The Idiocy of Fighting Narco-Terrorists With a Useless $200 Billion Surface Navy

by David Stockman | Dec 31, 2025 | ANTIWAR.COM

Talk about attacking a gnat with 1,000 pounds of TNT!

We are referring, of course, to the Donald’s latest gambit of sending a $40 billion carrier battle group to the coast of Venezuela in order to help kill a few fishermen (46 to date) on $400,000 speedboats, who run a side-gig of bringing cocaine across the Caribbean to distribution points to the US market. These hapless fishermen have been relabeled as “narco-terrorists” by the Washington War Machine, but as we show below, that’s pure barking hogwash.

The real reason for all the bellicose posturing from the Donald and the pathetic wanna be Navy Seal who got made Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, is yet again “regime change”.

To be sure, Maduro is a relentlessly destructive socialist dictator, but so what? He doesn’t have even a tinpot military that could get out of port if it tried.

Moreover, if the Washington neocons have failed to notice a notable event, we haven’t. To wit, the Cold War ended 34 years ago – so the remnant of the World Communist Menace in China and Russia is no longer even a remote military threat to the Homeland Security of the US, even if the US spy satellites can identify an operative or two from these nations stumbling around the ruling courts of Caracas.

In short, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to be sending the state-of-the-art Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) carrier battle-group to the Venezuela coast on the hoary grounds of national security. In fact, this hideous exercise of the mighty US Navy is a reminder of the pure idiocy of the $200 billion per year that Washington spends on the Surface Navy and Marines.

In this day and age the skies are full of satellites and military arsenals are rife with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and high-powered, lethal fighter aircraft – and soon, mother-ship bombers capable of launching swarms of hundreds of weaponized drones at Navy battle groups floating on the surface waters like sitting ducks. So the only thing the Surface Navy is good for is –

• (a)fighting regime change wars of invasion and occupation against no-count third-world dictatorships, which is not a legitimate purpose of homeland security.
• (b)Helping to kill defenseless fishermen on speed boats!

Yes, under the Donald, that’s what the Mighty Washington Empire has been reduced to. So far, it has killed 46 Venezuelan fishermen for no valid purpose whatsoever.

And, no, it’s not because they are sending boatloads of “poison” to kill innocent Americans as per the bombastic rhetoric of Hegseth and Ice Barbie at the Homeland Security Department. The latter had this to say the other day, but it’s absolute malarkey.

“You’ve saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you’ve blown up in the Caribbean.”

OK, that just unadulterated bullshit. That is to say, last year there were 178 million alcohol drinkers in the US, which, unfortunately, resulted in 178,000 alcohol related deaths in the US. That’s a regrettable 0.1% fatality rate among users.

But alcohol isn’t illegal because America hasn’t forgotten the bitter lessons of the Prohibition disaster 100 years ago.

By contrast, the only illegal drug that comes in from Venezuela is cocaine. There is no evidence whatsoever by the Federal government’s own lights that any fentanyl comes into the US from Venezuela.

So the “killer” drug they are gumming about is cocaine. Yet even then, Venezuela grows zero percent of the annual US supply of about 826,000 pounds, and accounts for only 8% of US-bound shipments via transit from Colombia and other sources.

Still, cocaine may well be both illegal and a dubious source of recreational stimulants for most people, but it is actually no more deadly than alcohol. To wit, according to the DEA and other government agencies, last year, there were about 5 million cocaine users in the USA and about 5,000 deaths from pure cocaine overdoses.

In this regard, the higher figure of 20,000 cocaine deaths per year often cited by drug prohibitionists reflects the widespread spiking of street cocaine with deadly fentanyl. The latter is far, far cheaper at 0.3 cents per dose versus $150 per dose for cocaine or more than 1,000X more.

In any event, the fatality rate among cocaine users purely from cocaine is just 0.1% or the same as alcohol. Yet due to Nixon’s long-running misbegotten War on Drugs, we spend billions each year trying to eradicate it – a pointless effort that now includes even the mobilization of the US Navy against fishing boats.

But here’s the thing. Using $40 billion carrier battle groups to blow up cocaine-transiting speed boats is simply the stupidest, most irrational action ever conceived on the banks of the Potomac, and there is surely plenty of competition for that honor.

The reason is straightforward: Namely, interdiction and destruction of supply only drives up the price and drastically so – thereby making the illicit business of growing, shipping, and distributing cocaine all the more profitable. In turn, this also means that the illegal cartels which distribute it are capable of spending whatever it takes to counteract law enforcement and to compensate for the loss of product due to interdiction. Stated differently, the idiots behind prohibition – from alcohol to cocaine and heroin – believe that they can win by defying the law of supply and demand.

They most surely cannot. The only thing supply destruction actually accomplishes is to massively increase the revenue of the drug cartels and their ability to maintain ever larger armies of ever more violent operatives to conduct their insanely profitable businesses.

For want of doubt, let’s begin with the basic facts of supply and demand. Currently, Grok 4 indicates that US cocaine consumption is estimated at 514,000 pounds per year. Among an estimated 5.0 million active users, that’s an average annual consumption of 2 ounces per user per year. That is to say, the overwhelming number of recreational users are not about to kill themselves on 2 ounces of snort.

Nevertheless, the actual supply of cocaine coming into the USA in 2024 was about 826,000 pounds, meaning that about 312,000 pounds of seizures by the Coast Guard, other border control operations, and law enforcement domestically amount to nearly 61% of actual use.

Yes, for a product with the inherent high price inelasticity of a recreational stimulant like cocaine, just have the cops confiscate 61% of the end demand. That does make the price go sky-high!

And that gets us to the absurd economics of the so-called War on Drugs. In this case, we are talking about using hundreds of thousands of domestic law enforcement personnel led by the DEA, thousands of Coast Guard and other border patrol, and now $40 billion Navy carrier battle-groups to hunt down 312,000 pounds of a drug that is no more lethal than alcohol!

After all, the US government at all levels spends an estimated $100 billion per year on the War on Drugs. So even if just 20% of that is directly against the cocaine traffic, that’s nearly $320,000 per pound of cocaine interdicted!

That’s surely stupid enough, but it’s not even half of it. Spending that much on policing, interdiction, and supply destruction drives the price skyward. As shown below, the farm-gate value of cocaine paste grown in Colombia is just $382 per pound, which rises by another $525 per pound for in-country processing and delivery to shipping points, but then the cost of interdiction takes off like a bat out of hell.

The landed value in the US is estimated by Grok 4 at about $11,320 per pound. However, the shipping cost of the 826,000 pounds that makes its way to the US is not remotely the $10,340 per pound uplift from the port of export value. That 10X markup is plain and simple, the high cost of combating law enforcement and compensating for the 61% of supplies that are lost due to interdiction on the way to end customers.

Beyond that, as also shown by the table, there is another nearly 5X markup on the way from illegal entry at the US border to street value at retail. Needless to say, the standard ratio of landed price to retail for normal legal commerce is 2X, as exemplified by the case of coffee in the second column.

In all, the markup from the Columbia farm-gate to retail is 142.5X or $54,050 per pound of product distributed at retail. By contrast, coffee beans grown in Colombia and distributed via legal commerce exhibit a markup of just 2.86X between farm gate and retail value per pound. The only reason the farm-gate value of cocaine is more than 100X higher than that of coffee beans is that it takes about 500X more land to generate enough cocaine leaf for a pound of paste than it takes to grow enough coffee cherries for a pound of brew.

Accordingly, were cocaine commerce to be legal and were the leaf-based paste produced at the farm level at $382 per pound to be handled by legal shipping lines and domestic drug store distributors, the street retail value would be about $1,100 per pound or 98% less than current levels. Stated differently, the prohibition cost amounts to more than $53,000 per pound.

Stated differently, what does that $53,000 per pound cost of law enforcement and prohibition in the retail price of coke really fund?

Well, violent criminal syndicates. That’s what!

And yet and yet. The Donald is compounding the insanity by mobilizing $40 billion Naval carrier battle groups to make, well, a lot more totally unnecessary crime on the streets, byways and communities of America.

Supply Chain Cost Of Columbia-Produced Cocaine Versus Coffee

Level	Cocaine ($/lb)	Coffee ($/lb)
Farm-gate costs per processed/shipped pound equivalent	382	3.50
In-country processing and handling to FOB	907	4.00
US landed	11,340	4.20
US retail	54,432	10.00
Mark-up X from farm gate to retail	142.5	2.86
Available margin per pound (retail less farm gate)	54,050	6.50
Illegality Premium	53,339	0.00

 

David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, and the recently released Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself From The Coming Inflation Storm. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

Spyware and Murder: The NSO Group, Governments, and Khashoggi

by Binoy Kampmark / December 31st, 2025

The efforts to hold the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accountable for the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate in October 2018 continue. In his complex connubial life, the slain scribbler can now count, not only on efforts made by fiancée Hatice Cengiz in 2020 but his widow Hanan Elatr Khashoggi in seeking curial scrutiny on why he was do remorselessly dispatched by a death squad authorised by the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Unfortunately, whether focusing on the culpability of the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, or that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, their efforts have yielded lean returns.

The October 2020 lawsuit filed by Hatice Cengiz and Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) was dismissed in December 2022 by US District Judge John Bates for reasons of head of state immunity. The judge nonetheless registered his “uneasiness” at the decision by the Kingdom to make the crown prince prime minister, along with “credible allegations of his involvement in Khashoggi’s murder”. The move had the stench of convenient expediency. “A contextualized look at the Royal Order thus suggests that it was not motivated by a desire for bin Salman to be the head of government, but instead to shield him from potential liability in this case.”

Prior to the decision, the Biden administration had also intervened on its own accord in the case, suggesting the court heed arguments of sovereign immunity. The State Department also affirmed the position that the US had “consistently, and across administrations, applied these principles to heads of state, heads of government and foreign ministers while they are in office.”

In 2023, Hanan Elatr filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Virginia against the NSO Group alleging the intentional targeting of her devices, thereby causing “immense harm, both through the tragic loss of her husband and through her own loss of safety, privacy, and autonomy.” At the time, Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert explained that his outfit had learned that the spyware Pegasus had been installed on her phone as she was being interrogated in Dubai “and the phone communicated several times with a server that is part of the NSO infrastructure”.

In May this year, the US District Court of Appeals of the Fourth Circuit upheld the lower court ruling that there was no “personal jurisdiction” in the matter for Hanan to assert. The reason here was that NSO had not appeared “to have directed electronic activity into Virginia”. If there had been “any express aiming of conduct towards Virginia, it was at the direction of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, not NSO.” This was to be contrasted with the 2019 targeting by the same company of WhatsApp’s California-based servers with the Pegasus spyware “through those servers to facilitate the sort of surveillance Pegasus offers to its clients”. (1,400 users had fallen victim to the exercise.) This was the sort of quibbling that gives the law a bad name, leading Hanan to make the chilling point that the NSO Group had irrefutably infiltrated her devices, spied on her and her husband and “tracked him down to his death.”

Hanan is now seeking redress in France for the data stolen from the two phones that were infected by Pegasus in April 2018 while being interrogated in the UAE. “It would be unthinkable not to establish a link between this interception (of information) and the actions that led to the murder” of Khashoggi, attorneys William Bourdon and Vincent Brengarth said in a joint statement.

Her case has also piqued the interest of Virginian Congressman Eugene Vindman who, in November, urged President Donald Trump via letter to release the transcript of a 2019 call to Prince Mohammed. In this, he was not alone, keeping company with other 37 lawmakers. “The US Intelligence Community,” the letter states, “concluded that the Saudi Crown Prince personally ordered Khashoggi’s murder. In a direct rebuke of our dedicated national security civil servants, your recent statements suggest that you place greater trust in the Crown Prince’s claims than in the assessments of our intelligence agencies.”

The jurisprudence on holding spyware producers to account is burgeoning, if slowly. Meta’s victory in December 2024 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against the NSO Group’s targeting of WhatsApp was significant enough to lead spokesperson Emily Westcott to praise the ruling as placing such companies “on notice that their illegal actions will not be tolerated.” In May 2025, a jury in California found that $167.3 million in punitive damages and $414,719 in compensatory damages should be awarded to Meta.

NSO had resoundingly failed to exempt its activities from legal accountability in asserting sovereign immunity, their argument being that they had acted as an agent of a foreign power. This was conclusively rejected by the US Supreme Court in January 2023.

While those linked to Khashoggi may not have been successful securing remedies for his murder from governments using Pegasus to target those it deems undesirable, they can at least be given some cold comfort that the NSO Group’s reputation has fallen into an investment purgatory. The nature of such an industry, however, is that murky reputations are no guarantee to the extinction of these companies. Even now, a group of US investors led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds have acquired the company, effectively taking it out of Israeli hands. Those in the dream factory are not above producing nightmares on occasion.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

A Tale of Colliding World Views

by Greg Godels / December 31st, 2025


In December, documents were released asserting two radically different political perspectives.

They could not be more different.

On December 4, under the President of the United States’ Seal, the White House published the administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, expressing the government’s current evaluation of the global challenges facing it.

The next day, December 5, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) publicly announced its forthcoming 22nd Congress, followed by the publication of its Theses of the Central Committee — the product of long preparatory discussions by the KKE’s members– constituting an assessment of the state of the world and the Party’s approach to it.

A comparison of the two documents presents a violent clash of class outlooks.

The US National Security Strategy

The US ruling class — in its current incarnation — intends to maintain or re-establish US economic domination and grease the wheels for US corporations to succeed internationally. In this regard, the Trump administration is no different than earlier administrations, except — perhaps — being more transparent in this goal.

More specifically, extracting policy from the section on the Western Hemisphere, the strategy includes:

Militarizing the seas and the oceans. Previous administrations portrayed military force as an instrument of guaranteeing free “access” to trade. This administration, under the “America First” ideology explicitly uses military force to promote US economic success, foregoing the charade of promoting free trade for all.

Accessing strategic resources. In the document’s laundered language, the goal is “to identify strategic points and resources… with a view to their protection and joint development with regional partners.” More candidly, US policy makers in this administration project power to privilege US corporations in resource-rich countries like Bolivia or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Making it hard for other countries to compete. “The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.” The strategy endorsed by the document uses economic leverage to deny success to others.

Helping US corporations to dominate. “[W]e will reform our own system to expedite approvals and licensing—again, to make ourselves the partner of first choice. The choice all countries should face is whether they want to live in an American-led world of sovereign countries and free economies or in a parallel one in which they are influenced by [other] countries…” Specifically and adamantly, “[e]very U.S. Government official that interacts with… countries should understand that part of their job is to help American companies compete and succeed.”

Accepting that “[t]he United States must also resist and reverse measures such as targeted taxation, unfair regulation, and expropriation that disadvantage U.S. businesses.” Of course, this policy only reiterates what every US administration for more than a hundred years has sought since the intervention in Cuba and the Philippines: a free hand for US economic exploitation.

While these goals are extracted from Trump’s new Monroe Doctrine for the Western Hemisphere, they are barely disguised as policy for the rest of the world. However, they represent considerable continuity with the foreign policy of earlier administrations, though shorn of any pretense to global fairness.

Commentators have been surprised with the Trump administration’s focus on the Western Hemisphere over the often-bitter hostility towards the People’s Republic of China. Surely, that simply acknowledges the formidable economic and military power of the PRC. US policy makers of Trump’s world have been forced to recognize that — no matter how much they would like otherwise — the US is in no position to bully the PRC. Therefore, they accept that they can only adjust or modify their economic relationship. Competing with the PRC — the US’s most formidable rival — consists, instead, in bullying those who do business with their rival.

The administration is explicit on how to “compete” for the allegiance of their Chinese rivals’ economic collaborators: “China’s state-led and state-backed companies excel in building physical and digital infrastructure, and China has recycled perhaps $1.3 trillion of its trade surpluses into loans to its trading partners. America and its allies have not yet formulated, much less executed, a joint plan for the so-called ‘Global South,’ but together possess tremendous resources. Europe, Japan, South Korea, and others hold net foreign assets of $7 trillion. International financial institutions, including the multilateral development banks, possess combined assets of $1.5 trillion. While mission creep has undermined some of these institutions’ effectiveness, this administration is dedicated to using its leadership position to implement reforms that ensure they serve American interests.” [my emphasis] Thus, the document reveals the carrot to the US stick.

Almost in passing, by merely observing the European Union’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the Trump administration demonstrates that it considers the EU to be another rival, albeit a rival retaining some important historical ties — neither a protectorate, nor currently a competitor of great concern.

The US National Security Strategy paper offers the latest insight into the thinking now directing the still-greatest power in the imperialist system. It is a blue print for the security of US business interests and not of the security and well-being of the people.

The KKE Theses of the Central Committee

How does the Greek Communist Party view the current state of the world?

The KKE is one of the few Marxist organizations relatively untarnished by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It conceded little to the mass retreat from Leninist principles. It refused to flirt with the widespread ideological marriage of markets and socialism. It held fast to the centrality of class in the analysis of the contemporary world. Where much of today’s left rails against an ever-changing, seemingly unrelated basket of grievances, the KKE defends the classical Marxist understanding that the central, determinative contradiction remains the contradiction between capital and labor, nationally and internationally.

Certainly, that should make Greek Communist thinking of interest to all those who question the strategic aims of the leaders of the most powerful state in the capitalist system.

KKE sees a class-divided world moving toward relative and absolute impoverishment of working people, long-term unemployment, and an unfavorable balance of power between capital and labor. Technological innovation is skewed dramatically in support of the interests of capital. Pursuit of profit continues to dangerously degrade the environment.

As a result of the weakness of labor in confronting capital, the capitalist system is suffering from an overaccumulation of capital. Hyper-exploitation has produced a mass of capital, seeking — with greater and greater difficulty — to find (safe) profitable investment opportunities (one might well view the orgy of investment in AI as an attempt to create such an opportunity).

KKE understands the recessionary pressures experienced in Europe, Japan, and Asia as the effects of this crisis of the return on investment. Efforts to manage this crisis — Keynesian or otherwise — have failed. Specifically, the liberal project of green technology (e.g., the Green New Deal) and the Central Bank project (e.g., interest-rate manipulation, qualitative easing) were unsuccessful in restoring a solid foundation for the rate of profit.

Further, the capitalist powers have invested in the war economy, both in response to inter-imperialist contradictions and to absorb capital.

Militarism serves to destroy and devalue capital through the never-ending conflicts arising from imperialist rivalries. They caution that this military buildup increases sharply the risk of even larger wars, possibly world wars.

The KKE stresses competition between existing nations — great powers, alliances, and emerging blocs — fueling the existing wars, flashpoints, and severe clashes endangering our world. They contend that:

The USA, which still holds the leading position, is trying to halt the shift in the balance of power in China’s favour. International financial institutions have already downgraded the US credit rating. This trend is reflected in the decline of the US share and the significant increase of China’s share in Gross World Product (global GDP) between 2000 and 2025, in the significant difference in growth rates between the USA and China, the large US trade deficit in bilateral trade with China and the EU, and the sharp rise in US public debt.

Within the global imperialist system, both the PRC and Russia present challenges to US hegemony, and US nationalist, protectionist policies are also “… sharpening contradictions within the Euro-Atlantic camp and causing a deterioration in relations between the USA and the EU, Canada and Australia. They are exacerbating intra-bourgeois contradictions within the USA, which are also reflected in developments within the bourgeois political system. They are increasing the likelihood of the decline of the dollar as an international currency. They have a negative impact on international trade and reinforce the downward trend in the international capitalist economy.”

Of the major powers, the KKE sees the European Union as losing ground “relative to the USA and China”, which is feeding the existing turn to the right in many Eurozone countries.

The war in Ukraine is the result of today’s Great Power rivalries — it is an imperialist war. The KKE asserts:

In the three-and-a-half years of this war, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians have lost their lives, mainly young people of the working class and the poor popular strata. Approximately twenty-five million people have fled their homes. Homes and public infrastructure have been destroyed on a massive scale. Amidst the ruins, capitalist states and monopolies are competing for the “reconstruction” of Ukraine, viewing it as an “investment opportunity.” This will cost hundreds of billions of euros, a burden that the people will be made to bear… The outbreak of contradictions and realignments within imperialist alliances as imperialist conflict and competition unfold is neither paradoxical nor unprecedented, but a typical feature of imperialist wars. It can lead to former adversaries becoming allies, and former allies becoming adversaries.

Similarly, the KKE views the war in the Middle East as an imperialist war:

The Israeli war machine supported by the USA and the EU, launched a massive operation in the Gaza Strip, using the Hamas attack as a pretext. This operation resulted in the deaths and injuries of tens of thousands of innocent people, including unarmed civilians, young children, women and elderly people….The imperialist nature of the war in the Middle East and the bourgeois character of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority do not invalidate the just struggle of the Palestinian people and other peoples in the region, who resist and fight against foreign occupation and other imperialist plans. Through this struggle, they can create the conditions necessary to free themselves once and for all from the system of exploitation and war.

For those who may be interested, the current assessment bears remarkable consistency and continuity with the Theses for the 20th Congress developed nearly a decade ago.

Serious-minded people seeking an understanding of the perilous, contentious, and confusing world in which we are living should welcome the revealing contrast between the two perspectives outlined here. One outlook only recognizes the interests of a minority of advantage-seeking, privileged individuals and soulless corporations, while the other recognizes the common fate and pressing needs of the majority of the world’s people who are found within a well-defined social class.

One doesn’t have to agree with all of the conclusions shared by the Greek Communists, but one must acknowledge that they are drawn from an effort to create a world far distant from the one arrogantly defended in the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Moreover, the KKE unabashedly supports a class line — on the working peoples’ side of the barricades. It argues that exploitation is the crucial social relation that decides whether employment, equality, living standards, health care, education, security, or peace are won or lost. Moreover, KKE unequivocally sides with the exploited.

Finding our way free from the Trumpian world and those conditions that produced it will require a clear and deep analysis. The KKE Theses provide a solid foundation of both clarity and depth.

Greg Godels writes on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.