That's mainly because it cuts into the US government profit margins. They and their favored contractors have been selling arms for profit and love drug running when it suits their aims as they showed with eg support for the Contras.

It is important drugs stay illegal so powerful connected interests can maintain high profit and control. Without that, simple cocaine/meth/marijuana is just an agricultural or chemical commodity with essentially the margin of generic OTC drugs.

The US government does not have profit margins. It hasn’t run a balanced budget in decades. What are you even trying to say?

They might be alluding to regulatory capture by groups such as the NRA, big pharma, and the defense industry, which, for all purposes, are an unelected part of the government.

I love how the NRA - which is almost entirely member-funded - gets lumped in with actual industries with eye watering margins.

They are a powerful lobby. Just mention "gun regulation" in DC to see how many of them there are.

In terms of money they really aren't that big, but they don't need much money to wield influence because their cause is very popular with a lot of voters and politicians know that.

Yeah I meant more like some shady fentanyl that overdoses people en masse, not some rather harmless and sometimes even beneficial weed.

The worst part are weapons, there is no way to spin it as something benign. Victor Bout for example got 25 years and there was no drug smuggling nor contract murders.

Victor Bout is free and selling weapons again with the blessing and release of the US government. Always was about profiting off of weapons. Don't believe what the US really got from it was one ditzy WNBA player.

He was serving 2 life sentences + 40 years, not one. Even the prosecutors only asked for 20. What he did was wrong, but the sentence was disproportionate. The judge intended to throw away his life to make a point.

Fitting then, that his release is happening to make a point with respect to judicial overreach in New York.

> for Europe, China starts to look like a great not only business but also military partner

Speak for yourself. China is still worse than the USA, and Xi isn't bound to any term limit, and has built up quite a following.

China seems to understand the concept of soft power, something the US has been neglecting for many decades in favor of less subtle military intervention.

You mean: bribery and economic pressure? It surely isn't cultural power.

It could start helping finance infrastructure projects, schools, hospitals, universities, and so on. Along that comes the opportunity to exercise cultural influence and develop consumers and suppliers for your own industry.

It’s far less nasty than invading, freeing the people from their government and installing a puppet in its place. Also a lot cheaper. Any missile could pay for a school.

Read up on USAID.

Which countries has china invaded, illegally or otherwise? Which governments have they toppled, covertly or openly?

Tibet

Perhaps more impressively: India, after India had been early to recognize PRC and worked to get them recognized internationally.

The next country that recognizes Taiwan as a state will find out.

Ah ok, so in other words we have to consider hypotheticals in order to even try and draw a comparison to the other state in question.

So, which countries did China liberate from oppression? What did the CCP/its predecessor movement actually do? Standing aside while the NRA fought the Japanese. Instead of helping and preventing some major bloodbaths, Mao and his army just abided their time. After the power change, the Long March, the Cultural Revolution and whatever havoc I forget, China was too weak to do anything, let alone invade countries. Now it's stronger, and seems remarkably poised for war.

Your "US bad because invasion" is a tankie frame. Yes, that refers to the Tiananmen tanks.

>So, which countries did China liberate from oppression?

My friend, what are you babbling about? Are you arguing with hallucinations? Did you think I'm arguing that China is my model of a utopian society?

Again. Which countries has China invaded or toppled, outside of the imaginary ones you yearn for in your head? Is the list close to that of the US?

>Your "US bad because invasion" is a tankie frame. Yes, that refers to the Tiananmen tanks. (??)

I'm a tankie because I think invasions are bad?? What does that make you, a frothing bloodthirsty hawk? A despotic militarist?