forces.

But many of those mujahideen networks, including major warlords, were deeply involved in opium cultivation and heroin production.

US logistical support – from trucks to mule caravans to air supply routes -frequently overlapped with established drug routes.

By the late 1980s, Afghanistan had become a major global heroin source –supplying a substantial portion of opiates consumed in the West. 

In effect, a war fought under the banner of anticommunism helped transform Afghanistan into what some have called a narco-state – the revenue from opium serving as covert funding for an insurgency and a proxy war.

A consistent pattern

Across these different theatres – Southeast Asia, Latin America, Afghanistan – a consistent pattern emerges.

The US, primarily via the CIA, identifies or builds proxy forces (exiled armies, ethnic guerrillas, insurgents) to serve anticommunist or geopolitical objectives.

These covert wars were hidden from public view and accountability, and so proxy forces lacked legitimate or sustainable funding sources.

Rather than relying on transparent aid, the US – implicitly or explicitly – tolerates or facilitates their involvement in narcotics production, trafficking or both.

Drug money becomes a de facto currency financing covert war, liberation movements or regime-change efforts.

Meanwhile, at home or in public discourse, the US maintains a narrative of a ‘war on drugs’ – criminalising and militarising efforts against traffickers when politically convenient, especially when those traffickers don’t serve US. strategic interests.

This pattern reveals a deep hypocrisy.

The same government that claims moral and legal high ground by bombing “narco-boats” today once – by its own covert policies – seeded and nurtured large-scale global drug networks.

The 2025 Caribbean strikes

When judged against that historical backdrop, the 2025 campaign of lethal strikes by US forces against alleged drug-smuggling boats near Venezuela appears not as a principled war on drugs, but rather as a continuation of selective power politics — this time used as a pretext for military pressure and possible regime change.

Moreover, the reported follow-up strike – which allegedly targeted survivors of a disabled vessel – raises serious legal and ethical questions.

Many legal experts argue that such an attack violates both US and international law, especially since those aboard the vessel were not engaged in active combat. 

If what is being labelled ‘narco-terrorism’ is treated as a justification for extrajudicial killing, it sets a dangerous precedent: a world in which a superpower unilaterally declares certain people ‘terrorists’, then uses lethal force outside normal judicial or law-enforcement mechanisms — without oversight, trial or transparent evidence.

Given the long history of state complicity in drugs, this makes the entire exercise not only hypocritical – but deeply immoral.

Venezuela’s right to resist

Given this context, the recent US threats against Venezuela – including the shutting of Venezuelan airspace, naval deployment and military provocations – appear far more ominous than a simple crackdown on drug trafficking.

To frame Venezuela as a narco-state or to label dissidents or civilians as ‘narco-terrorists’ is not just selective, it is part of a larger pattern of using the ‘drug war’ as a pretext for regime change.

Given the long history of US involvement with powerful traffickers around the world when it suited its geopolitical aims, the moral authority of the US to play judge, jury and executioner – especially outside its own territory – is deeply compromised.

Thus, what is needed today is not yet another wave of air-strikes but a recognition of sovereignty, respect for international law and a commitment to the principle that states should not use a ‘war on drugs’ as a cover for power politics.

Venezuela, like any country, has the right to self-determination.

If it has internal problems, those must be addressed through diplomacy, dialogue and transparent justice – not military intimidation and extrajudicial violence. – Suaram

Dr Kua Kia Soong, a former MP, is the director of human rights group Suaram.

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