convergence

Introduction
This view continues to dominate mindsets within the U.S. national security community.
It fails to fully appreciate the growing power of nonstate actors and adversaries, or the magnitude
of the threat they pose and the harm they impose on the international system itself.
It underappreciates the possibility—indeed likelihood—of the convergence, whether for
convenience or growing ambition, of criminal, terrorist, and even insurgent networks. More
important even than insufficient recognition of the efficacy of these adversaries is the absence
of a plan to counter the threat they pose to both national security and the international state
system. In short, this view does not see the big picture—the long view of the declining robustness
and resilience of the global system of nation-states that has been dominant for centuries,
and the unprecedented attacks on that system. The failure of that system—in which we and
so many have prospered beyond belief or precedent in history—would be a catastrophic and
existential loss.
Global trends and developments—including dramatically increased trade volumes and
velocity, the growth of cyberspace, and population growth, among others—have facilitated the
growth of violent nonstate actors, the strengthening of organized crime, and the emergence of
a new set of transcontinental supply chains as well as the expansion of existing illicit markets.
The resourcefulness, adaptability, innovativeness, and ability of illicit networks to circumvent
countermeasures make them formidable foes for national governments and international
organizations alike. Their increasing convergence gives them ever-improved ability to evade
official countermeasures and overcome logistical challenges as well as ever better tools for
exploiting weaknesses and opportunities within the state system, and attacking that system.
Since illicit actors have expanded their activities throughout the global commons, in the land,
sea, air, and cyber domains, nations must devise comprehensive and multidimensional strategies
and policies to combat the complex transnational threats posed by these illicit networks.
This book is an attempt to map the terrain of this emerging battlespace; it describes the
scope of the security threat confronting the United States and the international community
from transnational criminal organizations and what is being done to combat that threat—from
the strategic level with the release, in July 2011, of the U.S. Government’s Strategy to Combat
Transnational Organized Crime: Addressing Converging Threats to National Security and, in April
2011, of the Department of Defense (DOD) Counternarcotics and Global Threats Strategy—to
the operational level with increased regional partnerships and dialogues.
A Clear and Present Danger
What are the nature, magnitude, and danger of this phenomenon? The first chapters of this
book describe the gravity and the scale of the challenge posed by proliferating, diversifying, and
globalizing illicit networks. Authors Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber label
this phenomenon “deviant globalization” and argue that it is first and foremost an economic
phenomenon that cannot be detached or separated from the broader process of globalization.
It is that portion of the global economy that meets the demand for goods and services that
are illegal or considered repugnant in one place by using a supply from some other part of the
world where morals are different or law enforcement is less effective. Illicit networks are globally
integrated enterprises. Just as corporations no longer think of national borders as barriers, these
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