Fentanyl is becoming America’s deadliest drug, and it is being smuggled into the nation by Chinese drug traffickers. That is according to the security firm Fortress Risk Management. The Chinese Los Zheng cartel operates through a network of Mexican pharmacies, veterinary clinics, clothing stores and computer shops. And it is the largest fentanyl and methamphetamine cartel operating in Mexico.

Manufacturers in Wuhan, China, ship chemicals across the Pacific Ocean to Mexican ports in Lázaro Cárdenas, Manzanillo and Ensenada. These chemicals are then shipped overland to clandestine laboratories in the Mexico City region. The Los Zheng cartel then synthesizes them into fentanyl and methamphetamines for shipment to the United States.

Overdose deaths in the U.S. involving synthetic opioids—such as fentanyl—increased from about 3,000 deaths in 2013 to more than 30,000 deaths in 2018. The U.S. government is attempting to shut down the Los Zheng cartel. Federal officials have urged the Chinese government to shut down chemical laboratories, but the Los Zheng cartel continues to dominate Mexico’s synthetic opioid market.

One primary reason for Los Zheng’s success is that U.S. demand for fentanyl remains high. Yet another primary reason could be that the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party does not want to curb the sale of drugs that undermine America.

Officially, U.S. officials say China’s government is not complicit in drug trafficking. But retired Drug Enforcement Agency officer Derek Maltz told Fox News this is not true. “As part of the [Chinese Communist Party’s] unrestricted warfare model, they have progressed significantly against America with their enhanced role in the drug business. They can make multibillions and, at the same time, undermine the security of America. A kilogram of fentanyl can kill 500,000 people, so the administration should look at the death rates and treat this as a serious national security threat as opposed to only a public health crisis.”

Maltz makes a compelling point. Suppose China wanted to undermine America from within. Facilitating the flow of illicit drugs into the country would be an effective way to kill thousands of people, destroy families, increase crime, and otherwise tear society apart. The People’s Republic of China may have adopted just such a strategy!

Drug Offensive

Chinese leaders know the devastating effect opioids can have on an enemy. In 1927, China erupted in a civil war between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party. Communist leader Mao Zedong instructed his subordinates to grow poppies, create opium, and traffic it into China’s non-Communist regions. As drugs became more readily available, people more readily used them. Opium weakened drug users, the people around them, their societies, their governments, and their militaries. The Communists then conquered the area—and took draconian measures to stamp out drug use—even executing suspected traffickers.

But after the Communists conquered China in 1949, Mao nationalized opium production and started using narcotics as a weapon to destabilize his foreign enemies, primarily Japan and the United States. During the 1950s and 1960s, Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai managed his nation’s narcotics operations. In 1955, he allegedly told Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser that the Communists would use drugs against the morale of U.S. forces in Asia (Edward R. Slack, Opium, State and Society). Soviet statesman Mikhail Suslov said in 1964 that Zhou’s strategy was a way “to disarm the capitalists with the things they like to taste.”

There is scant evidence that any premier since Zhou has actively managed China’s narcotics trade. But the nation still incorporates “drug warfare” in its broader military strategy.

“Recent Chinese doctrine articulates the use of a wide spectrum of warfare against its adversaries, including the United States,” said a 2014 report from U.S. Army Special Operations Command. “The People’s Liberation Army (pla) colonels Liang and Xiangsui outline China’s vision on how China will attack the United States through a combination of military and nonmilitary actions. … These methods include trade warfare, financial warfare, ecological warfare, psychological warfare, smuggling warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, resources warfare, economic aid warfare, cultural warfare, and international law warfare” (Sept. 26, 2014).

At the very least, by turning a blind eye to Chinese fentanyl traffickers, the Chinese government enjoys the benefits of subversively weakening the United States!

Geographic Challenge

Geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan has noted that the drug trade is a strategic vulnerability for America. It is a fundamental way America’s adversaries can attack the U.S. without starting a world war. “[E]ven if every country in South America were run by anti-American governments, it would not overly concern Washington; these states, alone or en masse, lack the ability to threaten American interests … in all ways but one,” he wrote in 2008. “The drug trade undermines American society from within, generating massive costs for social stability, law enforcement, the health system, and trade.”

These “massive costs” to social stability, law enforcement and health care equal about 5 percent of America’s gross domestic product, according to Dr. Indra Cidambi.

Yet the strategic threats of the drug trade go beyond economic losses. By helping turn Mexico into a failed state, Chinese cartels pose a territorial threat to the United States.

“In many regards, Mexico as a failed state would be a worse result for Washington than a hostile united Mexico,” Zeihan continued. “A hostile Mexico could be intimidated, sanctioned or even invaded, effectively browbeaten into submission. But a failed Mexico would not restrict the drug trade at all. The border would be chaos, and the implications of that go well beyond drugs. One of the United States’ largest trading partners could well devolve into a seething anarchy that could not help but leak into the U.S. proper.”

With almost 130 million people, Mexico is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that could theoretically threaten U.S. dominance in North America. By allowing the Los Zheng cartel to operate in Wuhan and Shanghai, the Chinese government is advertently or inadvertently destabilizing Mexico and threatening the United States.

If America were to collapse into “a seething anarchy,” its foreign enemies would have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize control of Cuba, Panama and other vital maritime trade choke points. Since about half of America’s seaborne trade passes within 100 miles of the island of Cuba, a nightmare scenario would be having a foreign power cripple its economy by cutting off its Caribbean trade routes while it is engaged in a civil war!

Economic Siege

The late Herbert W. Armstrong explained in his landmark book The United States and Britain in Prophecy that the Anglo-Saxon peoples who settled the U.S. and Britain were descended from the ancient Israelites. This astonishing truth means that the Bible’s end-time prophecies about Israel are directed at the United States and Britain.

In one prophecy, God likens the U.S. to a hedged vineyard. It has been hedged—north, south, east and west—by nonthreatening nations and the two largest oceans on Earth. But because of the people’s sins, God warns that He will tear down this hedge: “I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down” (Isaiah 5:5).

In another prophecy, God says foreign enemies will besiege the U.S.: “The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the Earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand; A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young: And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee. And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee” (Deuteronomy 28:49-52).

In 1979, the Trumpet’s parent magazine, the Plain Truth, said the first breach in America’s hedge occurred in 1959, when Communist revolutionaries overran Cuba.

Today, China is destabilizing Mexico to further tear down the hedge along the U.S. southern border. This subversive activity leads to the ultimate fulfillment of Deuteronomy 28. Foreign enemies are preparing to economically freeze America out of world trade by tearing down its walls and seizing control of its gates and maritime choke points!

For more information on this coming siege against America, please read “Building Toward a World Catastrophe,” by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry.