The Drugs War: Civil-Military Relations and Political Economy (London Security Policy Study Book 19)

The drugs war has been recounted in numerous writings yet none have looked inwards into understanding that it is an issue of domestic civil military relations similar to that of the 1960s military-industrial complex that has been internationalised by virtue of the actors and activities of civil-society and globalisation. In doing so the drugs war can also be seen as the political economy of drugs or the International Drugs Complex. This makes victory against the drugs cartels impossible by military action alone. To understand the drugs war as being a symbiosis of civil-military relations and political economy this article will seek to answer three questions: who am I - who are you; are there better ways of doing things; and what if we loose. The first is an issue of the identity of civil-military relations in International Studies as part of a foreign policy agenda while the second addresses the political economy and regimes of the drugs war. The third undertakes an evaluation of the nature of the drugs war as being international security, foreign policy, and intelligence studies and how each of these lack a substantive understanding of the nature of the civil military relations and political economy of the drugs war in order to attain victory.