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Drugs, Gangs, and Violence pp 37–56Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Fragile States, Corruption, and Crime

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Abstract

This chapter focuses on the global superstructure and states that facilitate demand and supply. Looking specifically at weak and fragile states of the international system, the chapter illustrates the role of corruption, underdevelopment, and political/institutional weakness that enable global crime and violence. Some fragile states produce the goods and services (e.g., drugs) that are then marketed and ultimately sold to other countries. This means the United States and states of the European Union are the target of illicit suppliers; and as long as people in those states demand those goods, organized criminal networks will thrive. The chapter encourages more coordination through already established regimes like Interpol.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more on this topic, see Adriana Magdalena, Sandu, and Mirela Loredana Nitu, “Corruption and organized crime,” Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice 5, no. 2 (2013): p. 454; Louise Shelley, “Corruption and organized crime in Mexico in the post-PRI transition,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 17, no. 3 (2001): pp. 213–231.

  2. 2.

    For more, see Tamara Makarenko, “Crime, terror and the Central Asian drug trade,” Harvard Asia Quarterly 6, no. 3 (2002): pp. 1–24; Jonathan. Goodhand, “Corrupting or consolidating the peace? The drugs economy and post-conflict peacebuilding in Afghanistan ,” International Peacekeeping 15, no. 3 (2008): pp. 405–423; Cindy Fazey, “International policy on illicit drug trafficking: The formal and informal mechanisms,” Journal of Drug Issues 37, no. 4 (2007): pp. 755–779; Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Afghanistan : when counternarcotics undermines counterterrorism,” Washington Quarterly 28, no. 4 (2005): pp. 55–72.

  3. 3.

    Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna Samir Kassab, “Introduction,” in Fragile States in the Americas, eds. Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna S. Kassab (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), p. xiii.

  4. 4.

    Stewart, Frances, and Graham Brown. Fragile states. University of Oxford. Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE) (2009), p. 2.

  5. 5.

    Ibid., p. 3.

  6. 6.

    Ibid.

  7. 7.

    Ibid., p. 26.

  8. 8.

    François, Monika and Inder Sud, “Promoting stability and development in fragile and failed states, Development Policy Review 24, no. 2 (2006): p. 143.

  9. 9.

    Hanna Samir Kassab, Weak States in International Relations Theory: The Cases of Armenia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Lebanon and Cambodia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 12.

  10. 10.

    Ibid.

  11. 11.

    Christopher Easter, “Small States Development : A Commonwealth Vulnerability Index,” Round Table 88, no. 351 (1999): p. 403.

  12. 12.

    Ibid., p. 13.

  13. 13.

    Hanna Samir Kassab, Weak States in International Relations Theory: The Cases of Armenia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Lebanon and Cambodia (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), p. 46.

  14. 14.

    Quoted in Bill Roggio “Jihadists create ‘no-go zones’ in northern Afghanistan ” The Long War Journal (February 14, 2014).

  15. 15.

    “Figures reveal dire trend in Afghan opium production” CBS News, November 15, 2017.

  16. 16.

    Quoted in Mujib Mashal “Afghan Taliban Awash in Heroin Cash, a Troubling Turn for War” The New York Times, October 29, 2017.

  17. 17.

    Richard Mallet, “Beyond Failed States and Ungoverned Spaces: Hybrid Political Orders in the Post-Conflict Landscape,” eSharp (15, 2010), p. 65.

  18. 18.

    Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna Samir Kassab, “Introduction,” in Fragile States in the Americas, eds. Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna S. Kassab (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), p. xiii.

  19. 19.

    Volker Boege, M. Anne Brown, and Kevin P. Clements, “Hybrid political orders, not fragile states,” Peace Review 21, no. 1 (2009): pp. 13–21.

  20. 20.

    Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna Samir Kassab, “Introduction,” in Fragile States in the Americas, eds. Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna S. Kassab (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), p. xiii.

  21. 21.

    Ibid. Christopher Easter, “Small States Development : A Commonwealth Vulnerability Index,” Round Table 88, no. 351 (1999): p. 403.

  22. 22.

    Kyra Gurney, “Why are the World’s Most Violent Cities in Latin America?” InSight Crime, November 21, 2014, https://www.insightcrime.org/news/analysis/why-world-most-violent-cities-latin-america/, accessed January 2018, p. 6.

  23. 23.

    Frances Stewart and Graham Brown, “Fragile states,” University of Oxford. Centre for research on inequality, human security and ethnicity (CRISE), 2009, p. 26.

  24. 24.

    Ibid., p. xiii.

  25. 25.

    Hanna Samir Kassab, Weak States in International Relations Theory: The Cases of Armenia, St. Kitts and Nevis, Lebanon and Cambodia (New York: Palgrave, 2015), p. 66.

  26. 26.

    Mark A. R. Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken, Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 16.

  27. 27.

    Stewart, Frances, and Graham Brown. Fragile states. University of Oxford. Centre for research on inequality, human security and ethnicity (CRISE) (2009), p. 26.

  28. 28.

    L. Giommoni, A. Aziani and G. Berlusconi, “How Do Illicit Drugs Move Across Countries? A Network Analysis of the Heroin Supply to Europe,” Journal of Drug Issues 47, 2 (2017): p. 230.

  29. 29.

    Kyra Gurney, “Why are the World’s Most Violent Cities in Latin America?” InSight Crime, p. 6.

  30. 30.

    Gautam Basu, “Concealment, corruption, and evasion: a transaction cost and case analysis of illicit supply chain activity,” p. 219.

  31. 31.

    Paul Rexton Kan, Drug Trafficking and International Security (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), p. 52.

  32. 32.

    Hartelius, “Narcoterrorism,” The East-West Institute & the Swedish Carnegie Institute, p. 3.

  33. 33.

    Thomas M. Sanderson, “Transnational terror and organized crime: blurring the lines,” SAIS Review of International Affairs 24, no. 1 (2004): pp. 49–61.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., p. 51.

  35. 35.

    Ibid.

  36. 36.

    Deep connections between organized crime and terrorism have been discovered in the network known as Islamic State.

  37. 37.

    See: Shelley Louise I., and John T. Picarelli, “Methods not motives: Implications of the convergence of international organized crime and terrorism,” Police Practice and Research 3, no. 4 (2002): pp. 305–318.

  38. 38.

    Jessica West, “The political economy of organized crime and state failure: The nexus of greed, need and grievance,” Development and Change 33 (2002): p. 10.

  39. 39.

    A good summary of the multiplicity of issues affecting the region can be found in Tamara Makarenko, “Crime, terror and the Central Asian drug trade,” Harvard Asia Quarterly 6, no. 3 (2002): pp. 1–24.

  40. 40.

    Erica Marat, “The state-crime nexus in Central Asia: State weakness, organized crime, and corruption in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan,” Silk Road Studies Program (2006): pp. 13–14.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., p. 22.

  42. 42.

    Tamara Makarenko, “Crime, terror and the Central Asian drug trade,” Harvard Asia Quarterly 6, no. 3 (2002): pp. 1–24.

  43. 43.

    James Risen, “Reports Link Karzai’s Brother to Afghanistan Heroin Trade,” The New York Times, October 4, 2008.

  44. 44.

    Mariya Y. Omelicheva, “Mapping the Terrorism/Trafficking Nexus in Central Asia,” Prepared for the Annual Conference of the Central Eurasian Studies Society (Working Paper), p. 6.

  45. 45.

    Quoted from “Drug Trafficking in West and Central Asia,” UNODC, https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/drug-trafficking/central-asia.html, accessed December 16, 2017.

  46. 46.

    Substance Use & Mental Illness in U.S. Adults (18+) From the 2013 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), https://www.samhsa.gov/samhsaNewsLetter/assets/images/substance_use_and_mental_full_size.jpg, accessed April 2017.

  47. 47.

    Quoted in Joel Gehrke, “Rex Tillerson and John Kelly: US responsible for Mexican drug violence,” Washington Examiner, May 18, 2017.

  48. 48.

    Gautam Basu, “Concealment, corruption, and evasion: a transaction cost and case analysis of illicit supply chain activity,” Logistics, Information, and Service Economy 7, no. 3 (2014): p. 210.

  49. 49.

    Jonathan Rosen, The Losing War: Plan Colombia and Beyond (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2014).

  50. 50.

    OECD International Drivers of Corruption, OECD, 2012, p. 10.

  51. 51.

    Manuel Castells, “Global governance and global politics,” PS: Political Science & Politics 38, no. 1 (2005): p. 10.

  52. 52.

    Hanna Samir Kassab, Prioritization Theory and a Defensive Foreign Policy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).

  53. 53.

    Ibid., p. 227.

  54. 54.

    Ibid., p. 193.

  55. 55.

    Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail (New York, NY: Random House, 2012).

  56. 56.

    Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail, p. 372.

  57. 57.

    Tina Hilgers, “Democratic Processes, Clientelistic Relationships and the Material Goods Problem,” in Clientelism in Everyday Latin American Politics. Ed. Tina Hilgers (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 6.

  58. 58.

    Hilgers, “Democratic Processes,” p. 7.

  59. 59.

    Hilgers, “Democratic Processes,” p. 7.

  60. 60.

    Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna Samir Kassab, “Introduction,” in Fragile States in the Americas, eds. Jonathan D. Rosen and Hanna S. Kassab (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), p. xiii.

  61. 61.

    Robert Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 27.

  62. 62.

    United States Department of State “U.S. National Security Strategy: Overview of America’s International Strategy,” 2002, https://2001-2009.state.gov/r/pa/ei/wh/15421.htm, accessed December 2017.

  63. 63.

    Ibid.

  64. 64.

    “Crime Areas” Interpol, https://www.interpol.int/Crime-areas, accessed December 17, 2017.

  65. 65.

    “Priorities” Interpol, https://www.interpol.int/About-INTERPOL/Priorities, accessed December 9, 2017.

  66. 66.

    Stephen Krasner, International Regimes (Cambridge: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 2.

  67. 67.

    Monika François and Inder Sud, “Promoting stability and development in fragile and failed states,” Development Policy Review 24, no. 2 (2006): p. 145.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Holy Family University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Jonathan D. Rosen

  2. East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, USA

    Hanna Samir Kassab

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Rosen, J.D., Kassab, H.S. (2019). Fragile States, Corruption, and Crime. In: Drugs, Gangs, and Violence. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94451-7_3

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