The World’s Biggest Pusher
by Richard Balzano The United States kidnapped Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in January 2026* on now-crumbling allegations that he headed the fictional “Cartel of the Suns.” Washington framed Maduro as a narco-terrorist kingpin to justify what was effectively an act of war disguised as law enforcement, but prosecutors are now quietly backing away from the bolder claims used to rationalize his abduction. The irony, of course, is that the United States has spent decades enabling narcotrafficking in the name of democracy. For 40+ years Washington waged its unsuccessful War on Drugs alongside its oft-illegal Cold War pursuits. In the American hierarchy of foreign-policy values, anticommunism …