The Script That Never Changes
For half a century Washington has relied on the same formula. Problem. Reaction. Solution.
The problem is either manufactured or seized upon. The reaction is fear, chaos, or anger, usually amplified by media. The solution is always pre-written and always consolidates power.
From Afghanistan to Iraq, from the pandemic to Venezuela, the playbook does not change. The only thing that changes is the theater.
Crisis by Design: Brzezinski and Afghanistan
In July 1979, six months before Soviet troops ever set foot in Afghanistan, the Carter administration signed off on covert aid to Islamist fighters. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, later admitted it was intentional. In a 1998 interview he said plainly: “That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap… We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.”
The official story has always been that the U.S. only armed the Mujahideen after Moscow invaded. Brzezinski himself blew that myth apart. He confirmed that the U.S. wanted the Soviets to take the bait, knowing it would drain their economy and fracture their empire.
This was the beginning of Operation Cyclone, the longest and costliest covert action in CIA history. Billions of dollars were funneled into Afghanistan throughout the 1980s. But the funding did not flow into “moderates.” It flowed, with the help of Pakistan’s ISI and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi clerical institutions, into the most radical and violent factions.
The U.S. wasn’t just supporting resistance fighters. It was engineering a global jihadist network. Saudi petro-dollars paid for madrassas that churned out young ideologues. The CIA shipped weapons through Pakistan. And as Brzezinski himself put it, the U.S. created the conditions that “stirred up Muslims” across Central Asia.
The formula was simple. Problem: Soviet expansion into Afghanistan. Reaction: Islamist insurgency funded and armed by outside powers. Solution: U.S. dominance and the slow death of the Soviet Union.
What was sold to the public as a noble fight for Afghan independence was in reality the prototype of a much bigger playbook. Radical Islam was weaponized. Intelligence agencies learned it could be controlled, redirected, and unleashed wherever geopolitical ends required it.
Weapons of Chaos: Iraq, ISIS, and the CIA–Mossad–Saudi Axis
After 9/11 the U.S. shifted the playbook into overdrive. General Wesley Clark went public years later with what he saw at the Pentagon in late 2001. A classified memo laid out a plan to topple seven governments in five years. The list started with Iraq and ended with Iran. In between were Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. What Clark revealed was not improvisation. It was a roadmap.
Iraq was first. When the U.S. invaded in 2003, Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority made one of the most consequential decisions of the war. It disbanded the Iraqi army and banned Ba’ath Party members from government work. In one stroke, hundreds of thousands of trained soldiers and officers were left jobless, armed, and embittered. These men did not disappear. They became insurgents.
The U.S. occupation then created the conditions for something worse. In southern Iraq, American prisons like Camp Bucca acted as radicalization factories. Future ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi spent time there along with dozens of other commanders. The camps were perfect networking hubs for militants. The U.S. built the container and locked the door. The ideology spread inside.
Behind the scenes a familiar intelligence triangle was at work. The CIA oversaw the dismantling of Iraq’s institutions and controlled the flow of arms across borders. Mossad ran clandestine operations in Iraq and Syria, feeding chaos to weaken both regimes. Saudi Arabia pumped money and clerical support into Sunni militias. Together they weaponized fundamentalist networks in a way that mirrored the Afghan playbook. The result was ISIS.
ISIS was not a freak accident of history. It was the logical outcome of dismantled states, intelligence manipulation, and Gulf sponsorship. Once ISIS emerged, the cycle reset. Washington had its new justification for occupation, drone campaigns, and permanent bases. The threat was manufactured, the panic was real, and the solution was the same as always. More war, more control, more dominance.
Problem: a collapsed state and disbanded army.
Reaction: a radical insurgency amplified by intelligence games.
Solution: endless war and a permanent Western footprint in the region.
Plandemic Panic: Biosecurity as Governance
The playbook did not stay overseas. In 2020 it came home. The Covid pandemic was not just a health crisis. It was the first time the “Problem. Reaction. Solution.” model was openly deployed on a domestic scale against entire populations in the West.
Months before the outbreak, in October 2019, Johns Hopkins, the World Economic Forum, and the Gates Foundation ran a pandemic simulation called Event 201. The exercise walked through a hypothetical coronavirus outbreak. The participants discussed lockdowns, travel restrictions, vaccine rollouts, censorship of “misinformation,” and the economic collapse that would follow. Every element of the script surfaced months later in reality.
When the virus spread, the problem was clear. The world was told an invisible pathogen threatened everyone. The reaction was fear. People panicked, governments froze, and entire economies shut down. That fear allowed restrictions to roll out that would have been impossible in 2019. Stay-at-home orders, digital passes, mass surveillance, mandatory medical interventions.
The solution was not just the containment of a virus. The solution was the birth of a new model of governance. A biosecurity state where emergency powers are permanent, where digital identity is tied to health, and where compliance is enforced by fear of contagion.
What had been pioneered in Afghanistan and Iraq, the management of populations through fear was imported wholesale into the West. Instead of terrorists lurking everywhere, the threat became germs lurking everywhere. The script was the same.
Problem: an invisible virus.
Reaction: mass panic and obedience.
Solution: a permanent biosecurity regime.
Venezuela and the Narco Terrorist Narrative
The next frontier of the playbook is not a desert battlefield but an oil corridor. Iran holds the power to close the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which almost a fifth of the world’s oil passes. If Tehran ever moved to block that artery, global markets would convulse and Western economies would crash. Washington’s hedge is Venezuela, which sits on the largest proven oil reserves on the planet.
In August 2025, the U.S. Navy deployed three Aegis-equipped destroyers — the USS Gravely, the USS Jason Dunham, and the USS Sampson — along with Marines, surveillance aircraft, and even a submarine, to waters near Venezuela. Officially, the mission was framed as a counternarcotics operation aimed at “narco terrorists.” The narrative is familiar. Problem: Venezuela painted as a drug haven. Reaction: public fear of cartels and instability in the hemisphere. Solution: U.S. military force positioned as both regional cop and global energy insurance policy.
The contradiction is glaring. Federal agencies allow fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine to pour across the U.S. border every year While letting big pharma experiment on you and your children. The same government that labels Venezuelans “narco terrorists” has spent decades tolerating or even enabling the flow of narcotics when it served political ends. Iran-Contra exposed how CIA logistics networks were used to smuggle cocaine into U.S. cities in the 1980s. The Kerry Committee’s 1989 report documented how drug profits were tolerated because they supported U.S.-backed militias. The war on drugs has always been less about drugs than about power.
Now that script is being used to target Venezuela. Caracas is not simply a neighbor with cocaine smugglers. Caracas is the fallback if Iran slams the Strait of Hormuz shut. The destroyers off the coast are not there for narco-traffickers. They are there for oil. I argue war with Iran without controlling Venezuela is an impossibility. Clearly, we do not care about the E.U. which is why they were sacrificed to hurt Russia when the Nordstream 2 pipelines were destroyed and created the largest methane leak in history. Two narratives killed with one lie. So much for climate change!
President Nicolás Maduro made that clear when he mobilized millions of militia members in response. He knows what is at stake. The U.S. playbook requires a villain, and Venezuela has been cast for the role.
Problem: Venezuela framed as narco state.
Reaction: fear of drugs and chaos.
Solution: U.S. naval presence securing energy leverage.
It is not about cartels. It is about control.
Conclusion: Manufactured Crisis as Governance
From Brzezinski’s jihadist trap in Afghanistan to the Pentagon’s roadmap for Iraq and Syria. From the rise of ISIS inside U.S. prison camps to the collaboration of CIA, Mossad, and Saudi intelligence in weaponizing fundamentalist networks. From the pandemic script of Event 201 to the current branding of Venezuela as a narco terrorist state while the U.S. military positions destroyers off its coast.
The pattern is not random. The pattern is deliberate.
Problem. Reaction. Solution.
The “problems” are rarely organic. They are seeded, steered, or outright manufactured. The “reactions” are predictable, often fueled by panic and media conditioning. And the “solutions” are never about fixing the crisis. They are about consolidating power.
Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted as much when he said, “We knowingly increased the probability [of Soviet invasion]… We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Wesley Clark revealed the Pentagon’s own plan when he recounted, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off, Iran.”
Patrick Clawson, at a Washington Institute event, stripped away the last illusions of restraint when he declared, “Crisis initiation is really tough… If the Iranians aren’t going to compromise, it would be best if someone else started the war.” And Event 201 laid out the media’s role in pandemic governance with chilling precision: “Governments will need to partner with traditional and social media companies… to flood media with fast, accurate, and consistent information.” Translation: flood social media with so much nonsense that people can’t tell fact from fiction. It worked. For a while.
What Clawson let slip more than a decade ago is now the quiet operating manual. Crises are not accidents. They are engineered, staged, or milked until they deliver the right reaction. Ceasefires are pauses in the script, not breaks from it. Merely time to reload before the next act of destruction. And Venezuela is not about cocaine or cartels. It is the insurance clause in a war plan that cannot be executed against Iran without a backup supply of oil. Strip away the narratives and the euphemisms and what you see is not foreign policy. It is theater, written in advance, played out on a stage where the audience is kept terrified, obedient, and always paying the price of admission.
Sources
Afghanistan
Iraq & ISIS
Pandemic
Venezuela
Wall Street Journal – U.S. Deploys Warships Against Latin American Cartels
Kerry Committee Report on Contra-Drug Links, 1989 – U.S. Senate