Opium and Empire: McCoy on Heroin in Southeast Asia

Abstract

More and more, as scholars search to understand the history of U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia, they are forced to study the largely submerged operations of crime. The tripartite symbiosis which A. J. Liebling a generation ago described in Chicago—between local government, the Syndicate, and less visible economic interests—operates with the same brutal efficiency in the Far East as well. There too the tightly-knit, ruthless bagmen and enforcers from narcotics and other vice operations become the indigenous local cadres for venal and demoralized regimes, which in turn are fronts for more powerful imperial and economic forces. Al McCoy has written a fascinating and exhaustive analysis of the interpenetration between crime and local government in Southeast Asia. But, as we shall see, he has less to say about U.S. influence behind the scenes, and as to economic interests he is largely silent.