convergence

Chapter 14
Collaborating to Combat Illicit
Networks Through Interagency
and International Efforts
Celina B. Realuyo
Introduction
This chapter examines collaborative efforts among U.S. agencies, partner nations, and multilateral
organizations to address the hybrid threats posed by illicit networks through the diplomatic,
development, and defense lenses of national security in the Western Hemisphere. The
resourcefulness, adaptability, impunity, and ability of illicit networks to circumvent countermeasures
make them a formidable foe for governments. Since illicit actors have expanded
their activities throughout the global commons, in the air, land, sea, and cyberspace domains,
nations must devise comprehensive and multidimensional strategies and policies to combat
the transnational threats posed by these illicit networks.
The initiatives discussed here focus on programs in the Western Hemisphere to tackle
the converging threat of transnational organized crime (TOC) and other illicit networks,
undertaken by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Organization
of American States (OAS), Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), and
U.S. Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force–South. Each of these endeavors
represents models for collaborations that require political will, institutional capacity, mechanisms,
resources, and measures of effectiveness for success. These instructive examples of
interagency and international collaboration in the Americas underscore the continued need
to foster communities of interest to comprehend illicit networks and devise more effective
strategies to counter them as they further evolve and threaten the national security of the
United States and its allies.
Based on analysis of these examples, the following recommendations are offered for
consideration by policymakers:
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