The American Empire is the safest country in history. Among other things, we sport more than the 5,000 nuclear warheads shielded from outside inspection; a multitrillion-dollar military-industrial-security complex; nonstop surveillance of the entire population; special forces in 70–80 countries; NATO and defense pacts with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines; a de facto alliance with Israel; and pioneering AI to optimize the lethality of weapons. Nobody goes to bed in the United States fearing an invasion or military attack.
Yet we are poised to hike Pentagon spending to $1.5 trillion annually, excluding the VA budget, which approaches $500 billion. The $2 trillion dwarfs annual defense spending by the American Empire’s only plausible global rival, China. Further, the latter possesses approximately 600 nuclear warheads to our more than 5,000. Aircraft carriers show a similar overwhelming imbalance in our favor. The American Empire maintains a fleet of 11 large, nuclear-powered supercarriers. China ranks second globally with three operational carriers dependent on conventional propulsion and focused on regional dominance in the Indo-Pacific.
Since the American Empire confronts zero existential threats, we summon them into being to justify a national security state that crushes liberty and the march of the mind while exalting force of arms. Thus, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has decreed that “antifa”—i.e., antifascism—is a global, terrorist threat. The Secretary invited over 70 delegations to meet in Washington, D.C. this week to slay the putative antifa dragon.
We’ve seen this rodeo before. In 2003, the United States employed foreign aid, military assistance, trade pacts, and debt forgiveness to entice or coerce scores of other nations to join the “Coalition of the Willing” to invade Iraq. The foreign delegations attending the antifa event were similarly bribed by the United States to create a politically attractive optic for President Donald Trump and Secretary Rubio.
Antifa has no bank account. It owns no property. It has no chain of command. It has no designated leader. It has no members. At most, antifa is an ideology opposed to fascism—the same fascism the United States opposed in Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain.
On September 25, 2025, President Donald Trump designated antifa a domestic terrorist organization through an executive order devoid of legal standing. Among other things, the order declared antifa “explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government…us[ing] illegal means…,” a clear violation of the Smith Act. Yet Trump has been unable to muster a single Smith Act prosecution of Antifa on his watch. None! But he had time to prosecute Sean Dunn, a protestor in the District of Columbia, for throwing an onion sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent. (Dunn was acquitted).
International drug cartels (which would be defunct without willing American customers) have also leapfrogged to the top of the American Empire’s national security agenda. The cartels are an old phenomenon. The “French Connection” was a massive global heroin smuggling network operating from the 1930s to the early 1970s. It moved morphine base from Turkey through France—primarily Marseille—to be processed into high-purity heroin, before smuggling it into the United States and Canada via Corsican and Italian-American mafia syndicates. Moviegoers will remember the 1971 Academy Award-winning film The French Connection starring Gene Hackman.
Panama’s Manuel Noriega and Colombia’s Pablo Escobar followed. Mexican drug cartels have flourished since 1980, nearly 50 years.
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Drug trafficking persists because of unflagging demand and money from American consumers. Drug traffickers are not engaged in wars of conquest. They are out for money and all that it can purchase. Buyers are at least in pari delicto, yet none are accused of waging war or providing material assistance to warriors.
Trump, however, has designated multiple drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations allegedly invading the United States. Trump has murdered more than 200 drug trafficking suspects, without evidence, using military force—the Godfather on steroids.
Drug trafficking, like prostitution, is deplorable. But neither is a national security threat. And the cost-free, risk-free cure is in plain view: Consumer boycotts of their goods or services.
