About the Author::: "Dr. Joseph Douglass" : is a national security analyst and author with expertise in defence policy, threat assessment, deception, intelligence and political warfare, nuclear strategy, terrorism, advanced chemical and biological warfare agents and applications, and international narcotics trafficking. Since the mid-1980s, his primary focus has been research into various dimensions of cultural warfare and notably into the illegal drugs plague, with emphasis on its origins, support structures, marketing - and the question: 'What can be done?' Dr Douglass received his PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1962 and has taught at Cornell, the Navy Postgraduate School at Monterey, and Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Relations in Washington, D.C.. He has worked in and for the national laboratories (Sandia Corporation], the US Government, where he was Deputy and Acting Director, Tactical Technology Office, Advanced Research Projects Agency - and with various defence contractors, such as the Institute for Defense Analyses and System Planning Corporation. He is a former member of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, US Army Science Board, and a former consultant to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He currently directs The Redwood Institute, which was formed to address the internal problems America faces - such as illegal drugs, crime and impoverished education - and to identify root causes, evaluate national policy and devise alternative policy options. The Author is a pioneering analyst and is perhaps best known for his ground-breaking studies of nuclear weapons policy, the impact of precision-guided munitions, the nature of the Soviet nuclear threat, the risks arising from chemical and biological warfare agents, and intelligence aspects of international narcotics trafficking. His unclassified books include The Theater Nuclear Offensive [1976, reprinted ten times]; Soviet Strategy for War in Europe [Pergamon Press, 1980, also translated into and published in German]; Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War [Hoover Institute Press, 1979: numerous printings, translated into and published in Japanese]; CBW: The Poor man's Atomic Bomb [Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, 1984]; Why the Soviet Union Violates Arms Control Treaties [Pergamon-Brassey's, 1988]; Conventional War and Escalation [The National Strategy Information Center, 1981]; The Superpowers and Strategic War Termination [co-editor, Pergamon-Brassey's, 1989]; and the present work, originally entitled: Red Cocaine: The Drugging of America [1990]. This new edition has been prepared with a view to meeting continuing demand for the work, in both the United States and elsewhere, following the strategic adjustment completed in 1991 when the Communist strategists switched to pursuing their manic World Revolutionary objectives through covert Communism and a 'new form' of reversible 'state-controlled capitalism' - working, as Lenin taught his 'illuminated' followers, 'by other means'. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 'In 1996, annual revenues derived from global criminalist activities were estimated by the World Bank's experts at $1.2 trillion, of which $500 billion were thought to represent profits. These were and remain highly conservative estimates. The narcotics trade alone is in the $500 billion or more range. A more realistic estimate today would probably be of the order of $2 trillion per year - with $1 trillion, more or less, by way of straight profit; and some experts would raise these estimates further, towards $3.0 trillion annually in turnover. That is to say, governments, banks and the global criminalists are arranging the transfer of at least $1.0 trillion every year of national and private wealth into the bank accounts of the global criminal fraternity - a massive transfer of wealth for which there has been no historical parallel. This scandalous state of affairs has been continuing for several decades on an ever expanding scale, and the power conferred as a consequence threatens to destroy governments, democracy and the international banking system itself. Drug money also weakens and corrodes competition by favouring some economic agents at the expense of others'. 'Two trillion+ dollars a year (a conservative figure, as noted) over the past two decades, excluding interest, would imply that more than $40 trillion will have been added to the wealth of the global criminal classes, including the managers and representatives of Lenin's continuing world socialist revolution. Most of this money has been invested in property, bonds and stocks, and each year a further trillion or more dollars is added to the pool. Given that these data are believed by some experts to understate the position, the probable value of accrued drug money lodged in the international financial system now exceeds this $40 trillion estimate by a considerable margin. The associated corruption among financial institutions, investment advisory services (including stock brokerage houses and mutual funds), prestigious law firms, and among the political classes, has by now long since reached epidemic proportions. And this transformation has been accompanied by minimal publicity, with the exception of extensively publicised, but intermittent, 'drug busts'...'. 'It is critical for the survival of Western civilisation, and in order to slow down its rapid descent into pervasive, corrosive globalised criminality and corruption, which is the grim outlook for the 21st century, that Western countries begin, even at this late hour, to understand the true nature of the illegal drug crisis - which means correctly analysing its sources, especially its political origins, its enabling mechanisms, and its related criminal dimensions. Unless the nature and provenance of the challenge is finally understood, the appropriate strategy and tactics to address it will never be formulated. The drugs scourge continues to escalate because the measures so far developed to counter it do not take account of the geopolitical dimension - that is to say, of the malevolent, revolutionary intent which drives it'. 'As a consequence, the measures taken, in the United States, Britain and elsewhere, to address the scourge, have remained essentially irrelevant and ineffective.... The plague continues to spread because the West is the victim of a deliberate, sustained and relentless offensive planned and directed by enemy intelligence which Western policymakers appear not to begin, or care, to understand. Some Western leaders even share the ideological objectives of the perpetrators of the drugs offensive. To make matters much worse, the values of many policymakers have been fatally eroded; and if one has no real values, one is not emboldened to defend anything at all, let alone with conviction and vigour. Policymakers too often stand for nothing and fall for everything - for every false assessment, for every piece of fashionable disinformation and for every diversionary tactic which is intended to add to the confusion and which clouds the truth: namely, that the West has been targeted as an act of war, and is the victim of a sustained offensive'. 'Obviously, the longer this perversity and blindness continue, the more powerful and insuperable will the forces which help to perpetuate this blanket offensive, become. Soon, they will wield almost total power in some Western countries. The European Union's collectivist structures, with their pork-barrel traditions and inclinations, are conspicuously vulnerable to drug-related corruption...'.