...So you pick up a history book to figure out US's angle
From Peter Dale Scotts: American War Machine-Deep Politics, The Cia and the Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan
TL:DR the US turned Burma-Laos and Thailand into a heroin growing triangle (The Golden Triangle) much like they did with the Mafia in Sicily and Marseilles.
The Drug traffickers and drug money became a huge way of CIA to implant bourgeois ideology and suppress communists and the growing popularity of the PRC. They even used ex-Nazis as agents for drug smuggling. It also gave US unfettered access to Myanmars tungsten reserves.
This enitre coalition was directed at China of course.
OP I think the word you were looking for is fomenting