Corporatist Drug War Foreign Policy

by | Aug 17, 2011 | News | 4 comments

Via the Just the Facts blog, this U.S. Trade and Aid Monitor* details the corporatist approach to drug war foreign policy. The Department of Defense is extending a privately contracted five-year global counter narcotics program valued upwards of $15 billion. The program employs five primary corporations in the military industrial complex: Blackwater Lodge & Training Center, Inc.; Lockheed Martin Integrated SystemsARINC Engineering Services, LLC;Raytheon Technical Service Company; and Northrop Grumman/TASC, Inc. The countries in which these taxpayer-funded rent-seekers and mercenaries have been and will be operating in include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Colombia, and Mexico.

The extended program would again be granted for a five-year period, beginning on or about June 1, 2012, and would continue to support the CNTPO’s mission to “disrupt, deter, and defeat the threat to national security posed by illicit trafficking in drugs, small arms and explosives, precursor chemicals, people, and illicitly-gained and laundered money.

[…] Specific details about the extended program have not been released, but the announcement did include four attachments (attachments 2-5) detailing projects anticipated under the follow-on contract…

Those four attachments are worth exploring. They detail the program’s projects – which include everything from training and equipping counter-narcotics forces, to construction of high-tech facilities and equipment for border and airport security, to language lessons and media training – within the above mentioned countries.

See recent drug war coverage at Antiwar.com:

Latin America Beware: The Imperial Pretext Is Changing

US-Trained Guatemalan Forces Tied To Drug Gangs

Interventionism South of the Border: Teaching Drug Cartels How to Kill

CIA, DEA, Contractors Operate Secretly Inside Mexico

Mexico Blocks US Extradition of ‘Drug Queen’

Supporting Atrocities in Colombia

Update on US Support for Colombia

US Pledges $300 Million More for Central America Drug War

Drug War Wreaking Havoc in Latin America

*The original language of this post incorrectly described the U.S. Trade and Aid Monitor as affiliated with the Christian Science Monitor.

Update: Jason Ditz writes in the news section on the U.S. hiring Blackwater for the Afghan drug war.

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