Transnational Criminal Organizations and Security

Halbert Exchange Post Doctoral Fellow, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto. The author would like to acknowledge the generous support of the Halbert Exchange Program at the Munk Centre and the Leonard Davis Institute for International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The article greatly benefited from the useful and wise comments of Idit Wagner-Lowenheim, Joshua D. Goldstein, Benjamin Miller, and two anonymous reviewers. Dr Loewnheim may be reached at Oded. Lowenheim@utoronto.caINTRODUCTIONAre transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) a threat to security in world politics? Certainly, they are well-established networks or associations that strive for monetary and commercial gain wholly or in part through illegal means across national borders. Under the United Nations convention against transnational organized crime, an offence is transnational if '(a) It is committed in more than one State; (b) It is committed in one State but a substantial part of its preparation, planning, direction or control takes place in another State; (c) It is committed in one State but involves an organized criminal group that engages in criminal activities in more than one State; or (d) It is committed in one State but has substantial effects in another State.'(1)The profit-seeking nature of TCOs notwithstanding, a growing body of literature argues that the activities of TCOs in themselves and also in conjunction with terrorism are a threat to national and international security.(2) In light of these claims, which are also propagated by many politicians and officials in the Western world, this article examines the alleged security threats posed by TCOs. In examining the most common arguments about the TCOs threat in light of the concept of security in international relations theory and the empirical background, I find that TCOs are far less a security threat than has been suggested. I also maintain that we should be more frugal in using the term 'threat to security.' Not every unwanted or negative phenomenon and actor should be labelled as such. If we overstretch the range of security threats, we might end up wearing out one of the fundamental notions of our discipline and unnecessarily add to fear-mongering in the contemporary 'world risk society'(3) in which a growing number of states, politicians, non-governmental organizations, interest groups, and other actors attempt to advance their various agendas by identifying a broad array of processes and factors as security threats. Finally, dubbing transnational organized crime a threat to security does not guarantee a satisfactory solution to the problems posed by it, and in fact might exacerbate them.TCOs AND SECURITY THREATS: REVIEWING THE MAIN ARGUMENTSAlthough transnational organized crime is not a new phenomenon, its scope has broadened considerably since the late 1970s. Various economic and technological developments - the expansion of telecommunication systems, the growing volume of international transportation and trade, the standardization of consumer tastes, the spread of electronic financial networks, increasing immigration and border crossings, and so on - have helped local criminal organizations to expand their operations into other countries and continents, sometimes through co-operative arrangements with each other. This is not to say that there is a global conspiracy or 'Pax Mafiosa' with a formally planned division of criminal work, as Claire Sterling has proposed.(4) Rather, it seems that transnational organized crime is relatively decentralized and based on loose networks.(5) In addition, TCOs, despite their transborder dimension, still retain strong ethnic, national, and/or religious inclinations; most are domestic crime groups that have extended their operations into the international market.(6) Thus, most TCOs do not fit the image of a supranational illegal corporation. Instead, we speak of Colombian or Mexican drug 'cartels,' Russian 'mafia' groups, Chinese 'triads,' and so on. …

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