Peter Andreas - Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs

Date
-
Location
Encina Hall West, Room 400 (GSL)

 

Abstract

There is growing alarm over how drugs empower terrorists, insurgents, militias, and gangs. But by looking back not just years and decades but centuries, Peter Andreas reveals that the drugs-conflict nexus is actually an old story, and that powerful states have been its biggest beneficiaries. In his path-breaking Killer High, Andreas shows how six psychoactive drugs-ranging from old to relatively new, mild to potent, licit to illicit, natural to synthetic-have proven to be particularly important war ingredients. This sweeping history tells the story of war from antiquity to the modern age through the lens of alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, opium, amphetamines, and cocaine. Beer and wine drenched ancient and medieval battlefields, and the distilling revolution lubricated the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the New World. Tobacco became globalized through soldiering, with soldiers hooked on smoking and governments hooked on taxing it. Caffeine and opium fueled imperial expansion and warfare. The commercialization of amphetamines in the twentieth century energized soldiers to fight harder, longer, and faster, while cocaine stimulated an increasingly militarized drug war that produced casualty numbers surpassing most civil wars. As Andreas demonstrates, armed conflict has become progressively more drugged with the introduction, mass production, and global spread of mind-altering substances. As a result, we cannot understand the history of war without including drugs, and we similarly cannot understand the history of drugs without including war. From ancient brews and battles to meth and modern warfare, drugs and war have grown up together and become addicted to each other.

 

Biography

Peter Andreas is the John Hay Professor of International Studies at Brown University. He joined the Institute in the fall of 2001, and holds a joint appointment with the Department of Political Science. Previously, Andreas was an academy scholar at Harvard University, a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. He holds an MA and PhD in government from Cornell University and a BA in political science from Swarthmore College.

Andreas is the author, co-author, or co-editor of eleven books. These include Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America (Oxford University Press, 2013, selected by Amazon and by Foreign Affairs as one of the best books of the year), Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo (Cornell University Press, 2008); Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations (Oxford University Press, 2006); and Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide (Cornell University Press, 2000, second edition 2009, third edition 2020). His most recent book is a political memoir, Rebel Mother: My Childhood Chasing the Revolution (Simon & Schuster, 2017, selected by Foreign Affairs as a best book of the year). His new book, Killer High: A History of War in Six Drugs (Oxford University Press, 2020), explores the relationship between warfare and mind altering substances, from ancient times to the present. 

Andreas has also written for a wide range of scholarly and policy publications, including International SecurityInternational Studies QuarterlyForeign AffairsForeign PolicyThe New RepublicHarper's, Slate, andThe Nation. Other writings include congressional testimonies and op-eds in major newspapers, such as the New York TimesWashington Post, Boston Globe, and The Guardian.