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Transnational Organized Crime
and International Security
Allan Castle
Institute of International Relations
The University of British Columbia
Working Paper
No. 19
November 1997
About the Author
Allan Castle
(Ph.D., McGill) is Director of the Proceeds of Crime Project with the International Centre
for Criminal Law Reform (Vancouver, BC), and Assistant Director of the Institute of International
Relations at UBC. He was formerly Fellow in National Security at the John M. Olin Institute for
Strategic Studies at Harvard University. His current interests centre on transnational organised crime,
with a broader background in international security and international relations theory. He is currently
engaged with the International Centre for Criminal Law Reform as director of a three-year program
addressing international cooperation on money-laundering in the Pacific Rim, involving research, a major
international symposium (1999), and the development of bilateral cooperative strategies.
Contents
I.
Introduction ...............................................................................1
II. Crime and Security:
Knowing a Threat When We See One ......................................2
III. Transnational Organized Crime:
Structure and Immediate Threats ..............................................7
IV. Security Threats in the Longer Term ......................................12
Abstract
In this essay, I examine the strength of the claim that transnational organized crime is a security threat, in
a meaningful sense of the term. I review the claims that have been made regarding the status of
transnational organized crime as a security threat, and in doing so suggest the characteristics which one
might expect a priori of such a threat – that is, how do we know a security threat when we see one? In a
second section, I examine the notion of transnational organized crime both conceptually and empirically,
in order to present a clearer picture of the phenomenon and to assess the different manners in which its
existence and activities present a potential menace to security. Lastly, I offer an evaluation of the degree
to which the fears outlined in the first section are justified. I conclude by suggesting that while the threat
to the nation state posed by criminal groups has been overstated in general terms, particularly with respect
to short-term existential threats, the threat is very real for poorly institutionalized, non-democratic states
and ultimately for the leading democracies. The threat which presents itself is a security threat in terms of
the future democratic development and political stability of newly-democratizing areas.
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No. 19
Transnational Organized Crime and International Security
, by Allan Castle, November 1997
I. Introduction
The end of the cold war brought with it a crisis of identity for the discipline of international
relations, and in particular the subset of the field known as strategic or security studies. The growth of
security studies in this century can be linked directly to the devastation of world war and the subsequent
primacy of strategic politics in the nuclear age. While there was debate over the appropriate methods and
activities required to achieve security in the face of existential threat in the postwar period, there was little
need to question the importance of these matters. Nor, indeed, was there any reason to worry about
defining the dependent variable. In the developed world at least, where those who published articles on
these issues resided, security was above all the condition of being neither attacked by horrifically
powerful weapons nor subjugated by a foreign power in lieu of such destruction.
The changes of the last decade have provoked two reactions in the study of security. On one
hand, while not disputing the marked decline in strategic military competition amongst the great powers
since 1990, some realist scholars have maintained that the study of security need not alter its focus,
claiming that the dynamics which created and prolonged the cold war did not disappear along with the
Soviet Union. Accordingly, while great power rivalry was at an ebb, the seeds of future systemic conflict
were said to be evident in the unstable nature of regions newly released from the grip of bipolarity –
regions such as eastern and central Europe.
1
A less abstract and more historically-grounded argument
claimed (at least by implication) that fault-lines between a number of global “civilizations” ensured the
continuing relevance of security studies as constituted since 1945.
2
Either way, the relevance of models
which depicted security as dependent on state-to-state military competition was assumed to be enduring.
On the other hand, suspicious that such claims of continuity were either empirically wrong or the
result of intellectual inertia – or both – others strove to assess the relevance of security studies in an era
where the traditional version of security, sought at such cost in the past half-century, was now relatively
assured.
3
It was argued that for most states, especially the wealthiest, territorial integrity and economic-
constitutional makeup were no longer under threat, and the lives of their citizens no longer in serious
danger, in any broad sense. However, new problems were identified as having created new insecurities in
place of nuclear or ideological threats. Issues not typically associated with security in the cold war
context were “securitized,” as security expanded from simply meaning safety from military danger to a
broader sense of survival across a number of dimensions. The prime example of this is perhaps the study
of environmental security, in which threats to the species posed by environmental degradation, and
conflicts springing from those threats, are posited as analogous to more traditional dangers.
4
The focus of this paper is instead on another of the so-called “non-traditional” threats to security
which have recently emerged on the security studies agenda: namely, transnational organized crime. In
recent years, the transnational character of organized crime has been remarked upon repeatedly and
identified as a worrying trend. Traditionally the province of criminologists, lawyers and sociologists, the
enormous profits and power said to accrue to today’s leading criminal organizations and networks have
brought crime onto the curricula of political science and economics. This is the “dark side” of
globalization, where criminal organizations are said not only to have benefited from the increasingly open
global economy, but to have developed powerful tools, techniques and relationships to thwart state
1
John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War,”
International Security
15: 1 (Summer 1990).
Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations,”
Foreign
Affairs 72 (Summer 1993).
3
See in particular the collection of essays around this topic in Ronnie D. Lipschutz (ed.),
On Security
,
Columbia University Press: New York, 1995.
4
On the theoretical and political undercurrents surrounding the introduction of non-traditional security threats,
see Ole Waever, “Securitization and Desecuritization” in Lipschutz (ed.),
On Security
, pp.46-86. The
concepts of securitization and the multiple dimensions of security originate with Barry Buzan. See Buzan,
People, States and Fear: An Agenda for Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era (2
nd
edition),
Lynne
Rienner: Boulder, 1991.
1
2
attempts at controlling their activities. These activities are those of traditional organized crime – violence,
intimidation, extortion, and corruption – only on a larger scale; for some observers, transnational criminal
organizations now pose a threat to the nation-state.
In this essay, I examine the strength of the claim that transnational organized crime is a security
threat, in a meaningful sense of the term. Several steps are necessary in order to draw any conclusions in
this area. In the first section below, I review the claims that have been made regarding the status of
transnational organized crime as a security threat, and in doing so suggest the characteristics which one
might expect
a priori
of such a threat – that is, how do we know a security threat when we see one? In a
second section, I examine the notion of transnational organized crime both conceptually and empirically,
in order to present a clearer picture of the phenomenon and to assess the different manners in which its
existence and activities present a potential menace to security. Lastly, I offer an evaluation of the degree
to which the fears outlined in the first section are justified. I conclude by suggesting that while the threat
to the nation state posed by criminal groups has been overstated in general terms, particularly with respect
to short-term existential threats, the threat is very real for poorly institutionalized, non-democratic states
and ultimately for the leading democracies. The threat which presents itself is a security threat in terms of
the future democratic development and political stability of newly-democratizing areas.
II. Crime and Security: Knowing a Threat When We See One
At first blush it seems strange to consider organized crime in the context of international security
studies, a domain more regularly associated with deterrence theory, nuclear proliferation, and other
subjects having primarily military associations. There are two initial objections one might make to its
inclusion. First, while organized criminal groups are often the instigators of sensational violent episodes,
such as occur in conflicts over the control of geographic markets in the drug trade, these events may be
construed merely to punctuate what is in most cases a fundamentally economic exercise: that is,
organized crime exists almost entirely for the purpose of making money outside the confines of legally
acceptable behaviour. If this is the case then the primary risk for other actors is not to their physical
security but rather to their economic well-being, as a consequence of the economic distortions resulting
from activities such as extortion, fraud, and smuggling.
A second possible objection relates to the essentially economic nature of the phenomenon. If
criminal organizations are successful in eluding authority in the jurisdictions in which they operate, and
are able to run their various operations in a profitable fashion, it is logical to assume that rather than
acting as a destabilizing force, they will behave like any profitable business and seek to support the
administrative status quo under which they have prospered. The history of organized crime in the United
States suggests that laissez-faire and even symbiotic relationships between criminal organizations and
governing authorities, as in mid-twentieth century Chicago, may be as common as conflictual
relationships.
Taken together, these arguments – that crime is an economic activity, and that it is not necessarily
incompatible with the political status quo – would suggest from the beginning that transnational
organized crime is “low politics,” a topic best suited for disciplines such as economics or criminology,
and should not concern national security planners or students of international security. The null
hypothesis, in other words, has much to recommend it. In working to resolve this issue, a number of
questions must be asked and answered. First, what do we mean when we talk about security? Second, in
which ways
might
the global activities of criminal organizations threaten the values inherent in our
definition of security, if they did so at all? Third, is there anything particularly
inter
national or
trans
national about these activities which should draw the attention of those studying international
relations and international security over and above students of particular domestic societies?
Security
2
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