On orders from Washington to our British puppet? The Brits may have committed a faux pas but the Brits are not our puppet any more than we are theirs. I speak as a Columbian American, as a Columbian and as an American, Columbian as in Christopher Columbus. We and the Brits do, however, share a common puppet master.

All of these 'black markets' that you described will come back at one point and bit themselves and the entire world up the you-know-what. With globalization, the mere conspiracy of winning an election or initiating an invasion in one country impact nearly everyone else. The world goes in the direction of the biggest and powerful countries, but its made up of more smaller ones that can and may stand up to the 'evil empires'.