Interesting.
Years ago I ran across the trails used to smuggle drugs. The relationship between Afghanistan and Russia was all evolved around the drugs. Grown in Afghanistan, manufactured in Russia. One article said it second only to oil in Soviet economy
The need of Croatia to distribute the drugs to Europe was pointed out even then :otherwise the trail was almost tripled. Saved material to the old computer that crashed and haven’t looked into it since.
BUT its always in the back of mind when dealing with anything Russian
Yes, the problems caused by drug smuggling are horrible. The problem for soldiers and governments are a little different from the problems caused to civilians back home, and here’s how.
Soldiers and governments (including both ours and Russia’s) generally do not want to profit from the drug trade or to use drugs to cause misery to their enemies. The problem for soldiers is that of weighing the importance of public affairs (getting along with those in a local, foreign populace) against the horrors caused by illegal drugs.
More specifically, a local populace involved in a drug trade might work against an antagonistic influence (against “our” enemy in their own country, whether “we” are the Russians or the Americans). So to disrupt their drug trade would be to cut off a potential ally in a war and to make another enemy of them. Such locals are often not very rich or literate and tend to see their trade as being benign and as being their only livelihood.
Accusations are fabricated in conspiracy stories against soldiers and governments by civilians (most often by fascists). It’s a difficult problem to solve.
As for the main national and cultural differences between the U.S.A. and Russia, the U.S.A. tries to influence other nations to suit U.S. interests. Russia generally does the same. But each does so under different conditions and with different methods to choose different kinds of allies.
At the end of the 1990s, I was honored to chat in person with each of a couple of former Russian commanders here, in America. I was only enlisted and not an officer, by the way. But as with most who’ve served, we only discussed funny personal situations of the past with no mentions of anything having to do with tactical defense. We laughed.
There was mutual admiration and relaxed comfort. In each case, onlooking Russians who had not served appeared to be angry about our friendly interactions. Some civilians just don’t understand. Why? For one, some of the information that they received has been different from what we of prior service learned. Also, we’d had very little freedom and only the choice of following orders while on duty. During those chats, we were here and free with no one having the authority to monitor or control what we said.