Busting Drugs While Paying With Crime: The Collateral Damage of U.S. Drug Enforcement in Foreign Countries

The "Americanization" of the global drug war is now synonymous with the global expansion of the United States (U.S.) Drug Enforcement Administration's (DEA) drug enforcement operations in foreign countries. Recent research posits that the rise in violent crime in Latin America is the "collateral damage" of the "Americanization" of drug enforcement in the region. However, the causal inference of the "collateral damage" thesis is biased because drug enforcement and violent crime in Latin America are endogenously related. This research corrects this bias in two ways. First, we collect data for cases to which the endogenous bias does not apply. Namely, we ask what effect does the operations of the DEA, specifically trafficker immobilization and drug interdiction, have on violent and property crimes in Central American and Caribbean countries where drug producing cartels and narco-insurgent organizations are not indigenous to the political landscape? Second, we estimate the data via a structural equation model. The results lend support to the collateral damage hypothesis. The DEA's coordinated drug enforcement operations contribute to increasing the level of violent and property crimes in the region.     

China in Africa: challenging US global hegemony

In the first decade of the 21st century China has been able to enter political, military and commercial deals with countries of the asean community, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the countries and observers in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sco). In November 2006 China sealed this circle with a strategic partnership with Africa at a major feast of leaders celebrating the friendship and co-operation between the two. The emergence of China as a force in Africa complicated the tussle between the EU and the USA over the ‘who controls Africa’. The new relations between Africa and China could be described in the words of Gramsci, as, ‘the old is dying yet the new is yet to be born’. Chinese relations with Africa combine elements of the old (extraction of raw materials), yet the experience of transformation in China ensures that there are many positive and negative lessons to be learnt. What is new is the prospect for the consolidation of African independence and the challenge to the hegemony of the dollar and US imperialism. I argue in this paper that, in the short term, one of China's most important roles will be to break the disarticulation between the financial and productive sectors of the economy and to stem the outflow of capital from Africa. In the long run the experience of linking new ideas of science and technology to a home grown path of reconstruction can be an important lesson for Africa. State-to-state relations are usually opportunistic and it is for this reason that transnational civil society linkages between the Chinese and African people will be more important than relations between leaders.     

Free Traders and Drug Smugglers: The Effects of Trade Openness on States' Ability to Combat Drug Trafficking

The theoretical literature presents conflicting expectations about the effects of trade openness on the ability of states to interdict drug trafficking. One view expects that trade openness will undermine drug interdiction; a second argues the opposite; a third argues that trade openness does not necessarily affect drug interdiction. This article assesses empirically the effects of trade openness on drug interdiction for countries in the Americas using a pooled time-series cross-sectional statistical model. It finds that trade openness decreases the interdiction capabilities of states in drug-consuming countries while increasing those of states in drug-producing countries. Greater openness to trade does not have a consistently significant effect on the interdiction capabilities of states in drug transit countries.     

Cognitive Images and Support for International Economic Agreements with the United States Among Mexican Citizens

A 1995 survey shows that Mexican citizens depend on their cognitive and affective orientations toward the United States in forming opinions about economic agreements between the two countries. The degree to which respondents utilized general feelings toward the United States rather than images of the United States varies by educational level and across the two agreements that were examined, NAFTA and the Clinton economic stabilization package of 1995. Whether respondents utilized an image of U.S. economic imperialism or of racial discrimination against people of Mexican origin in forming their opinions also depends on the level of education attained and on the policy domain of the agreement. The cognitive processes respondents utilized to form opinions about these economic agreements also differ across educational levels and policy domains. The findings have important implications for the capacity of Mexican elites to mobilize support for agreements with the United States and more generally for U.S.-Mexican relations.     

Implementing the convention on the prevention and punishment of crimes against internationally protected persons,including diplomatic agents

Abstract

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons was negotiated by the Sixth Committee of the U.N. General Assembly on the basis of a draft by the International Law Commission. The Convention represents a major move against terrorism aimed at diplomats and others who have special status under international law. The United States Government was successful in obtaining fairly rapid approval of the text and also in obtaining the necessary U.S. legislative action to put it into effect. The United States has been hampered, however, by the fact that the two federal agencies, the F.B.I, and the U.S. Marshal's service normally do not engage in the type of activity required to protect persons covered by the Convention. Local U.S. authorities are overburdened with their normal duties and there is extremely limited federal authority to extend financial assistance to the states. More far‐reaching measures to counter the growing terrorist threat are needed.     

Culture-centric pre-emptive counterinsurgency and US Africa Command: assessing the role of the US social sciences in US military engagements in Africa

The twenty-first century has seen a continued evolution of the US military’s strategic interest in socio-cultural knowledge of (potential) adversaries for counterinsurgency strategies. This paper explores the implications of the reinvigorated and expanding (post-9/11) relationship between social science research and US military strategy, assessing the implications of US Africa Command strategies for preventive counterinsurgency. Preventative counterinsurgency measures are ‘Phase Zero’ or ‘contingency’ operations that seek to prevent possible outcomes, namely threats to ‘security’ in Africa. The research initiatives of US Africa Command illustrate a culture-centric approach to this strategy, which seeks to draw from detailed socio-cultural knowledge in the prevention of possible populist or popular uprisings. Recent such uprisings, resistance actions and strikes in the continent illustrate a problematic tendency to interpret various forms of populist resistance as ‘terrorist’ actions, thereby condoning the bolstering of African national military capacity. The article considers the implications of these culture-centric counterinsurgency strategies as a means of anticipating and repressing the variety of mobilisations encapsulated within the ‘terrorism’ catchall. We conclude by urging social scientists to reject and disconnect from US Africa Command’s missions and knowledge acquisition efforts in Africa.     

Corporate power,US drug enforcement and the repression of indigenous peoples in Latin America

Abstract

The question that motivates this article is: what are the mechanisms through which the prosecution of the drug war in Latin America lead to human rights repression? In answering this question, I theorise that drug enforcement is a coalition of actors that facilitates domestic and international consensus around prohibition as a mechanism for corporate expansion. Drug war infrastructure financing is likely to facilitate the expansion of corporate investments by resource-seeking industries that require greater land use, which encroaches on the ancestral territories of indigenous peoples. And, in response to indigenous resistance to corporate appropriation of ancestral lands, resource-seeking transnational corporations will collude with private security firms and paramilitary organisations to repress and eliminate indigenous resistance. In the process of accumulating capital in Latin America, transnational corporations, domestic security, and paramilitary organizations are the drug enforcement coalition’s mediators of terror.