Transnational organized crime, terrorism, and criminalized states in Latin America
Subtitle: an emerging tier-one national security priority
By: Douglas Farah
Contributors: Army War College (U.S.). Strategic Studies Institute
Series: Strategic Studies Institute monograph; SSI monograph
Publisher: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Carlisle, PA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 83
ISBN-13: 9781584875390
Subjects: Transnational crime; Organized crime; Terrorism; State crimes; State-sponsored terrorism; National security
Description: The emergence of new hybrid (state and nonstate) transnational criminal/terrorist franchises in Latin America operating under broad state protection now pose a tier-one security threat for the United States. Similar hybrid franchise models are developing in other parts of the world, making understanding the new dynamics an important factor in a broader national security context. This threat goes well beyond the traditional nonstate theory of constraints activity such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking into the potential for trafficking related to weapons of mass destruction by designated terrorist organizations and their sponsors. These activities are carried out with the support of regional and extra regional states actors whose leadership is deeply enmeshed in criminal activity, which yields billions of dollars in illicit revenues every year. These same leaders have a publicly articulated, common doctrine of asymmetrical warfare against the United States and its allies that explicitly endorses as legitimate the use of weapons of mass destruction. The central binding element in this alliance is a hatred for the West, particularly the United States, and deep anti-Semitism, based on a shared view that the 1979 Iranian Revolution was a transformative historical event. For Islamists, it is evidence of divine favor; and for Bolivarians, a model of a successful asymmetrical strategy to defeat the "Empire." The primary architect of this theology/ideology that merges radical Islam and radical, anti-Western populism and revolutionary zeal is the convicted terrorist Ilich Sánchez Ramirez, better known as "Carlos the Jackal," whom Chávez has called a true visionary.
Notes: Format not distributed to depository libraries.

"August 2012."

Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-83).

Also available online in PDF format from Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) web site. Adobe Acrobat Reader required.
Table of contents: title: Introduction and general framework; title: The current U.S. government responses to TOC; title: The nature of the threat in the Americas; title: Criminalizing states as new regional actors; title: The Bolivarian and Iranian revolutions : the ties that bind; title: Conclusions.