Villar and Cottle's book dismisses the idea that the United States is waging a war against drugs in Colombia and instead proposes that ‘the [US-led] war on drugs and terror [in Colombia] is part of a counterrevolutionary strategy designed to maintain rather than eliminate the economic conditions that allow the drug trade to thrive’. Moreover, the authors argue that the United States has economic and political interests in Colombia and the region that have remained the same since the Cold War. More specifically, they argue that the United States seeks to eliminate any form of competition, particularly leftist subversives in the region and Colombia's Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC) guerrillas, which threaten the United States' fierce capitalistic goals and domination in the region. Maintaining the status quo, Villar and Cottle argue, enables the United States to channel most commodities' profits (including those from illegal drugs) to its banks and private corporations.

The United States' arguably inflexible position for the continuation of the war on drugs may have a rational explanation, in view of its overwhelming and well-documented failure, but it's very difficult to ascertain that the US government has conspired for more than five decades to drive the scourge of cocaine in Colombia, as Villar and Cottle assert. Market forces essentially drive the cocaine trade, as is the case for most commodities, and the authors could acknowledge this more clearly. Nonetheless, using a Marxist approach, the authors make some relevant contributions to the literature on the war on drugs by presenting new grievances and greed.

Villar and Cottle explain the war on drugs in Colombia as a class struggle led by a Colombian narco-state and the imperialistic policies of the US military aimed at guerrillas and peasants. While their claims and evidence support their argument with respect to the toll that the drug war has taken on the peasants, the evidence provided on the role of the Colombian narco-state and US imperialistic policies is less convincing. On the former, the authors downplay the intrinsic weaknesses of the Colombian state – its inability to govern the national territory or to administer justice effectively, and relatedly, the strength of the guerrillas and drug traffickers. Meanwhile, the authors' claims about the impact of US imperialistic policies on the war on drugs are obscured by the absence of a clear definition of US imperialism.

In contrast, the authors paint a rosy picture of the FARC guerrillas in terms of their role in the nation's history of violent contestation, and also in drug trafficking. This is not a convincing portrayal, especially because since the end of the 1980s it has been well documented that FARC guerrillas have continually been involved in violations of human rights and crimes against humanity. In terms of drug trafficking, the authors implicitly acknowledge the FARC's involvement, yet present justificatory arguments rooted in their idea that ‘The eventual domination of coca in much of rural Colombia is part of the FARC resistance to US imperialism’ (p. 98). This claim is difficult to sustain, even in the main territorial bastions of the FARC, where often the same peasants that are hurt by the war on drugs are also victims of FARC oppression – a reality that has become clearer in light of recent evidence.

Villar and Cottle also argue that US-led Cold War policies caused the violent tactics of the paramilitaries, saying that the US government's approach has plagued and amplified violence in Colombia. Specifically, the authors claim that the US military training programmes under Plan Lazo since 1962 and the subsequent CIA training, both of which preceded the birth of Colombian guerrillas, are responsible for the rise of the paramilitaries. The evidence does indeed show that such US-led policies may have contributed to these groups' creation and even to their transformation, but causality is hard to prove, as recent evidence demonstrates. In fact, the relevant Colombian literature and emerging information from the Law of Justice and Peace, the legal framework that regulated the demobilisation of the paramilitaries during 2003–6, show a clearer picture of the origins, finances and evolution of the paramilitaries.

The second half of the book discusses topics related to the war on drugs, including the manner in which cultivation zones have shifted over time, an important phenomenon often called the ‘balloon effect’. Villar and Cottle specifically refer to the case of the Andes, where balloon effects have contributed to the re-engineering of organised crime, otherwise known as the ‘cockroach effect’, and discuss its effect on the globalisation of the cocaine trade in the region. They also discuss claims about the harmful effects of fumigating coca plants, a tactic used and imposed by the United States, more often in Colombia than in any other nation on the continent. While these issues are timely and important, one would have expected the authors to bring forward new evidence on the issue of fumigation, which is less well documented and researched than the balloon or cockroach effects.

Furthermore, the authors argue that the war on drugs continues despite its failure to reduce the production of illegal substances, mainly because the US financial system and some US companies benefit from such a foreign policy. Indeed, there is plenty of evidence, as the authors show, that profits earned from the illegal drug business do enter US financial markets and penetrate the global economy, including many US banks. Nonetheless, the authors exaggerate how dramatically the economic benefits and allures of drug money ultimately influence US political and economic policy-making. In addition, Villar and Cottle assess the degree to which certain sectors of the Colombian state benefit or profit from the war on drugs, but these claims, while potentially valid, must be more strongly supported.

Overall, Villar and Cottle provide some useful ideas and arguments that can contribute to the scholarly work on drugs in Colombia, Latin America and the western hemisphere. However, there is not enough empirical evidence to support some of their main points, and this further diminishes the strength of their new claims about the role the United States has played in the region and in determining the Colombian government's approach to the war on drugs.