Federal agents recently raided the home of Paul Campo. Campo is no street criminal; a former high-ranking Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) official, once responsible for overseeing financial investigations under former President Obama, he reportedly laundered millions for Mexico’s CJNG cartel, designated this year as a foreign “terrorist” organization.

According to prosecutors, Campo converted cash into digital assets for the cartel and agreed to move more than $12 million. He has also been indicted on other charges such as conspiracy to engage in narcoterrorism and to distribute cocaine in New York City. Campo still holds a security clearance. One might recall that the Washington Post also reported how internal US legislation weakened DEA authority under the same Obama presidency.

Campo’s case is far from an anomaly, though. In fact, it fits into a pattern too consistent to dismiss as coincidence. Just days earlier, US President Donald Trump was under scrutiny for preparing a full pardon for Juan Orlando Hernandez, former president of Honduras, convicted in the US for helping flood American streets with over 400 tons of cocaine. Hernandez was a darling of Washington’s counter-narcotics diplomacy, applauded by US officials while reportedly running one of the most efficient drug pipelines into North America. In other words, the last couple of weeks in the US saw a Democrat administration DEA financial chief caught for laundering cartel money plus an US-backed narco-president receiving a Republican pardon.

In any case, Hernandez is far from being the only major drug-dealing figure recently pardoned. Trump has also pardoned: “Silk Road” founder Ross Ulbricht, who created the largest online black market for illicit drugs; mobster Larry Hoover, founder of Chicago’s infamous “Gangster Disciples” crime family; Baltimore drug kingpin Garnett Gilbert Smith (“one of the largest cocaine and heroin dealers to be arrested by the DEA in recent history”); and many others.

All of this is impressive enough, given the American leader’s “tough on drugs” rhetoric. It is not just a Trump oddity though: former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, for example, commuted the sentences of Carlos Anibal Vignali Jr, part of the “largest drug-dealing ring in Minnesota history”; and of Harvey Weinig, money-lauderer linked to the Cali Cartel; to name just a few.

Incidentally, Bill Clinton’s brother (Roger Clinton), also pardoned, is a convicted cocaine dealer, also connected to the Gambino Italian mafia family. And, coincidentally, Orlando Cicilia, the brother-in-law of Republican Marco Rubio (the incumbent Secretary of State) was convicted of leading a major cocaine trafficking ring in South Florida. Jeb Bush (brother of former President George W. Bush), for his part, has his own cocaine connections via drug dealer Claudio Osorio and, allegedly, Barry Seal – not to mention the Iran-Contra/Mena affair.

Family connections and elite corruption aside, there seems to be a deeper pattern. One may recall that, around 2011, Sinaloa Cartel drug lord Vicente Zambada Niebla, son of Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, became a cooperating witness for the US government (under a plea agreement later unsealed), providing testimony against rival cartel figures. This took place during the rise of the very same Sinaloa cartel. Court filings suggested Washington had effectively allowed Sinaloa to operate with protection in return for information, thereby consolidating its empire and funneling narcotics northward.

This historical pattern is not confined to Mexico. Colombia’s paramilitary AUC, created to fight guerrilla groups, quickly became dependent on drug trafficking for revenue. After its demobilization, many of its members regrouped into criminal organizations such as today’s Clan del Golfo, inheriting its networks and routes. The AUC, in any case, expanded during US-backed counterinsurgency campaigns aimed at the Marxist FARC.

The hard truth is that US drug policy has always prioritized geopolitical calculus over fighting the drug epidemics in America. And this machinery keeps producing blowback. One just needs to consider Afghanistan’s opium, a topic I recently covered. The case of Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, former CIA asset, who recently attacked US National Guard officers in Washington DC, is emblematic enough.

Under the same logic, the main American target in the continent now is Venezuela. Not Colombia, which still dominates coca production. Not Mexico-based cartels, which control supply chains and trafficking routes. But the Venezuelan government, which, whether one likes Maduro or not, happens to also resist subordination to US regional designs.

An April declassified US National Intelligence Council (NIC) Memorandum concluded (page 2) that “the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating” with cartel activity and is “not directing” cartel “movement to and operations in the United States.” While there might exist a loosely connected network of corrupt officials and criminal groups (the so-called “Cartel de los Soles”), most analysts argue there is no single monolithic criminal-state apparatus, much less one led by Caracas. In other words, no real cartel. While Venezuela is presented as a “cartel state” anyway, that has not stopped Washington from backing security forces elsewhere that operated alongside drug-funded paramilitaries.

Professor Peter Dale Scott’s concept of the “deep political economy” of narcotics adds some depth here. Drug networks often are para-state actors: they intersect with intelligence operations, financial systems, and geopolitical agendas. This being so, some are tolerated, and some are weaponized; while some are targeted.

Therefore, when Washington declares war on drugs, one must ask which drugs and whose networks. As I wrote elsewhere, the entanglement of narcotics, intelligence, elite networks, and political protection cuts across administrations and parties. Democrats, Republicans, Hollywood donors, NGOs, security contractors, and politicians have all been embedded in the same system in America.

American “drug wars” have never dismantled dope markets; they rearrange them, while weaponizing anti-cartel rhetoric. Typically, players closer to US interests are empowered in the process. If it is fair to talk about a “Venezuelan narco-state” (disputable), maybe it is time to discuss Washington’s “Cartel”.

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Uriel Araujo, researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.