The Heroin Wars

Today, the United States of America faces a crisis which none but the smartest of Empires have successfully defeated. A growing trade-imbalance with China. It's nothing new of course. Spain stupidly was handed the crisis and stupidly did nothing to correct it. Medieval Castilians weren't too big on economics unlike their Dutch vassals. However the British solved their problem quite intelligently, can America do the same?

So around the mid 16th century Spain is finally getting down to work with its colonies in the New World and is gazing in one direction. West, towards Asia. The original goal of Columbus' explorations and the place where the Portuguese were getting all their spice from. From that time period onward, New Spain (Mexico) sent fleets into the Pacific. One conquered the Philippines archipelago and finally had a depot to trade with China. There was one problem though. The Ming Dynasty were Mercantalist to the core. They didn't welcome foreign goods into their nation. But they did welcome Spanish silver from Peru and Mexico to trade for porcelain, silk, spices etc. Soon, so much silver was flowing to China that the country had to cut the Manila trade to two ships each year but these ships soon became gigantic Spanish galleons.

This loss of silver contributed to to economic downfall of Spain which bankrupted itself with wars with France, the Ottomans, the United Provinces of the Netherlands and England.

How did Britain approach this problem? The British, being protestants loved trade and the free market (as long as it worked towards their advantage) and in the case of China before the Opium Wars.. it didn't. The Chinese sent tea, porcelain,silk,rhubarb etc to the British who traded silver for it. The Chinese were loaded and on top of that, the largest untapped market in the world! It was the East India Company's wet dream. In order to make that dream come to fruition. The Company began growing tea itself at cut-throat prices to Britain to undercut Chinese competition and finally it planeted poppies to sell opium to the Chinese and make sure their population would be addicted and customers for a long time to Britain. The Chinese were using the very same silver they got when they getting silver for tea. It was mercantalism gone wrong. When the Manchu government saw that their population were being ensnared by this narcotic of course they fought back, but the industrial revolution the Chinese had forsaken for Confucian harmony destroyed their junks. This warfare culminated in the burning and looting of the Summer Palace and the seizure of Hong Kong. The most beautiful of all Manchu palatial homes in the Celestial Empire. After this, China and its territory were reduced to a rump-state that was all but controlled by Western and Japanese companies. Even Manchuria where the dynasty had hailed from had been taken by the Russians!

All i'm saying, is that worse comes to worse in the next 50 years...America should legalize all

drugs and sell them right here at home. Of course, we'd have to sell it, and who do we sell it to? The biggest market on Earth. Also, think of all the money America could make by forcing Afghan peasants instead of warlords to grow opium. We'd be starving the Taliban of an essential source of funding and getting that money by shipping heroin to the Chinese. Of course it won't be easy. The Chinese aren't relying on war-drums and monkey bombs as they did back in the 1850s. Still, I'm guessing that American weaponry by 2050 will be more powerful than anything the Chinese will have by then. Another unfortunate fact is that the Chinese knows what happened to them back in the 19th century but if the US is smart and grows some cojones it will find a way to sell drugs to the Chinese. Think about it, it'll make the British and French proud.