R.J. Godlewski's The Independent Counterterrorist. I, Militia. June ...

R.J. Godlewski’s The Independent Counterterrorist. I, Militia. June, 2009 

To facilitate the incorporation of the civilian population into the war effort 

against international terrorists, the International Nuclear Emergency Response 

Team (INERT), R.J. Godlewski, Right Truth Blog, and affiliated parties are 

developing a volunteer training program to educate interested individuals in the 

fields of counterinsurgency, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and counterguerrilla 

warfare operations. 

Each monthly module will consist of a brief narrative by R.J. Godlewski, 

appropriate federal military/civilian training manual/reports to review, and 

review questions to stimulate debate. There are no fees associated with these 

programs and no grades/certificates will be issued. This is strictly a volunteer 

program for educational purposes. 

Topics: 

Counterinsurgency, Operations, Che Guevara, Intelligence and Analysis, Interrogation, Explosive 

Ordnance Disposal, History of Terrorism, Castro and Terrorism, Psychology of Terrorism, Urban 

Warfare, Medical and Trauma Education, Survival and Evasion, Mine/Countermine Operations, 

Psychological Operations, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield, Shooting and Personal 

Defense, Police Intelligence Operations, Special Forces Intelligence, Combat and Operational 

Stress Control, Human Intelligence Collector Operations, Carlos Marighella, Urban Threats from 

Guerrilla and Terrorist Organizations, Nuclear Terrorism. 

NOTICE: 

Neither the author, INERT, nor any of its affiliated parties/individuals assume any 

responsibility for the misuse of any information contained within this training 

program. Seek competent legal advice before engaging within any personal 

plan of action. 

"I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and 

defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, 

foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance 

to the same…” 

2


terrorists, we found ourselves in trouble. 

As soon as our national leadership 

decided that terrorists who maim and 

murder at will could not be yelled at, 

dunked in water, or held until they were 

no longer a threat to our existence, we 

found ourselves in trouble. We have 

simply had our legs kicked out from 

underneath us and, the sad part is, we 

still turn to Washington to retrieve the 

use of these very same limbs. Well, not 

anymore… 

“So do not worry and say, 

„What are we to eat?‟ or „What are 

we to drink?‟ or „What are we to 

wear?‟” (Matthew 6:31 NAB) 

If we listened to Christ‟s words 

and took them to heart, we could corral 

our politicians in Washington who know 

that we constantly worry about such 

trivial things. In fact, we worry about 

them so much that we had recently 

elected a new president who‟s made it 

his job to decide for us what we‟re 

allowed to eat, what kind of car we‟re 

allowed to drive, and even how we‟re 

allowed to defend ourselves. 

We elected him because we have 

simply allowed “others” to bombard us 

with such ill-conceived thoughts as 

“global warming” (It‟s the end of May 

and I‟m still freezing my ass off), 

“torture” (compared with our enemies‟ 

actions, both historical and present, no 

American soldier or national security 

official has ever tortured another human 

being since our nation‟s independence), 

and “economic stimulus” (how 

stimulating is it to go broke?). 

It is simply a matter of “a glass 

half empty”, a “glass half full”, and 

George Carlin‟s memorable “a glass 

twice as big as it needs to be”. In the 

context of our government, I feel that 

the late comedian‟s jovial approach is 

closer to the truth, save that our 

government is two hundred times the 

size that it needs to be. 

If a government truly serves its 

citizens, then the president should not 

care what kind of automobile that I 

prefer to drive, rather what it can do to 

ensure that there’s enough fuel 

available for me to drive. The Obama 

Administration fails on this miserably. 

They do not desire to locate additional 

petroleum reserves or even adequately 

develop alternative fuels. They are 

infatuated with saving the environment 

over the existence of people deserving 

of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of 

happiness”. 

Government controls us because 

they simply do not fear us. All of those 

“tea parties” conducted on April 15 th ? 

Well, they were simply dismissed by the 

same government that feels we cling too 

much to our God and our guns. If they 

had met either, they would be singing a 

different tune altogether. 

We need to corral this 

government, ladies and gentlemen, if for 

no other reason than they work for us. 

Yet, we are confronted with: 

4


Personal Thought Envelope 

How personal values are subjegated to Progessive Liberals‟ agenda and national 

legislation. 

Your values. 

Progressive 

/Liberal 

agenda. 

Existing 

legislation. 

Your personal morals and values swirl around within your life as you make countless 

decisions based upon your particular culture, upbringing, and code of conduct. 

Regardless, these beliefs are kept in check by the overriding control of others‟ agendas 

and even our own laws and regulations. 

To see how this affects, say, your right to self-defense, apply the above diagram 

into a more proactive thought process: 

5

CRIMINALS, TERRORISTS, THUGS 


Protect your 

family at all 

cost. 

Convince you 

that guns are 

evil. 

Restrictions 

on type or 

location of 

firearms. 

SELF- 

? 

DEFENSE 

Your moral value is simply to protect your family at any cost. However, the 

Progressives/Liberals try to convince you that guns are evil: “The Second Amendment is 

all about hunting” or “The framers of the Constitution could not have possibly foreseen a 

period where guns became so powerful”. Finally, as enough idiots fall for their ploy, they 

enact restrictive gun-control legislation: no “assault weapons” no “concealed guns in 

bars”, etc. Behind all of this are the criminals, terrorists, and other thugs who simply 

want easy pickings for their chosen trade. 

Ask yourself, however, have any of the Progressive/Liberals provided you with 

why you should be permitted self-defense? I mean, in all reality, there are times in 

which it is permissible to defend yourself, right? Isn‟t that what courts are all about? 

What about fairplay on the sports field? Yet not a single Progressive/Liberal will come 

6


out and agree that there “might” be a time when you‟re permitted to off the guy trying to 

kill you or your little daughter. They simply do not account for common sense and, 

here‟s the real kicker, they cannot grant you the right to decide for yourself. 

Here‟s where you stand in their eyes: 

P/L 

THE 

COURTS 

COLLEGES & 

UNIVERSITIES 

MEDIA & 

ENTERTAINMENT 

THE GENERAL 

POPULATION 

You will note that the Progressive/Liberals elevate themselves above not only you, John 

Q. Public, but between you and them stand the media, our schools, and our courts, all of 

which the Progressive/Liberals use to keep you down while keeping themselves at the 

apex. “We the People” simply become “those who cannot possibly think for themselves”. 

In short, before we are considered „equal‟ to the Progressive/Liberals, we must first 

wade through the propaganda uttered by the media and entertainment industries, 

7

***** 

The views expressed in this report are those of the author 

and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the 

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. This report is cleared for public release; distribution 

is unlimited. 

***** 

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should be 

forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War 

College, 122 Forbes Ave, Carlisle, PA 17013-5244. 

***** 

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications are available 

on the SSI homepage for electronic dissemination. Hard copies 

of this report also may be ordered from our homepage. SSI’s 

homepage address is: www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil. 

***** 

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail 

newsletter to update the national security community on the 

research of our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and 

upcoming conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter 

also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research 

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ISBN 1-58487-344-2 

ii

FOREWORD 

The presence of drugged fighters is not unknown in 

the history of warfare. Yet widespread drug use on the 

battlefield is now part of protracted conflicts largely 

fought by nonprofessional combatants that take place 

in an international system characterized by the process 

of globalization. From marijuana, khat, hallucinogenic 

mushrooms, cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine 

to looted pharmaceuticals, irregular fighters have 

found a ready supply of narcotics to consume for 

a variety of combat purposes. Such consumption 

has led to unpredictable fighting, the commission of 

atrocities, and to the prolongation of internal violence. 

The presence of intoxicated combatants will continue 

to be a feature of armed conflict and requires a fuller 

accounting to adequately prepare policymakers and 

military planners for future conflicts. 

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR. 

Director 

Strategic Studies Institute 

iii

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 

PAUL REXTON KAN is currently an Associate Professor 

of National Security Studies at the U.S. Army 

War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. While 

finishing his Ph.D., he was the Deputy Director of the 

Center for China-United States Cooperation where he 

coordinated professional exchanges with Chinese officials 

from the policy institutions linked to the Ministry 

of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of State Security, 

and the People’s Liberation Army. Dr. Kan has published 

articles on the links between irregular warfare 

and criminality in Small Wars and Insurgencies, International 

Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Air 

and Space Power Review, and Defense Intelligence Journal. 

He was recently awarded the U.S. Army War College’s 

General George C. Marshall Faculty Research Grant to 

complete a book on the influence of the drug trade on 

contemporary warfare. Dr. Kan earned his B.A. in Political 

Science from Loyola Marymount University, his 

M.A. in Political Science from University of California 

at Santa Barbara, and his Ph.D. in International Studies 

from the Graduate School of International Studies at 

the University of Denver. 

iv

SUMMARY 

The complexity of many ongoing and persistent 

conflicts in the post-Cold War is partially attributed to 

the widespread presence of drug intoxicated irregular 

fighters. Drug consumption in contemporary wars 

has coincided with the use of child soldiers, has led 

to increased unpredictability among irregular fighters, 

provided the conditions for the breakdown of social 

controls and commission of atrocities, and caused the 

lessening of command and control among the ranks. 

Although the nonmedical use of drugs by combatants 

has a long history, recent encounters of professional 

armed forces have demonstrated the need to reinvestigate 

the reasons irregular combatants consume drugs, 

the type of drugs they consume, how they acquire drugs, 

and the consequences for professional militaries. 

Intoxication among combatants continues to be a 

part of today’s conflicts and occurs in minimal, acute, 

and unrestrained degrees. The perceived benefits 

felt by combatants consuming illegal narcotics on 

the battlefield have few pressures to constrain them. 

Pressures like social norms, legal controls, expense, and 

availability, along with individual fears of addiction, 

toxicity, and concerns about the lack of knowledge 

about a drug and supervision of its use are often 

mitigated by the nature of contemporary wars which 

tear down each of these by focusing attacks on the 

institutions and people who comprise them. However, 

drug use and abuse in wartime still depend on the 

law of supply and demand which is distorted due 

to the type of consumer (a person engaged in armed 

violence) and the areas (zones of conflict) where a drug 

is available. 

v

“Combatant demand” is comprised of four main 

reasons that drugs are sought by those engaged in 

armed conflict: stimulation, reward, recruitment, and 

relaxation. The supply side for drugs in today’s wars 

falls into at least one of four categories: traditional, 

transshipped, looted, and manufactured. The result 

is the use of marijuana, khat, hallucinogenic mushrooms, 

cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and 

looted pharmaceuticals to stoke a variety of conflicts. 

Drugged fighters are a significant feature of protracted 

conflicts, presenting challenges for Western militaries 

to overcome since such protraction creates conditions 

for drug use among their forces as well. Lengthier 

times spent in the field can generate personal hardships 

among troops that can be soothed by drug use. A type 

of drug quagmire can develop where protraction 

creates an atmosphere for the greater demand for 

drugs among irregular and professional forces. 

Although militaries from developed countries are 

beginning to acknowledge the strategic and tactical 

effects of drugged combatants, little has changed in the 

way military and political leaders have conceptualized 

the role of illegal narcotics in warfare. What is needed is 

greater cooperation among agencies of the Department 

of Defense, Department of Justice, Department of 

Treasury, and Department of Homeland Security to 

monitor and assess the ways drugs are being used by 

irregular forces so that new strategies can be added to 

the plans of conventional forces who may intervene in 

such operational environments. More techniques from 

law enforcement to track and trace combatant supply 

and demand will prepare militaries for encounters 

with drug intoxicated combatants by developing 

early warning signals in order to adjust their tactics in 

particular conflicts. 

vi

Additional institutional measures should be put 

in place before the next intervention in environments 

that include drug intoxicated irregular fighters. Such 

measures could include nesting operations targeted 

at reducing drug use in campaign plans from the 

beginning, while including new training to consider 

new military objectives like patrols along smuggling 

routes and securing hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies 

during an intervention. In situations where nationbuilding 

and stability operations are mandated, the 

main goal of governments in responding to these 

conflict environments should be to reduce the level 

of violence through a reduction of the use of drugs. 

By lowering the demand for drug use, command and 

control can be strengthened among irregular forces, 

thus increasing the likelihood of adherence to the 

parameters of any potential peace accord. To reduce 

the potential for a drug quagmire, greater institutional 

support is needed for the professional military to 

monitor, treat, and provide long-term care for active 

duty troops and veterans who may develop substance 

abuse disorders. 

vii

DRUG INTOXICATED IRREGULAR FIGHTERS: 

COMPLICATIONS, DANGERS AND RESPONSES 

Much has been written about armed irregular 

groups funding their operations by turning to the drug 

trade. 1 However, participation in drug trafficking is 

not the only way that drugs complicate contemporary 

armed conflicts. Widespread drug use by these types of 

combatants also contributes to conflict environments 

that challenge policymakers and military leaders. As 

one psychopharmacologist has argued, the desire to 

seek intoxication may be a “fourth drive” in human 

beings after hunger, thirst, and sex. 2 Such a drive 

appears to have an abiding link to warfare. 

The nonmedical use of drugs by combatants has a 

long history. In 1781, a South American Indian militia 

refused to fight against the Spanish unless they were 

resupplied with coca leaves. 3 Peyote was routinely used 

by various Native American warriors before armed 

clashes with British, French, and American colonial 

armies. The Zulu warriors of Isandlwana cooked a 

cannabis broth, emboldening them and making them 

unpredictable to British troops in 1879. Commanders 

of European forces, however, were reluctant to permit 

their own troops to partake in the local drug of choice. 4 

While in Egypt, Napoleon noticed the smoking of 

hashish among the lower classes and forbade it by his 

troops. 5 

However, paralleling the trade of opium to fund 

European imperial expansion, opium use flourished 

particularly among the British and French officer corps. 

Many American Civil War soldiers became addicted 

to opium as a result of being given morphine to treat 

their injuries. 6 In fact, opium and morphine became 

so closely associated with the military profession 

1

that those who became addicted were said to have 

contracted the “soldier’s disease.” Western forces were 

not the only forces who succumbed to the intoxicating 

benefits of the poppy; opium took its toll on the forces 

of the Chinese emperor during the time of the Opium 

Wars. Many of the Chinese soldiers fighting to defend 

the empire against opium were addicted themselves. 

More than 10 years after the First Opium War, the 

successes of the Taiping Rebellion (whose members 

touted their sobriety as a virtue) may be explained in 

part by the nearly 90 percent addiction rate among the 

Chinese emperor’s army. 7 

Drug use among conventional forces also has roots 

in major 20th century conflicts. Cocaine use has links to 

World War I. The fear of cocaine abuse among British 

Imperial Forces was spread by the media of the time by 

portraying it as part of a German plan to demoralize 

their adversary. 8 During World War II, amphetamines 

were widely used among all sides to keep the fighting 

men alert and were provided in ration kits of American 

troops. 9 Methamphetamine was widely used by 

Imperial Japanese forces in World War II. 10 During the 

Korean War, American servicemen stationed in Korea 

and Japan invented the “speedball,” an injectable 

mixture of amphetamine and heroin. 11 U.S. troops in 

Vietnam preferred marijuana, but when subject to a 

sudden marijuana ban, they turned to heroin. Discipline 

problems quickly rose; as one commanding officer 

lamented 2 years after the marijuana crackdown, “If 

it would get them to give up the hard stuff, I would 

buy all the marijuana and hashish in the Delta as a 

present.” 12 

While conventional forces struggled (and continue 

to struggle) with drug use among the ranks, warfare 

today occurs in a different context, meaning that drug 

2

consumption by combatants has differing effects 

that military leaders and policymakers must take 

into account. Contemporary wars feature new actors 

employing differing tactics than conventional militaries 

and doing so for a variety of different goals. 

Martin Van Creveld argues that war has become “transformed” 

as we enter a “new era, not of peaceful competition 

between trading blocks, but of warfare between 

ethnic and religious groups” waged “not by armies but 

by groups whom we today call terrorists, guerrillas, 

bandits, and robbers.” Barbara Ehrenriech, too, points 

to a “new kind of war,” one “less disciplined and more 

spontaneous than the old,” and “one often fought by 

ill-clad bands more resembling gangs than armies.” In 

a similar vein, Mary Kaldor writes about “new wars,” 

ones centrally about “identity politics,” fought in a context 

of globalization by “a disparate range of different 

types of groups such as paramilitary units, local warlords, 

criminal gangs, police forces, mercenary groups, 

and also regular armies including breakaway units of 

regular armies.” 13 

These are rich environments for the presence of 

widespread drug use. This monograph examines the 

reasons irregular fighters consume drugs, the types of 

drugs they consume, how they acquire drugs, and the 

effects on conflict. 

DEGREES OF DRUG USE IN CONTEMPORARY 

CONFLICTS 

Intoxication among combatants continues to be a 

part of today’s conflicts and occurs in minimal, acute, 

and unrestrained degrees (see Table 1). Regardless of the 

degrees, however, the perceived benefits of combatants 

consuming illegal narcotics on the battlefield, much like 

the drug financing of violent conflicts, has few pressures 

3

to constrain it. Taking mind altering substances may 

seem like a risk for an individual fighter who must 

be aware of danger and competent enough to defend 

himself, his comrades, and equipment. Maintaining a 

clear mind would seem to be more advantageous than 

being strung out. However, much like drug use by 

ordinary citizens in peace time, “gains generally loom 

larger than risks [because] gains tend to be immediate” 

while jeopardy, danger, and consequence are more 

remote. 14 Individual fears and concerns are often 

mitigated by the atmosphere of organized violence— 

the gain of cheating death outweighs the possibility 

of impairment, illness, or injury in the minds of many 

combatants who consume drugs. 

Minimal: Haiti, Iraq (Sunni insurgents, al-Qaeda in Iraq). 

• Leadership of irregular group ignores drug use by 

individual fighters. 

• Alternatively, leadership of irregular group recruits fighters 

via intoxication or addiction. 

Acute: Bosnia, Colombia, Congo, Peru, Philippines, Russia 

(Chechen rebels), Rwanda. 

• Leadership of irregular group uses the promise of drugs to 

their fighters as a reward. 

• Leadership of irregular group encourages drug use as a 

motivation for atrocities against civilians. 

• Command and control problems begin to occur among the 

ranks. 

Unrestrained: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Uganda. 

• Increasing intoxication or addiction among irregular troops 

who may conduct violent operations to support their habits. 

• Command and control of irregular troops are nearly 

nonexistent due to widespread drug use among fighters. 

Table 1. Degrees of Drug Use by Combatants. 

4

Additionally, while there are numerous external 

pressures that constrain an individual’s desire to use 

drugs in peacetime, such constraints are not always 

present during war. These constraints include social 

norms, legal controls, expense, and availability, 

along with individual fears of addiction, toxicity, and 

concerns about the lack of knowledge about a drug 

and supervision of its use. Social norms, legal controls, 

expense, and availability are often mitigated by the 

nature of contemporary wars which tears down each 

of these by focusing attacks on the institutions and 

people who comprise them. 

In fact, some appeals that lead an individual to 

abuse drugs during peacetime are heightened during 

war. Peer pressure and “turning on” a friend to a drug 

are more acutely felt in wartime when an individual 

fighter must demonstrate his bravery and honor. Small 

group cohesion occurs when individuals experience 

and survive danger with their fellow comrades. Drug 

use allows an individual to “prove himself” to his 

comrades and eases his transition into a battlefield 

context. 

Although key restraints are removed and appeals 

increased, drug use and abuse in wartime still depend 

on the law of supply and demand. However, supply 

and demand are distorted due to the type of consumer 

(a person engaged in armed violence) and the areas 

(zones of conflict) a drug is available. Much as there 

are distinctions in the trafficking of drugs that allow 

warring groups to participate in certain key nodes, 

there are distinctions in supply and demand at the 

level of the individual fighter that are significant to the 

ways contemporary wars are now being waged. 

5

DRUG DEMAND AMONG COMBATANTS 

Drugs are used by individual fighters for four 

main reasons—stimulation, reward, recruitment, 

and relaxation—and comprise a type of “combatant 

demand.” 15 Drugs can stimulate a person’s will to fight 

and to ignore the possibilities of injury and death. 

The notion of “liquid courage” is not just applicable 

to the use of liquor, but to the use of other drugs in 

situations of organized violence. Afghan soldiers who 

worked with Soviet forces against the mujahedin were 

provided hashish in their rations; “When you get high 

on hashish, you become completely revolutionary and 

attack the enemy—fear simply disappears.” 16 Drugs are 

often used to fend off the boredom that accompanies 

being a part of a group that, when not fighting, is 

waiting to fight, hiding, or carrying on the mundane 

duties required to keep a combatant group effective. 

Drugs have been offered as rewards for conducting 

hazardous or unpalatable operations against civilians. 

John Mueller describes the phenomenon as “carnival,” 

whereby warring groups take a territory and celebrate 

by looting medical buildings for drugs and then 

following up with orgies of rape, torture, and murder 

of local residents. 17 Recruitment is also aided by the 

use of drugs and the type of devastation that occurs 

in internal conflicts. As drug profits alleviate key 

problems of recruiting, training, and retaining fighters 

for a combatant leader, the provision of drugs can sway 

an individual’s decision to join the ranks of a warring 

group. The stress of combat can also increase the desire 

to seek mental escape in a fighter. Depressant drugs can 

alleviate the stress felt by a combatant and help him to 

avoid reflecting on his circumstances. At times, a rise in 

the level of violence has altered the drug habits among 

6

irregular fighters. The young Hmong fighters of the 

Pathet Lao were forbidden by social custom to smoke 

opium, but after the American bombing campaign 

against their strongholds, many took up the habit to 

calm their nerves. 18 

Since the overwhelming number of today’s wars are 

civil wars, they are largely fought by nonprofessional 

armed groups like insurgent organizations, militias, 

and paramilitaries. Unlike members of professional 

militaries, these groups are not prescribed and 

administered drugs by a centralized government 

bureaucracy or monitored by medical professionals. 

This has become problematic since these groups are 

mainly comprised of civilians who are not trained to 

handle combat stress nor equipped with sophisticated 

weapons like their professional military counterparts. 

Without sophisticated weaponry, individual fighters 

engage in close combat encounters and often the extreme 

tension of hand-to-hand combat. Drugs provide 

a means to cope with the physical stress and mental 

anxiety that are a part of such violent encounters. In 

essence, drugs can compensate for the lack of training 

and mental discipline that are part of the composition 

of professional military forces and are a resource that 

can increase the probability of winning for militarily 

weaker groups. 

The widespread presence of civilians on the 

battlefield is also made worse by the reliance on the 

drug trade by warring groups in some conflicts. With 

the growing significance of drug crops and smuggling 

routes to the financing of warring groups, civilians 

who cultivate drug crops, inhabit valuable agricultural 

space, or live near transportation routes come to be 

seen as legitimate targets by opposing groups. Acting 

against these civilians by nonprofessional and poorly 

7

equipped troops also causes the same type of combat 

stress that individual fighters seek to lessen by using 

narcotics. 

Second, the types of equipment used by irregular 

forces do not require a great degree of skill. The lack of 

sophisticated weaponry facilitates the ease of its use; 

shooting a gun, planting a mine, or aiming a mortar 

does not require a combatant to be clean and sober. 

In contrast to the high tech weapons of professional 

Western militaries and the integrated way they fight, 

easy-to-use weapons provide very little restraint on 

drug use and intoxication by irregular or untrained 

forces. 

In addition, the emergence of wartime drug markets 

is assisted by the presence of criminals and addicts in 

the ranks of irregular forces. Besieged governments 

have not been averse to letting criminals “earn their 

freedom” by fighting for their people. Both Slobodan 

Milosevic and Saddam Hussein emptied their jails of 

drug criminals and other inmates to fight in paramilitary 

groups against their adversaries. Moreover, many 

insurgents and terrorists, who are considered by 

definition to be lawbreakers by established authorities, 

have spent time in prison among drug dealers and 

abusers. For the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu 

Musab al Zarqawi, participation in the drug trade was 

nothing new. Zarqawi even recruited drug addicts 

and dealers to his cause during his time in a Jordanian 

prison. 19 

DRUG SUPPLY IN CONTEMPORARY 

CONFLICTS 

The demand for drugs by combatants must be 

juxtaposed with the availability of drugs to combatants. 

8

Typically, the supply for drugs in today’s wars falls into 

at least one of four categories: traditional, transshipped, 

looted, and manufactured. These categories are not 

mutually exclusive to a single conflict since combatants 

often find access to drugs from a number of differing 

sources. Traditional drugs are those that are part of the 

long-standing cultural practices of the societies of which 

a warring group is a part and are naturally produced 

in the territories where conflicts are taking place. For 

example, the drug khat is part of the social landscape 

of east African societies, and its use is incorporated by 

combatants in Somalia and Sudan. Traditional drugs 

can also be ceremonial by linking the fighter to the 

traditions of the past and connecting fighters to the 

mystical. Such connections are seen as ways to fight 

honorably or to become impervious to injury and death 

in combat. This has been commonplace in Liberia’s civil 

wars when fighters fortified by marijuana and palm 

wine donned dresses and wigs, believing that bullets 

would be confused and misidentify their true targets. 

Other drugs which are consumed are those that 

are available due to the presence of a transit route 

through the territory where a conflict is occurring. 

Once again, globalization has been a significant factor 

since it has made a variety of drugs available to new 

markets where there are both conflicts and valuable 

transshipment points. Coca, for example, is not grown 

in Africa, yet cocaine is routinely used by combatants 

who are “paid” with it by traffickers. Such bartering 

for securing routes is not uncommon; Revolutionary 

United Front (RUF) fighters in Sierra Leone regularly 

consumed crack cocaine and “brown-brown” (heroin) 

that were transshipped through their territories. 20 

Drugs can also be attained by looting them from 

pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals. These are prescription 

drugs manufactured by pharmaceutical companies 

9

for ailments unrelated to combat. Nonetheless, they 

can alter the consciousness of a fighter for combat 

(and carnival) related purposes. Drugs looted from 

pharmacies were used as rewards and motivators 

for those Hutus who committed atrocities against 

Tutsis during the Rwanda genocide in 1994. 21 In 

Iraq, numerous pharmaceutical drugs like Captagon 

(stimulant), Benzhexol (relaxant), Benzodizeapines 

(a stimulant when abused), and Valium looted from 

clinics, pharmacies, and hospitals in the immediate 

aftermath of the fall of Baghdad have been abused. 22 

Manufactured drugs refers to pharmaceuticals 

prescribed by physicians to treat legitimate disorders 

and “home manufactured” drugs like amphetaminetype 

stimulants (ATS), methamphetamine in particular. 

In Iraq, evidence of methamphetamine production and 

use has been found in insurgent hideouts. Numerous 

returning military field commanders have substantiated 

claims of drugged insurgent fighters from Zarqawi’s 

group; hideouts used by Zarqawi’s fighters were 

frequently found littered with drug paraphernalia like 

pipes and needles. 23 A Marine in Ramadi reported that 

random autopsies of insurgents discovered high levels 

of narcotics use. 24 

TYPES OF DRUGS USED IN CONTEMPORARY 

CONFLICTS 

When the ways supplies of drugs are made 

available are placed together with the reasons they are 

in demand, the specific drugs that are consumed by 

combatants can be identified (see Table 2). 25 The drugs 

that are used by members of a single combatant group 

can fall in a number of these categories since fighters 

will often combine various drugs. For example, in 

10

Colombia, many combatants smoke basuco which is 

cocaine paste combined with marijuana and tobacco. 26 

In some instances, transshipped drugs are also 

adopted into the ceremonial practices of a warring 

group to increase the “high” that is experienced by 

individual fighters. Cocaine, transshipped via Liberia, 

became regularly ingested by participants in its civil 

war. 27 Several drugs like heroin, marijuana, and ATS 

are used for a number of purposes and are available 

in a number of different contexts. Hallucinogens like 

mushrooms, while a part of traditional uses, are also 

used by certain troops who do not participate in local 

practices but merely take advantage of their nearby 

availability for mental escape. Table 3 lists the conflicts 

where combatants have been known to consume drugs, 

the supply and demand for the drugs, and the specific 

drugs known to be consumed by belligerents. 

Traditional Transshipped Looted Manufactured 

Stimulant Marijuana, Cocaine, ATS Pharmaceuticals ATS, “basuco” 

Hashish, Khat, 

Mushrooms, Coca 

Reward Khat Heroin, Pharmaceuticals ATS 

Cocaine 

Recruitment Marijuana, Khat Heroin, Pharmaceuticals Unknown 

Cocaine 

Relaxant Marijuana, Heroin, Pharmaceuticals Prescribed 

Hashish Opium, Medications for 

Marijuana 

Professional 

Militaries 

Table 2. Drugs Present in Conflicts. 

11

Conflict Supply/Demand Type(s) of Drugs 

Bosnia Transshipped-Reward Heroin 

Looted-Stimulant 

Pharmaceuticals 

Colombia Manufactured-Stimulant Basuco 

Traditional-Relaxant 

Basuco 

Haiti Transshipped-Stimulant Cocaine 

Iraq Manufactured-Stimulant (AQI) Methamphetamine 

Looted-Recruitment (Sunni 

insurgents) 

Pharmaceuticals 

Liberia Transshipped-Stimulant Cocaine 

Transshipped-Recruitment 

Cocaine 

Traditional-Relaxant 

Marijuana 

Peru Traditional-Stimulant Coca, base cocaine 

Philippines Traditional-Stimulant Heroin 

Russia Transshipped-Reward Heroin 

Rwanda Looted-Stimulant, Pharmaceuticals 

Looted Reward 

Sierra Leone Transshipped-Stimulant, Cocaine, Heroin 

Transshipped-Recruitment 

Somalia Traditional-Stimulant, Khat 

Traditional-Reward, 

Traditional-Recruitment 

Uganda Traditional-Stimulant, Khat 

Traditional-Reward, 

Traditional-Recruitment 

Table 3. Known Drug Use by Combatants 

in Contemporary Conflicts. 

EFFECTS OF DRUG USE ON THE BATTLEFIELD 

The law of supply and demand for narcotics in 

wartime also affects the way contemporary wars are 

being fought. For irregular fighters who consume 

drugs, the degree of effects on the battlefield has been 

varied. The acute and unrestrained degrees of drug 

used by irregulars on the battlefield are associated 

12

most significantly with transshipped and looted 

drugs used for recruitment and rewards. Each degree, 

however, is associated with the use of child soldiers, 

increased unpredictability among irregular fighters, the 

breakdown of social controls, and the commission of 

atrocities, as well as decreased command and control. 

The Use of Child Soldiers. 

Roughly 300,000 children are believed to be involved 

in hostile conflicts, many of whom are drugged by 

warring groups as a form of recruitment and retention. 28 

While the specific number of children pressed into 

combat via drug addiction is not known, there are 

regular reports that child soldiers are drugged in order 

to impair their judgment and lower their inhibitions. 

The experience of one former child soldier from Sierra 

Leone is representative: “Before battles, I was given 

white powder which was mixed with rice. It made 

me brave; it made me think I could do anything.” 29 

Many girls who were press-ganged into becoming 

members of rebel groups in Uganda and Sierra Leone 

participated in drug use, terrorist mutilations, and 

ritualistic murder. 30 In another example, in Iraq a girl 

was abducted, taken to Baghdad, drugged with pills 

against her will, dressed in a suicide belt, and sent to 

bomb a cleric’s office. 31 In Uganda, some 10,000 children 

have been pressed into service of the Lord’s Resistance 

Army, drugged, and forced to kill their relatives so 

they cannot run away and return home. 32 

Increased Unpredictability among Irregular 

Fighters. 

Regardless of the type of drugs and reasons for use, 

widespread drug intoxication among forces has meant 

13

that many fighters do not act in a rational or predictable 

manner. Combatant behavior is often influenced by an 

individual’s state of intoxication. For example, U.S. 

Marines reportedly had to change their tactics when 

notified that the insurgents in Fallouja were probably 

high and thus less likely to be stopped by standard 

shots to the torso. 33 One Marine stated that “on the 

second day of the fight, word came down to focus on 

head shots, that body shots were not good enough,” 

while another compared it to “‘Night of the Living 

Dead’, people who should have been dead were still 

alive.” 34 

Battlefield courage is not the only effect of drug 

use; depending on the type and regularity of the drug 

ingested, drug abuse can lead to long-term behavioral 

changes that complicate warfare. Several effects of 

repeated hard drug use include increased confusion, 

agitation, paranoia, and hallucinations. Continued 

high-level use of hard narcotics like cocaine, heroin, 

and ATS can alter the brain chemistry of an individual 

and actually increase the sense of fear felt by a 

combatant. With fear a natural state of fighting a war, 

increased fear only leads to less control and episodes 

of greater violence. When ex-prisoners, former drug 

dealers, and junkies fill the ranks of irregular forces and 

populate the battlefield, standard military operations 

against strategic installations have been superseded 

by criminal activities that support individual interests 

and motivations. 

Widespread drug abuse by irregular troops creates a 

genuine dilemma for their leadership. Much as routine 

drug use by an individual creates tolerance, requiring 

ever greater doses to achieve intoxication or to avoid 

withdrawal symptoms, leaders cannot necessarily 

reduce command and control problems by restricting 

14

drug use. To do so would invite more unpredictability 

and continued coordination problems. As one Afghan 

soldier, while working with the Soviets, stated: “If the 

commanders refused to come up with hashish, they 

would face the wrath of armed soldiers.” 35 

Breakdown of Social Controls and Commission 

of Atrocities. 

With the lack of government authority extended 

over all sections of a country in a civil war, no legal 

constraints on drug use by rebel forces exist. In the 

absence of formal legal controls, informal social controls 

typically play a major role in regulating psychoactive 

drug use. 36 However, in many of today’s wars, those 

who exercise social control on drug use are often 

victims themselves. For example, 

Since ancient times, drugs have probably been part of 

the “conditioning” of African warriors in very strict ritual 

settings. Even today, although the social control exercised 

through the activity by the shamans, witches, and 

other initiates over the use of psychoactive substances 

has, in many instances, disappeared, these substances 

are still in widespread use, as was observed, for example, 

during the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Like 

the grigri, the power to make warriors invisible, leave 

them unaffected by bullets, and so on, is attributed to 

certain substances. 37 

Social control can also be exercised by families and 

traditional leaders, but they too are often targeted by 

adversarial groups. Without these people, fighters are 

freer to abuse drugs and act in unrestrained ways. 

Ironically, drugs are frequently used to break these 

social controls. Warring groups will generate addiction 

among the vulnerable to fill their ranks and tear them 

away from familiar social patterns. 

15

Giving drugs to individuals coincides with the tactics 

employed by irregular forces. A common approach 

is to “tease out someone else’s latent prejudices and 

inflame it [sic] with scapegoating rhetoric, mobilize 

gangs of thugs and criminals and the unemployed, 

arm them, stoke them with drugs and drink, and loose 

them upon defenseless civilians.” 38 Carnival also has a 

strategic purpose for combatant leaders because it can 

induce such terror among the local population that they 

will flee or submit more easily to the new authority. In 

fact, the promises of carnivals are frequently used as 

recruitment tools for combatant leaders; rebel leaders 

linked to Charles Taylor rallied fighters for his final 

offensive against supporters and troops of Liberian 

President Samuel Doe by naming it “Operation Pay 

Yourself.” 39 As a result, campaigns often involve 

“immiseration and violent population displacement 

as an essential precondition for asset realization” that 

is key to maintaining a warring group’s cohesion and 

viability. 40 

Decreased Command and Control among the Ranks. 

Commanding and controlling intoxicated forces is 

extremely difficult when warring groups degenerate 

into criminal gangs whose members fight among 

themselves over petty drug stakes. Factions of 

Sendero Luminoso in Peru routinely deserted when 

drug supplies were low and would “re-enlist” when 

cocaine was made available. 41 Some groups within 

violent organizations will go on the prowl for not 

only drugs, but booty to trade for drugs. Over time, 

drug use among irregular forces generally degrades 

combat effectiveness and leads to internal division and 

fragmentation. Many Chechen rebels are believed to be 

16

egular heroin users who are provided with doses in 

exchange for protecting routes through their territory. 

In fact, their leader, who was killed by Russian special 

forces, was betrayed by an informer in exchange for a 

dose of heroin. 42 

When drug supplies run low, regular drug users 

among fighting forces can suffer withdrawal symptoms 

which can still lead to the outbreak of violence. For 

example, forensic evidence shows that some of the 

militants who seized over 1,000 hostages in a southern 

Russian school in 2004 were long-time heroin addicts 

who were in a state of withdrawal shortly before 

the violent outcome which claimed more than 300 

lives. 43 Withdrawal can last from a few days in the 

cases of cocaine and heroin, to a few months in the 

case of methamphetamine, thus varying the length 

and severity of unpredictable behavior. A common 

withdrawal effect experienced by long-time drug 

users is anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure. 44 

This lack of pleasure sensation causes a disagreeable 

feeling that can last for weeks, leading many to take 

up the drug habit again. The anhedonia symptoms of 

methamphetamine abuse are particularly acute. Many 

methamphetamine users in society try to alleviate the 

effect of the methamphetamine “crash” by buffering the 

effects with other drugs such as cocaine or heroin. 45 

CHALLENGES FOR CONVENTIONAL 

MILITARIES 

The increasing number of civilians comprising 

belligerent groups, when combined with the types 

and availability of drugs, means that the presence of 

intoxicated combatants is likely to be an abiding feature 

of war in the near term. While drug use by individuals 

17

in war occurs for a variety of reasons and complicates 

conditions on the battlefield, the effects are more 

far reaching in an era of globalization. Combatants 

under the influence of drugs have been known to 

commit massive human rights abuses against rival 

groups, creating immense human suffering that affects 

regional stability. For example, carnival activities in 

Yugoslavia sent waves of refugees throughout Europe 

and eventually led to a Western military response to 

the immense humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in 

the heart of Europe. 46 

More significantly, as globalization draws more 

actors together for purposes that range from development 

projects to security and stabilization operations, 

from peacekeeping to humanitarian missions, they 

are more likely to come into contact with intoxicated 

combatants. While some individuals are seduced by the 

availability of drugs to join a warring group, those who 

are coerced to join through drugging further denigrate 

human rights standards and serve to undermine the 

establishment of civil society. 

It is likely that Western militaries will continue 

to deal with the effects of the presence of drugs on 

the battlefield. Over time, this will likely pressure 

defense establishments to reconsider their current 

approaches. One way such reconsideration may occur 

is under the new imperatives to come to grips with the 

dynamics of asymmetric warfare and the nuances of 

conducting counterinsurgency operations. The use of 

drugged combatants by nonstate groups lends itself 

to asymmetric approaches to counter the superior 

technical firepower and skills of Western militaries. 

With patterns of contemporary war composed of 

mostly civil wars fought by nonprofessional armed 

groups with less sophisticated weaponry, few potential 

18

adversaries of the West will wage a conventional high 

tech war because doing so presents enormous training 

and logistical and resource requirements that few 

groups can produce. 47 Drug use, with its effects on 

combatant behavior, can narrow the gap by exploiting 

the Western legal and ethical regimes under which 

troops must operate. Enemies may consider the West’s 

humanitarian sensitivity to enemy casualties as an 

advantage: they “may purposely put their own people 

in jeopardy, if doing so complicates or adversely affects 

the West’s use of its military power.” 48 Increasingly, 

opponents of Western military forces have sought to 

present them with moral and ethical quandaries. 

Drugged fighters may operate in unfamiliar and 

seemingly irrational ways to members of professional 

conventional forces, yet the standard response to 

engaging any fighter whether he is sober or intoxicated 

is the same—a threat on the battlefield in combat is 

dealt with by lethal force. This tactic is problematic 

since the battlefield and combat are no longer the only 

contexts where professional militaries are deployed 

and operate. In the years since the end of the Cold War, 

Western militaries have engaged in peacekeeping, 

stability and security missions, and nation-building 

activities that were all characterized in the United States 

as “military operations other than war” (MOOTW). 

Such operations have lower thresholds of violence and 

more restrictive rules of engagement. In the face of 

more constrained uses of force by intervening forces, 

militaries engaging drugged forces at different points 

along the spectrum of war are still a missing piece of 

any professional military’s doctrine. 

The need for doctrine is especially acute when wars 

include children who are recruited through addiction; 

professional military leaders with forces involved 

19

in the conflict will have to prepare their troops well 

in advance for a possible confrontation. Military 

operations will require more briefings to troops on 

the possibility of facing not only drugged adversaries, 

but drugged child soldiers. With the potential of 

using lethal force against drugged children, Western 

militaries are just beginning to recognize the effects on 

an individual service member in the aftermath of such 

a confrontation. However, formal doctrine to guide 

the practices and conduct of professional soldiers who 

encounter such situations is lacking. For example, 

there is a lack of specialized training to teach frontline 

conventional soldiers how to deal with drugged child 

soldiers. This was the conclusion reached by the Center 

for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, which held a 

seminar for the U.S. Marine Corps and recommended 

the development of tactics, techniques, and procedures 

for these situations. 49 Although the problems of combatant 

unpredictability and unconventional fighting are being 

recognized by professional militaries, the contribution 

of drugged combatants to the complexity of many 

conflicts has not strongly registered with the defense 

establishments of Western governments. 

However, other pressing challenges are presented 

by the presence of intoxicated combatants for professional 

militaries that are being overlooked. Table 

4 reflects the status of those conflicts that have been 

influenced by drug use among combatants. Ongoing 

conflicts are those where no settlement among the 

warring parties has been reached, and violence 

continues in various scopes and degrees. Abeyant 

conflicts are those where ceasefires exist between the 

belligerents or an intervening force to maintain peace 

is present. These conflicts, however, may also feature 

breakdowns of ceasefires that are then reestablished, or 

20

the high likelihood of violence returning if third party 

interveners depart. Settled conflicts are based upon 

agreements among the belligerents to end hostilities or 

exist in situations where one belligerent has defeated 

an opponent on the battlefield. 

Minimal Acute Unrestrained 

Drug Use Drug Use Drug Use 

Ongoing Iraq Colombia, Peru, Uganda 

Philippines 

Abeyant Haiti Bosnia, Congo, Liberia, Sierra 

Russia, Rwanda Leone, Somalia 

Settled ------ ------ ------ 

Table 4. Status of Conflicts Influenced by Drug Use 

among Combatants. 

As Table 4 demonstrates, there are no settled 

conflicts where there has been widespread use of 

drugs by warring groups. This is not to suggest a direct 

causal link—that drug use causes conflicts to endure. 

It does suggest that it is an influential factor on a range 

of issues that complicate efforts to reach ceasefires and 

political settlements. 

Nonetheless, if drugged combatants do not directly 

contribute to the prolonging of conflict, Table 4 does 

reveal that drugged fighters are a prominent feature 

of protracted conflicts. This presents a significant 

challenge for Western militaries to overcome since 

such protraction creates conditions for drug use among 

their forces as well. The longer duration of armed 

conflicts contributes to drug use among members of 

professional militaries when deployed far from home. 

Lengthier times spent in the field can generate personal 

hardships among troops that can be soothed by drug 

21

use. A type of drug quagmire can develop where 

protraction creates an atmosphere for the greater 

demand for drugs among irregular and professional 

forces. 

Professional militaries of developed states generally 

possess better resources to diagnose and address the 

type of stress that individual fighters undergo and 

have access to prescription medication administered 

by experts. 50 However, such access to professionals 

and tightly controlled prescription drugs along 

with monitoring possible drug abuse do not make 

professional forces immune from drug abuse. With 

conflicts growing more protracted, the temptation 

to turn to illegal drugs also grows among troops of 

Western militaries. The rate of illicit drug use increased 

among U.S. military members in 2005, to an estimated 

5 percent, nearly double the rate measured in 1998. 51 

Dr. Thomas R. Kosten, a psychiatrist at the Veterans 

Affairs Medical Center in Houston, traces drinking and 

drug use to the stress of working in a war zone. “The 

treatment that they take for it is the same treatment 

that they took after Vietnam,” Dr. Kosten said. “They 

turn to alcohol and drugs.” 52 

Protraction of a conflict can also have repercussions 

in recruitment that present opportunities for drug 

use to become problematic. As two simultaneous 

protracted conflicts with irregulars continue for the 

U.S. military and with more service members opting 

out of continued service, recruitment becomes a higher 

priority but is also exceptionally difficult in the face of 

an ongoing unpopular war in Iraq. The reduction of 

recruitment standards during protracted wars risks 

bringing the drug habits of society into the ranks of the 

professional military. 

22

As the recruiting climate has grown more difficult, the 

Army also has increased the number of recruits who require 

moral waivers because of misdemeanor offenses. 

Through April, about 15.5 percent of recruits required 

some kind of waiver for a misdemeanor offense, drug, 

alcohol incident, or medical problem, compared with 12 

percent for 2004 and 15 percent for 2005 when the Army 

missed its recruiting goal. (emphasis added) 53 

As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue, the use 

of moral waivers has increased and has led to accepting 

many more recruits who have had contact with law 

enforcement and the courts due to drug offenses. 

When peacekeeping forces have been sent to conflicts 

where drugs are available, they have not proven immune 

from succumbing to drug use themselves. Much 

like combatants, peacekeepers are frequently exposed 

to dangerous, provoking, or humiliating situations and 

have limited possibilities to express the resulting anger 

and frustration due to restrictive rules of engagement 

that encourage neutrality. Self-medication with alcohol 

and drugs to calm down or to “take the edge off” have 

not been uncommon. 54 In Cambodia, the favorite drink 

among the United Nations (UN) personnel at parties 

was the “Space Shuttle,” made “by distilling a pound 

of marijuana over a 6-week period with increasingly 

good quality spirits. It is a work of love, and the final 

product is an amber-colored liquid that tastes like 

cognac. We drink it with rounds of Coke.” 55 

Command and control problems due to drug use 

can also affect professional militaries. For example, the 

British Army has confirmed one instance of a major 

compromise in command and control due to drug use 

among its ranks in the war in Iraq. One former soldier 

claimed that 75 men from his company, 60 percent of its 

strength, regularly took cocaine, ecstasy, or marijuana. 

23

“There’s guys who have to have two or three lines of 

coke before they can operate,” he said. 56 British officials 

arrested several soldiers for exchanging their weapons 

in Germany for $4,700 worth of cocaine which was 

then later sold to their comrades in Iraq. 57 

Conscript armies are exceptionally vulnerable to 

drug use for many of the same reasons that irregular 

forces are—their members are not full-time, regularly 

trained military professionals. As a result, draftees and 

conscripts have sought drugs as a way to cope with 

an unfamiliar atmosphere and can behave similarly 

to irregular troops. Drugged conscripts have been a 

danger to their own forces; a soldier stationed near 

the Russian border with Georgia shot and killed eight 

of his colleagues (and wounded five others) during 

a hallucinogenic fit brought on by eating magic 

mushrooms. 58 Widespread drug problems among 

conscripts in the Red Army during the Afghanistan 

campaign resulted in serious discipline problems like 

desertion and the stealing of weapons, ammunition, 

and gas to trade for hashish and heroin. Afghan 

forces captured many Russian soldiers while they 

were drugged or seeking to trade their weapons and 

equipment for heroin or hashish. 59 

The breakdown of command and control in 

professional militaries due to drug use can lead to 

committing atrocities as well. For example, U.S. troops 

accused of rape and murder in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, 

were reportedly abusing alcohol, cough syrup, and 

painkillers as a way to cope with their dangerous 

duties. 60 

The addiction rate of returning troops has been of 

constant concern to average citizens as well as elites. 

In November 1971, New York reported nearly 10,000 

heroin-addicted Vietnam veterans which, as discussed 

24

in this monograph, was the result of the U.S. military’s 

clamp down on widespread marijuana use by troops. 61 

Drug use was so severe among American troops in 

the later stages of the Vietnam War that more soldiers 

were evacuated for drug problems than for battlefield 

wounds. 62 Heroin use among Vietnam veterans 

created societal fears of rising crime and disorder. 

Time magazine reflected the public mood by reporting 

that “the specter of weapons-trained, addicted combat 

veterans joining the deadly struggle for drugs [in the 

streets of America] is ominous. . . . [T]he Capone era 

of the ‘20s may look like a Sunday school picnic by 

comparison.” 63 The Nixon administration began to 

fear that the result could precipitate a stronger call for 

an American pullout from Southeast Asia. 64 The Soviet 

Union also faced similar fears when draftees returned 

from Afghanistan with heroin habits. 65 

RESPONSES TO DRUG USE BY COMBATANTS 

The far reaching effects of drug use by combatants 

on human rights, governance, and regional security 

have stimulated the desire by many actors in the 

international arena to intervene in these conflicts to 

ameliorate these effects or bring the fighting to a close. 

Yet, policymakers and military officials from developed 

countries have been left unprepared to face drugged 

combatants due to a lack of doctrine or policy. 

Leaders of professional militaries are beginning to 

recognize the characteristics and effects of drugged 

combatants to explain their battlefield behavior. For 

example, the U.S. Pacific Command describes the Abu 

Sayyaf Group in the Philippines as one that employs 

“ad hoc strategies and activities that are determined 

by the mood swings of individual leaders, many 

25

with eccentric nicknames reflecting bizarre bandit 

camaraderie. Discipline is haphazard, and some are 

addicted to drugs. Still, about 140 hostages have been 

taken during their last 2 years of violent kidnapping 

sprees.” 66 While recognizing the challenges of drug 

intoxicated combatants is a healthy first step, what 

is needed is broader and deeper recognition of the 

dimensions of combat supply and demand of drugs in 

numerous conflicts. 

Although militaries from developed countries are 

beginning to acknowledge the strategic and tactical 

effects of drugged combatants, little has changed in the 

way military and political leaders have conceptualized 

the role of illegal narcotics in warfare. Field Manual 

(FM) 3-24, the new U.S. Army field manual for 

counterinsurgency operations, does not include the 

topic of drug intoxicated combatants, even though U.S. 

forces continue to face them in ongoing operations. 

Drug use, along with drug financed warfare, is still 

considered to be more criminal than military in its 

implications and effects. However, as Martin Van 

Creveld described in The Transformation of War, “Often 

crime will be disguised as war whereas in other cases, 

war itself will be treated as if waging it were a crime.” 67 

In other words, not only will the actions of combatants 

resemble criminal acts, but the combatants themselves 

will share more in common with criminals than with 

professional armies. This is clearly the case in acts like 

carnival and the inclusion of former convicts in the 

ranks of some military forces. 

Such an environment speaks to the need for 

greater interagency cooperation among agencies of 

the Department of Defense (DoD), Department of 

Justice, Department of Treasury, and the Department 

of Homeland Security to monitor and assess the ways 

26

drugs are being used by irregular forces so that new 

strategies can be added to the plans of conventional 

forces who may intervene in such operational 

environments. Joint coordination among military 

and civilian agencies like the Federal Bureau of 

Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, 

and Customs is not unusual. Military and civilian 

cooperation routinely happens with counternarcotics 

operations; an example is the Joint Interagency Task 

Force-East, headquartered in Key West, Florida. 

More techniques from law enforcement to track and 

trace combatant supply and demand will be needed. 

This will prepare militaries for encounters with drug 

intoxicated combatants by developing early warning 

signals in order to adjust their tactics in particular 

conflicts. Empowering intelligence agencies is pivotal 

to supporting long-term strategies to bring drug 

trafficking under control and to build a foundation for 

a sustainable peace in particular conflicts. Knowing 

who among the population is involved in the drug 

trade and the methods used to transport the product 

can contribute to tactics designed to sap the economic 

and social base of an insurgency. Practices like 

community mapping, used by big city police forces like 

Boston to chart who is dealing and consuming drugs, 

should be integrated into military operations that 

occur in environments where drugged combatants are 

known to be active. Interagency cooperation among 

intelligence agencies, as well as routine contact with 

police forces and other agencies on the ground like the 

UN and nongovernment organizations (NGOs), can 

further both counternarcotics and counterinsurgency 

operations. 

A networked series of institutions would be needed 

to fully tackle monitoring efforts. The UN has an 

Office on Drugs Crime, and there are several regional 

27

law enforcement institutions like Europol. However, 

“fusion centers” are needed in each institution that 

allow for the exchange of information and ideas 

among different international, regional, and local 

institutions and across different agencies. Such fusion 

centers would focus on how drug patterns are not just 

affecting law enforcement, but patterns of organized 

political violence as well. 

Although militaries have resisted participating in 

counternarcotics operations, dealing with drugged 

combatants is separate from interdiction and eradication 

programs. Nesting operations targeted at reducing 

drug use in campaign plans from the beginning, 

while including new training to reconsider the military 

objectives in these types of conflicts, will lessen 

institutional apprehension of the military over time. 

Smuggling routes through transshipment countries 

need to be thought of by military planners as crucial 

lines of support for the enemy. Such routes are not just 

for weapons, but are critical to the warmaking effort of 

many combatants. Hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies 

should be added to campaign lists as objectives that need 

to be secured in an intervention. These facilities are also 

now a warmaking resource for combatant groups and 

their looting has contributed to human rights abuses 

and combatant unpredictability. Attaching as much 

importance to these facilities as to weapons depots, 

ammunition dumps, and campaign headquarters will 

lead to a decrease in the overall violence in the conflict. 

Additional institutional measures should be put in 

place before the next intervention in environments 

that include drug intoxicated irregular fighters. 

When militaries are likely to encounter drugged child 

soldiers, programs for counseling individual members 

should be prepositioned in medical corps so that troops 

28

can receive immediate counseling. Once again, with 

accurate intelligence and monitoring undertaken with 

interagency cooperation, troops may be briefed well in 

advance for such encounters. 

Institutions of professional military education, 

like war colleges, traditionally have been places 

where the free exchange of ideas and wide ranging 

adaptations have been examined and discussed before 

conflicts erupt. By including people from a variety of 

backgrounds outside the military, today’s professional 

military education can generate greater synergy for 

the development of strategies and tactics to combat 

drugged adversaries of the 21st century. Establishing 

regular conferences and sponsoring research projects 

on drugged irregulars would also add to the body of 

knowledge that may be used to develop new doctrine. 

Following up on the conclusions reached by the Marine 

Corps’ Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities 

(CETO) to develop tactics, techniques, and procedures 

for confronting child soldiers should at least be 

addressed since, as argued, much of the recruitment of 

child soldiers is linked to providing them with drugs. 

Capturing the knowledge of those fielded forces who 

have encountered drug intoxicated combatants would 

also be useful; more focused after-action reviews and 

lessons learned activities on the actions of drugged 

adversaries would be useful in building an increasing 

knowledge base on the issue. 

In situations where nation-building and stability 

operations are mandated, the main goal of governments 

in responding to conflicts where there is widespread 

drug use by combatants should be to reduce the level 

of violence through a reduction of the use of drugs. 

By lowering the demand for drug use, command and 

control can be strengthened among irregular forces, 

thus increasing the likelihood of adherence to the 

29

parameters of any possible peace accord. Reducing 

drug use also limits the potential for further atrocities. 

By focusing on reduced drug use, peace initiatives 

have a greater chance to flourish and thereby lessen the 

conditions of intense violence that led many fighters 

to take up the drug habit. Therefore, detoxification 

programs should be integrated into demobilization 

efforts, no matter the degree or types of drugs used by 

combatants. While militaries may have their medical 

corps undertake such detoxification programs, merely 

providing security for NGOs who do so may be enough. 

These programs should not be thought of as separate 

from demobilization to be run in its aftermath; they 

should happen concomitantly and include members of 

society who form the basis of informal social controls 

on drug use. Village elders, mayors and the displaced 

must be empowered again—detoxification programs 

under traditional social norms offer that chance. 

Outside agencies, NGOs and the UN Office of the 

High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should 

begin to put such considerations within their existing 

activities in war torn countries. In many cases, this 

is not possible, given the duration and magnitude of 

the conflicts. In such instances, members of diaspora 

communities may be able to assist in reconstructing the 

rough outlines of these informal social controls. Once 

again, these programs need to become part of existing 

military doctrine on counterinsurgency, peacekeeping, 

and stability operations. 

The tracking of the growing use of methamphetamine 

among irregular forces must be made a top priority. 

Since methamphetamine is so easy to manufacture 

and does not require a warring group to be near a 

traditional drug crop or close to a transshipment point 

or smuggling route, meth is likely to be a feature in 

more conflicts. In fact, many conflicts are occurring 

30

in countries with high levels of meth production or 

those that lie along trafficking routes. 68 This forms 

the potential for greater supply and, as seen, war can 

generate the demand. Additionally, the withdrawal 

symptoms of methamphetamine are particularly 

acute and prolonged, resulting in unpredictable and 

potentially higher levels of violence. Regular meth 

users in peacetime environments often seek out 

other drugs—like cocaine—to mitigate withdrawal 

symptoms. Combatant demand for other drugs may 

also rise if the methamphetamine supply is interrupted 

in a particular conflict where meth use was widespread, 

leading to an outbreak in violence such as looting 

pharmaceutical drugs. 

However, other lurking challenges are presented 

by drugs for professional militaries that are being 

overlooked. As previously mentioned, protracted 

conflicts fought by conventional forces can create the 

conditions that give rise to the temptation of troops 

to abuse drugs. More than directly diminishing the 

combat effectiveness of troops and undermining the 

overall health of an individual service member, the 

result can be the erosion of domestic support for a war. 

Unlike professional members of the military, draftees, 

and even reservists, are drawn directly from society 

and do not reside in guarded bases and insulated 

barracks when they are not deployed. As previously 

mentioned, citizens become especially concerned by 

the drug habits of returning veterans. One reason for 

this concern is that a greater proportion of the average 

citizenry have direct contact with conscripts and 

reservists than with full-time members of the armed 

forces. When drafted veterans and reservists return 

from their tours, the effects of the war on them and 

on society at large are more noticeable to the average 

citizen. 

31

Unlike the Vietnam era, the U.S. military currently 

has an all-volunteer force which is in large measure 

designed to compartmentalize protracted conflicts with 

irregular forces and isolate their effects on society by 

not relying on draftees. 69 Also unlike Vietnam, DoD has 

ongoing programs that address combat stress, mental 

trauma, drug use, and addiction. Yet, due to continuing 

U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and 

the increased tempo of deployments, especially among 

National Guard and Reserve troops, the atmosphere 

exists for the creation of personal stress that can lead 

many to abuse drugs. 70 Mental health trauma is on the 

rise among U.S. ground forces. U.S. Army studies show 

that more than a third of combat-deployed troops seek 

mental health care when they return home. 71 Another 

study showed that 31 percent of all veterans returning 

from Afghanistan and Iraq were diagnosed with 

mental health and/or psychosocial problems, while 

20 percent had “substance abuse disorders.” 72 The 

trend is not encouraging. According to figures from 

the Veterans Health Administration, 3,057 veterans of 

the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were diagnosed with 

drug dependency from 2005-07, while only a total of 

277 veterans were diagnosed from 2002-04. 73 

While the effects of these numbers on the wider 

society have yet to be felt, of most concern is that the 

support structure to handle such numbers is weak; 

training for mental health professionals is inadequate. 

A survey of 133 military mental health providers 

conducted from 2003-05 shows that 90 percent of 

the psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers 

reported no formal training or supervision in four 

post-traumatic stress disorder therapies recommended 

by the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs. 74 

Additionally, not all military installations offer in- 

32

patient treatment for drug abuse, forcing many veterans 

to go untreated. Depending on how the wars in Iraq 

and Afghanistan conclude, the numbers of returning 

service members will place additional stress on this 

system, and without adequate institutional capacity, 

illegal narcotics abuse may rise sharply among this 

group and stoke concerns among the public. 75 In order 

to reduce this potential, greater institutional support is 

needed for the military to monitor, treat, and provide 

long-term care for active duty troops and veterans. 

RECOMMENDATIONS 

For confronting drugged irregular fighters: 

• Increase interagency contacts among federal 

law enforcement, national intelligence, and 

defense agencies to monitor the use of drugs by 

irregular fighters. 

• Promote “fusion centers” at multiple levels of 

government to share information on drug use in 

zones of conflict. 

• Extend the use of fusion centers to international 

agencies that currently monitor worldwide 

and regional drug trafficking and drug use 

patterns. 

• Encourage community mapping practices 

among military forces to chart drug dealing and 

consumption patterns in countries of conflict 

and include them in campaign planning. 

• Expand military campaign planning lists to 

include pharmacies, clinics, and hospitals to 

protect their supply of drugs from potential 

looting. 

• Increase participation of individuals in other 

agencies of the federal government in institu- 

33

tions of professional military education to raise 

the awareness of the effects of drugged combatants 

in ongoing conflicts. 

• Develop focused research on the growing use of 

methamphetamines by combatants. 

• Engage NGOs that focus on the issue of child 

soldiering to gauge the level of drug use in 

particular conflicts. 

• Include detoxification and rehabilitation programs 

as part of demobilization efforts in particular 

conflicts. 

• Develop ways to contact diaspora communities 

which may possess expertise in reestablishing 

informal social controls on drug use in a given 

conflict. 

For coping with potential increases in substance 

abuse in the armed services: 

• Increase funding for mental health training, 

expertise, and institutions to cope with potential 

increases in substance abuse disorders by 

veterans involved in protracted conflicts. 

• Ensure that all military installations offer inpatient 

care services for the treatment of drug 

abuse by veterans returning from Afghanistan 

and Iraq or ensure that care can be given at 

nearby medical facilities in the community. 

• Decrease the number of moral waivers for drug 

and alcohol abuse given to new recruits. 

The presence of drugged fighters is not unknown 

in the history of warfare. Yet widespread drug use 

on the battlefield coincides with a perceptible change 

in the nature and type of wars that are occurring— 

protracted conflicts largely fought by nonprofessional 

34

combatants are taking place in an international system 

that facilitates bringing people and goods into closer 

and quicker contact. The presence of intoxicated 

combatants will continue to be a feature of armed 

conflict. Coming to grips with the effects of such an 

intersection will be an enduring requirement for 

many conventional militaries. Preparing now for this 

requirement can help give the strategies of the future 

the best chance of success. 

ENDNOTES 

1. See, for example, Svante Cornell, “Narcotics, Radicalism 

and Armed Conflict in Central Asia: The Islamic Movement of 

Uzbekistan,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Winter 2005; Indra de 

Soysa, “The Resource Curse: Are Civil Wars Driven by Rapacity 

or Paucity,” in Mats Berdal and David Malone, eds., Greed and 

Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, Boulder, CO: Lynne 

Rienner Publishers, 2000; David Keen, “The Economic Function 

of Violence in Civil Wars,” Adelphi Paper 320, Oxford, MA: Oxford 

University Press, 1998. 

2. Ronald K. Siegel, Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind 

Altering Substances, Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2005. See 

also Mary Midgley, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature, 

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978; Thomas Stephen Szasz, 

Ceremonial Chemistry, New York: Anchor Press, 1974. 

3. Parliament of Canada, “Conflict, Drugs, and Mafia 

Activities,” Contribution to the Preparatory Work for the Hague 

Peace Conference, May 11-16, 1999, March 1999, available at www. 

parl.gc.ca/37/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/ille-e/presentation-e/ 

labrousse2-e.htm. 

4. Alcohol was the preferred drug of choice among European 

troops during the colonial era. As American and British forces 

faced each other over the independence of the colonies in 1776, 

both militaries included in their respective doctrines that men 

could not be expected to fight without their regular rations of 

rum. Presaging contemporary episodes in today’s conflicts, the 

35

British routinely sought to destroy General Washington’s stores 

of rum as a way to affect American morale. See Ian Williams, Rum: 

A Social and Sociable History, New York: Nation Books, 2005. 

5. The word “hashish” is apocryphally associated with the 

corruption of the Arabic word for “assassin.” The assassins of the 

11th century were said to have been recruited after long smoking 

sessions of hashish. See Michael Pollan, Botany of Desire, New 

York: Random House, 2001, pp. 172-173. 

6. Matters were made worse by the fact that morphine and 

opium were cheaper than alcohol and widely available in the 

United States at that time. See Paul Gahlinger, Illegal Drugs: A 

Complete Guide to Their History, Chemistry, Use, and Abuse, New 

York: Plume, 2001, p. 26. 

7. W. Travis Hanes III and Frank Sanello, The Opium Wars, 

Naperville, IL: Source Books, 2002, p. 171. 

8. Dominic Streatfeild, Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, 

New York: Picador, 2001, p. 155. Reflecting the change in societal 

attitudes toward narcotics more generally at the beginning of 

the 20th century, drug use by soldiers was viewed as harming 

the war effort and disruptive of good order among the troops. 

These attitudes were strengthened when some returning veterans 

in Europe and America sought out cocaine as a way to “cure” 

their addiction to morphine and heroin acquired after treatment 

of their war wounds. In fact, drug addicted veterans in the United 

States often scrounged for junk metal to pay for drugs, earning 

them the nickname “junk men” and then simply “junkies.” See 

Gahlinger, p. 60. 

9. Bruce Eisner, Ecstasy: The MDMA Story, Berkeley, CA: 

Ronin, 1994, p. 127. 

10. This liquid form allowed the body to more quickly 

absorb the drug than amphetamine pills, but was more highly 

addictive. The addictive quality of the drug was felt particularly 

acutely in Japan when returning soldiers arrived home, and 

methamphetamine supplies stored for military use became 

available to the public at the conclusion of the war. 

36

11. L. A. Young, L. G. Young, M. M. Klein, and D. Beyer, 

Recreational Drugs, New York: Berkeley Books, 1977. 

12. Edward Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs, New York: Little, 

Brown & Co., 1972, p. 189. In addition, with the current “zero 

tolerance” of drug use and possession by the U.S. military 

combined with more frequent deployment rotations, some troops 

have resorted to unorthodox ways to achieve intoxication. There 

have been episodes of troops using over-the-counter cough and 

cold medications like Nyquil to get intoxicated. 

13. John Mueller, Remnants of War, New York: Cornell 

University Press, 2004, p. 86. 

14. Robert MacCoun and Peter Reuter, Drug War Heresies, 

New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 85. 

15. These descriptions do not match the clinical and 

pharmacological descriptions of the physiological and 

psychological effects of these drugs. For example, although 

marijuana is clinically classified as a “depressant” and is used 

by combatants to relax, it is also used as a stimulant in terms of 

motivating an individual to engage in combat. The term “relaxant” 

also refers to a combatant’s desire to find an escape rather than to 

the strict physiological effects. 

16. “Afghan Soldiers Report Getting Hashish Rations,” St. 

Louis Dispatch, May 25, 1989, p. 18A. 

17. Mueller, pp. 92-93. 

18. Martin Booth, Opium: A History, New York: St. Martin’s 

Griffin, 1996, p. 269. 

19. Jean-Charles Brissard, Zarqawi: The New Face of al-Qaeda, 

New York: Other Press, 2005, p. 49. 

20. Martin Boas and Anne Hatloy, “Alcohol and Drug 

Consumption in Post War Sierra Leone—An Exploration,” Oslo, 

Norway: Institute for Applied International Studies, pp. 43-44. 

21. Mueller, pp. 89-92. 

37

22. Addressing Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking in Iraq: 

Report of the UNODC Fact Finding Mission, New York: United 

Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2005, p. 13. 

23. Interviews conducted with the author at the U.S. Army 

War College on January 6, 2006. Interviewees wish to remain 

anonymous. 

24. Anonymous Marine, “A Marine Reports from Iraq,” 

Washington Times, November 22, 2005, p. 21. The production of 

methamphetamine does require certain chemicals with an essential 

ingredient, pseudophedrine, which is found in commercial 

decongestants like Sudafed. Obtaining the needed amounts of 

pseudophedrine to create methamphetamine requires access to 

pharmacies or other places where the drug is available which, 

in turn, often necessitates burglary, robbery, or looting. See also 

Robert Looney, “The Business of Insurgency: The Expansion of 

Iraq’s Shadow Economy,” The National Interest, Fall 2005. 

25. Liquor, not included in this table, is almost always added 

to the mix of narcotics to intensify the desired effects. 

26. Most telling about the use of basuco by Colombian 

guerrillas is that no one smokes paste except those involved in 

cocaine production. Coca paste is a precursor to the production of 

cocaine. 

27. Jane’s Sentinel Security Assessment-West Africa, December 

2005. 

28. Amnesty International, Child Soldiers: A Global Issue, July 

19, 2006, available at web.amnesty.org/pages/childsoldiers-backgroundeng. 

29. Amnesty International, “War Children Tell Their Story,” 

Amnesty Magazine, November/December 2000, p. 3. 

30. Susan McKay, “Girls as ‘Weapons of Terror’ in Northern 

Uganda and Sierra Leonean Rebel Fighting Forces,” Studies in 

Conflict and Terrorism, April 2005, p. 386. 

38

31. Brian Bennett, “Stolen Away,” Time, May 1, 2006, p. 38. 

32. Kasaija Phillip Apuuli, “The ICC Arrest Warrants for 

Lord’s Resistance Army and the Prospects for Peace in Northern 

Uganda,” Journal of International Criminal Justice, 2006, p. 180. 

33. Tony Perry, “Fallouja Insurgents Fought Under Influence 

of Drugs, Marines Say,” Los Angeles Times, January 13, 2005, p. 1. 

34. Ibid. 

35. St. Louis Dispatch, 1989. 

36. MacCoun and Reuter, p. 99. 

37. Parliament of Canada, “Sub-Saharan Africa Facing the 

Problems of Drugs,” April 2001, available at www.parl.gc.ca/37/1/ 

parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/ille-e/presentation-e/labrousse1-e.htm. 

38. Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe, and 

Power in the Heart of Africa, New York: Basic Books, 2001, p. 140. 

39. Stephen Ellis, The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia 

and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War, New York: New 

York University Press, p. 108. 

40. Mark Duffield, “Globalization, Transborder Trade, and 

War Economies” in Mats Berdal and David Malone, eds., Greed 

and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, Boulder, CO: Lynne 

Rienner Publishers, 2000, p. 81. 

41. Jeremy Weinstein, Inside Rebellion, New York: Cambridge 

University Press, 2007, pp. 155-159. 

42. Stephen Lee Meyers, “Top Chechen Rebel Dies in Russian 

Raid,” International Herald Tribune, June 18, 2006, available at www. 

iht.com/articles/2006/06/18/news/chechnya.php. 

43. Healthcare Customwire, “Beslan School Attackers Were 

Drug Addicts,” October 17, 2004. In addition, one of the effects 

of heroin withdrawal is insomnia which may have contributed to 

stress and unpredictability of the Beslan hostage takers. 

39

44. Little study has been done on the presence of anhedonia 

among combatant forces, but it may explain why individual 

fighters continue to wage war since it allows continued access 

to the desired drug (or to other drugs that may offer relief), and 

violence may be associated with the positive feelings that the drug 

itself provides. 

45. Narconon, “Methamphetamine History,” www.stopaddiction 

.com/meth_history.html#. 

46. Berdal and Malone. 

47. Charles Dunlap, Jr., “Preliminary Observations: 

Asymmetric Warfare and the Western Mindset,” Challenging 

the U.S. Symmetrically and Asymmetrically, Carlisle Barracks, PA: 

Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, July 1998, p. 

5. 

48. Ibid., p. 8. 

49. U.S. Marine Corps, Child Soldiers: Implications for U.S. Forces 

Seminar Report, Quantico, VA: Center for Emerging Threats and 

Opportunities, September 23, 2002, available at www.ceto.quantico. 

usmc.mil. The lack of doctrine for confronting child soldiers is not 

unusual among Western militaries. The British and Canadian 

militaries continue to have doctrine that deal with specific rules of 

engagement in contexts that may or may not include the presence 

of young combatants. 

50. Rick Rogers, “Some Troops Headed Back to Iraq are 

Mentally Ill,” San Diego Union Tribune, March 19, 2006, p. 1. 

51. Paul von Zeilbauer, “For U.S. Troops at War, Liquor is 

Spur to Crime,” New York Times, March 13, 2007, p. 1. 

52. Ibid. 

53. Greg Jaffe, “Army’s Recruiting Push Appears to Have Met 

Goals,” Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2006. 

40

54. Lars Mehlum, “Alcohol and Stress in Norwegian United 

Nations Peacekeepers,” Military Medicine, October 1999. 

55. Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait, and Andrew Thomson, 

Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, New York: Miramax 

Books, 2004, p. 77. 

56. David Leppard, “Soldiers in ‘Guns for Coke’ Scandal,” The 

Sunday Times, September 24, 2006, p. 1. 

57. Mary Jordan, “British Soldiers Allegedly Traded Guns for 

Cocaine,” Washington Post, September 25, 2005, p. 18. 

58. Mark MacKinnon, “Russian Forces Jittery Even on Army 

Base,” Toronto Globe and Mail, November 30, 2002, p. 14. 

59. Arthur Bonner, “Afghanistan’s Other Front: The World of 

Drugs,” New York Times, November 2, 1985, p. 1. 

60. “Stress Sent Soldiers to Drink and Drugs, Colleague 

Testifies,” CNN.com, available at www.cnn.com/2006/world/ 

meast/08/08/iraq.mahmoudiya/index.html. 

61. Booth, p. 272. 

62. Gahlinger, p. 207. 

63. “The New Public Enemy No 1,” Time, June 28, 1971, p. 20. 

64. Ibid. 

65. Stephen Handleman, Comrade Criminal, New Haven, CT: 

Yale University Press, 1995, p. 190. 

66. U.S. Pacific Command, “Combating Terrorism in the 

Phillipines,” available at www.pacom.mil/piupdates/abusayyafhist. 

shtml. 

67. Martin Van Creveld, The Transformation of War, New York: 

Free Press, 1991, p. 204. 

41

68. See, for example, Richard Rawson and Beth Rutkowski, 

“A Matter of Life and Meth,” Foreign Policy, November/December 

2007, pp. 32-33. In addition to the potential to manufacture 

methamphetamine for consumption by combatants, any excess 

can be sold as a way to raise money for the group or for personal 

enrichment. This may lead to further command and control 

problems as individual fighters become more opportunistic rather 

than dedicated to any distant political goal. See, for example, the 

decline of the Hell’s Angels in America in Frank Owen, No Speed 

Limit, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007, p. 19. 

69. For a more thorough discussion of the differences between 

volunteer forces and conscripts and their effects on society at 

large, see Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, New York: 

Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 74. 

70. Scott Shane, “A Flood of Troubled Soldiers in the Offing, 

Experts Predict,” New York Times, December 16, 2004, p. 1. 

71. Gregg Zoroya, “Psychologist: Navy Faces Crisis,” USA 

Today, January 17, 2007, p. 10. 

72. Karen Seal, Daniel Berenthal, Christian Miner, Saunak Sen, 

and Charles Marmar, “Bringing the War Back Home,” Archives of 

Internal Medicine, Vol. 167, p. 479. 

73. Robert Lewis and Kate McCarthy, “War Vets Fighting 

Addiction,” Military.com, November 26, 2007, available at www. 

military.com/features/0,15240,156956,00.html?ESRC+dod-b.nl. 

74. Seal and Berenthal. 

75. Yet fears about the potential abuse of drugs among 

Canadian forces serving in Afghanistan have not materialized. 

A 2003 Canadian Military Police report stated that the presence 

of cheap and available narcotics in Afghanistan may risk higher 

incidence of drug abuse. See Stephanie Rubec, “Drug Use 

Nightmare for Cdn Forces,” Toronto Sun, November 14, 2004. 

While Canadian participation has gradually intensified over the 

years, a rise in drug abuse has not occurred. This could be due 

to the fact that Canadian participation has not been the same 

as American and British contributions in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

42

Canadians are not using as many reservists, while tours of duty 

for their professional full-time troops have not been as long. 

These two elements may mitigate much of the atmosphere that 

stimulates a widespread desire to turn to drugs. On the other 

hand, the intensity of fighting has recently increased for Canadian 

forces in southern Afghanistan and, if recent history proves 

instructive, the effects of this may yet to be felt by the Canadian 

military establishment when veterans return and seek treatment 

for any mental health issues. 

43

MEXICO'S NARCO-INSURGENCY 

AND U.S. COUNTERDRUG POLICY 

Hal Brands 

May 2009 

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ISBN 1-58487-388-4 

ii

FOREWORD 

Since 2006, Mexico has rapidly climbed the list of potential 

trouble spots for U.S. policymakers. Public security in that 

country has deteriorated dramatically of late. Drug-fueled 

violence has caused thousands of deaths, taken a severe 

psychological toll on the citizenry, and, in the estimation of 

some observers, brought Mexico to the edge of the failed-state 

precipice. 

This rapidly unraveling situation has hardly gone 

unnoticed in Washington. U.S. officials recently unveiled 

the so-called “Merida Initiative,” a multiyear counterdrug 

program designed to help the Mexican government turn the 

tide in its fight against the cartels. As Hal Brands argues in this 

monograph, however, the Merida Initiative may not represent 

an optimal solution to the current crisis. It focuses largely on 

security, enforcement, and interdiction issues, paying less 

attention to the deeper problems that abet the drug trade and 

its devastating consequences. These problems include official 

corruption; U.S. domestic drug consumption; and a host of 

economic, social, and political questions. If left unaddressed, 

these ancillary issues will likely frustrate even a counterdrug 

program as ambitious and well-intended as the Merida 

Initiative. 

To make U.S. counternarcotics strategy fully effective, 

Brands argues, the United States must forge a more creative 

and encompassing approach to the drug trade. This strategy 

should combine interdiction and enforcement initiatives with 

a wide array of social, economic, political, and U.S. domestic 

programs, so as to create a broad, interlocking effort that attacks 

the drug trade from all sides. Forging such a strategy will not 

be easy, Brands warns, but is nonetheless central to addressing 

successfully the growing crisis in Mexico and meeting the 

broader challenges of counterdrug policy. 


Director 


iii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

HAL BRANDS is the author of From Berlin to Baghdad: 

America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World 

(2008), and has written widely on U.S. grand strategy, 

Latin American politics and security, and related 

issues. He is currently writing a history of the Cold 

War in Latin America. Mr. Brands is a Ph.D. candidate 

in the History Department at Yale University. 

iv

SUMMARY 

On June 30, 2008, President George W. Bush signed 

into law the Merida Initiative, a 3-year, $1.4 billion 

counterdrug assistance program for Mexico and 

Central America. The bulk of this money is destined 

for Mexico, where it will help fund counternarcotics 

operations against the powerful cartels that have 

recently turned much of that country into a war zone. 

Since 2006, Mexico has suffered thousands of drugrelated 

killings, a dramatic deterioration of public 

security, and severe psychological and social trauma; 

the Merida Initiative aims to rectify this situation by 

giving the Mexican government the tools to take the 

offensive in its fight against the drug traffickers. The 

program is likely to be extended in some form when 

its original mandate expires, and thus presages a longterm 

U.S. commitment to counternarcotics in Mexico. 

The Merida Initiative is representative of the supplyside 

approach to the narcotics trade that has long 

characterized U.S. drug control policy. It emphasizes 

interdiction, enforcement, and security measures, 

with domestic treatment and prevention programs, 

source-country economic development projects, and 

other alternative strategies assuming considerably 

less importance. This strategy is broadly similar to 

the approach used in Plan Colombia, the multi-billion 

dollar U.S. counternarcotics and counterinsurgency 

commitment to that country, and was recently 

reaffirmed in the 2008 U.S. National Drug Control 

Strategy. 

Unfortunately, this approach to the drug trade 

is unlikely to achieve the desired results in Mexico. 

In focusing largely on security, enforcement, and 

interdiction, the Merida Initiative pays comparatively 

v

little attention to the deeper structural problems that 

fuel the drug trade and drug-related violence. These 

problems, ranging from official corruption in Mexico 

to large-scale drug consumption in the United States, 

have so far frustrated Mexican attempts to rein in the 

cartels, and will likely hinder the effectiveness of the 

Merida Initiative as well. 

For the Merida Initiative to be fully successful, the 

United States must therefore forge a more holistic, 

better-integrated approach to the drug trade. This 

strategy should aim not simply at strengthening the 

forces of order in Mexico, but also at addressing the 

root issues that the Merida Initiative comparatively 

slights. It should partner enforcement and interdiction 

programs with a wide range of measures: anticorruption 

initiatives, social and economic development, 

institution-building, and efforts to restrict U.S. 

domestic demand and illicit arms trafficking into 

Mexico. Implementing such a strategy will not be easy, 

but it will be central to improving U.S. counternarcotics 

policy and ensuring that the Merida Initiative is more 

than a mere palliative for the problems associated with 

the Mexican drug trade. 

vi

MEXICO’S NARCO-INSURGENCY 

AND U.S. COUNTERDRUG POLICY 

INTRODUCTION 

In April 2006, individuals linked to one of Mexico’s 

powerful drug cartels left the severed heads of two 

police officers in front of the municipal building in the 

southern port city of Acapulco. The two officials were 

apparently abducted and killed in retaliation for their 

participation in a shootout with drug traffickers several 

days earlier. Their bloodied heads were accompanied 

by a hand-written note reading, “So that you learn some 

respect,” a message meant to make clear that the cartel 

would brook no interference from the authorities. 1 

Such occurrences have become alarmingly common 

in Mexico. A remarkably similar episode played out 2 

months later in front of the same municipal building, 

while drug-related murders have become so common 

in Acapulco that the city is now colloquially known 

as Narcopulco. 2 Such events in Acapulco are merely 

part of a broader trend sweeping the country, where 

the past several years, especially the period since 2006, 

have seen the emergence of a multi-sided war over the 

drug trade. Heavily armed cartels and their enforcers 

struggle viciously for control of the drug-trafficking 

routes running north into the United States, and 

have recently turned their fire against a government 

desperate to restrain this bloodshed. For now, the 

cartels seem to be winning this battle; despite the best 

efforts of Presidents Vicente Fox (2000-06) and Felipe 

Calderon (2006-present), the drug trade has continued 

apace and drug-related violence has reached ever- 

1

higher levels of intensity. As a result, Mexico has been 

beset by thousands of drug-related deaths over the 

past 2 years, growth of narcotics-fueled corruption, 

drastic deterioration of public security, and marked 

erosion of government authority in various parts of the 

country. The effects of this violence are not limited to 

Mexico; cartel killings have already spilled over into 

the United States, and the potential destabilization of 

Mexico’s economy and political system presents a host 

of dangers to U.S. interests. 

On June 30, 2008, George W. Bush signed into law 

the U.S. response to this deteriorating situation. The 

Merida Initiative (colloquially referred to as “Plan 

Merida” or “Plan Mexico”) is a 3-year, $1.4 billion 

counternarcotics package destined for Mexico and 

Central America, with Mexico to receive the vast 

majority of these funds. The central aim of the Merida 

Initiative is to use U.S. money, training, and equipment 

to strengthen Mexico’s military and law enforcement 

agencies, thereby giving them the capacity to take 

and hold the initiative in the fight against the cartels. 

The initiative likely presages a long-lasting U.S. 

commitment to counternarcotics programs in Mexico; 

U.S. and Mexican officials have referred to the program 

as constituting a “new paradigm” in bilateral security 

relations. 3 

The Merida Initiative may represent a new 

paradigm in U.S.-Mexican affairs, but it also symbolizes 

an old paradigm in U.S. counternarcotics policy. In its 

emphasis on interdiction and enforcement initiatives, 

the Merida Initiative is the latest incarnation of a 

longstanding, supply-side approach to the drug 

trade. This paradigm focuses mainly on strengthening 

international interdiction capacities and indigenous 

security forces in order to increase the pressure on 

2

major foreign traffickers, with domestic treatment 

and prevention initiatives, source-country economic 

development programs, and other alternative strategies 

assuming considerably less importance. This strategy 

has been manifest most recently in Plan Colombia, 

the multi-billion dollar U.S. counternarcotics and 

counterinsurgency commitment to that country, and 

was reaffirmed in the Bush administration’s 2008 

National Drug Control Strategy. 

This approach is politically popular, as shown by 

the bipartisan support that the Merida Initiative has 

thus far received. But is it an effective method of dealing 

with the inter-American drug trade, and will it work in 

Mexico? Given the present design and characteristics 

of the Merida Initiative, the outlook is not auspicious. 

This monograph argues that the Merida Initiative— 

and, by extension, U.S. counternarcotics strategy as a 

whole—suffers from a basic lack of balance. The Merida 

Initiative’s emphasis on internal security, enforcement, 

and interdiction is understandable given the current 

level of chaos and crime in Mexico, and may indeed 

help redress certain of the operational deficiencies that 

have hampered Mexican police and military responses 

to these problems. Yet the initiative pays comparatively 

little attention to the deeper-rooted factors underlying 

these devastating phenomena: official corruption, 

widespread poverty and inequality, weak governance, 

high demand for illegal narcotics in the United States, 

and the flow of illicit arms across the U.S. border into 

Mexico. So far, President Calderon’s failure to resolve 

these issues has hindered his aggressive efforts to 

rein in the narcotics trade, and in view of the current 

thrust of the Merida Initiative, there is little reason to 

think that this program is better suited for such a task. 

Accordingly, while the initiative will probably produce 

3

Cartel. 13 Since the late 1990s, these competing factions 

have done battle across Mexico, contesting each other’s 

control of crucial northern border cities like Nuevo 

Laredo, Juarez, and Tijuana, strategic southern ports 

like Acapulco, and interior transit points between. 

The Federation has launched what the U.S. Drug 

Enforcement Agency (DEA) calls a “violent eradication 

campaign against its rivals,” seeking to dislodge them 

from strongholds like Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana; the 

Gulf and Tijuana cartels have responded with fierce 

attacks throughout Federation territory. 14 

Because these alliances tend to be tenuous and 

impermanent, bloodshed occurs not simply between 

them, but within them as well. Smaller cartels shift 

allegiances frequently, band-wagoning with or 

balancing against the dominant coalition. In early 

2008, for instance, the Milenio Cartel defected from 

the Federation to ally with the Gulf Cartel, touching 

off a new round of bloodshed. (These shifts occur so 

regularly that even Mexican government agencies 

have difficulty determining who is allied with whom 

at a given point.) Power struggles within a single cartel 

are also common, as the arrest or assassination of a 

cartel leader often fosters violent leadership disputes. 

As a result, drug-related violence in Mexico occurs on 

several different planes, resulting in a multi-dimensional 

conflict. 15 

Paramilitary Organizations. 

This bloodshed has been all the more intense due 

to the rise of heavily armed, well-trained paramilitary 

forces as the chief combatants in the struggle for control 

of the drug trade. To outmaneuver and outgun their 

rivals (and also the authorities), cartel leaders have 

7

taken to recruiting former military and police officials, 

common criminals, and security guards to serve as 

foot soldiers in their own private armies. The Sinaloa 

Cartel formed an organization known as Los Pelones 

out of military deserters and turncoat police officers; 

Guzman now employs a similar group, the Fuerzas 

Especiales de Arturo (FEDA), composed of former 

security officials and gang members from Mexico and 

the United States. 

The gold standard for the paramilitaries remains 

Los Zetas, an organization linked to the Gulf Cartel. 

The Zetas initially consisted of 31 deserters from the 

Mexican army’s Airborne Special Forces Groups— 

elite counternarcotics units—that switched sides in 

1997. The organization has since grown considerably, 

now consisting of 100-200 men and women, and is 

distinguished by its advanced training and proficiency 

in violence. As elite commandos, the original Zetas 

were experts in “rapid deployment, aerial assaults, 

marksmanship, ambushes, intelligence collection, 

counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues, 

sophisticated communications, and the art of 

intimidation,” skills they have put to good use in their 

new profession. 16 While many later recruits have come 

from more pedestrian backgrounds, the Zetas have 

compensated by establishing training camps for these 

new members and incorporating roughly 30 Kaibiles, 

or former counterinsurgency specialists from the 

Guatemalan army, into the ranks. 17 

The Zetas resemble less a street gang than an 

efficient, highly evolved criminal organization. The 

group is considered by U.S. officials to be “the most 

technologically advanced, sophisticated, and violent” 

private army in Mexico. 18 They have developed 

an efficient organizational apparatus that involves 

8

individuals as diverse as electronic surveillance 

experts and information-gathering prostitutes. 19 The 

Congressional Research Service reports that the Zetas 

are now “an increasingly sophisticated, three-tiered 

organization, with leaders and middlemen who 

coordinate contracts with petty criminals to carry out 

street work.” 20 

Zeta attacks are often marked by their complex, 

elaborate plans and execution. The Zetas have used the 

cell-phone signatures of their opponents to coordinate 

assassinations and kidnappings, and there are reports 

that they have penetrated the radio frequencies used 

by Mexican law enforcement. 21 The group has been 

known to use the sort of swarming tactics favored by 

the powerful gangs that control the Brazilian favelas, 

and in other cases has put its military experience to 

use in more subtle ways. 22 In 2007, Zetas disguised as 

soldiers infiltrated two police stations under the guise 

of a routine weapons inspection and murdered seven 

government officials. 23 

In carrying out these attacks, the Zetas and 

their competitors employ an astounding amount 

of firepower. The AK-47, long the stock tool of the 

Mexican drug trade, is now accompanied by an array 

of heavy weapons, including MP-5s, AR-15s, P90 

submachine guns, grenade launchers, helicopters, 

improvised explosive devices, and 50-caliber machine 

guns. 24 “You’re looking at the same firepower here 

on the border that our soldiers are facing in Iraq and 

Afghanistan,” says Thomas Mangan of the U.S. Bureau 

of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). 25 

“It is incredible, facing these weapons,” agrees Genaro 

Garcia Luna, Mexico’s Secretary of Public Security. “It 

is truly astonishing, in terms of quantity, in terms of 

caliber.” 26 

9

Another calling card of these groups is their 

brutality. Aiming to terrify their opponents and cow 

the population, organizations like FEDA and the Zetas 

use a variety of savage tactics. The Zetas are known to 

strangle, decapitate, and immolate their victims, often 

after torturing them for hours. Another group linked 

to the Gulf Cartel recently advertised its expertise in 

such practices by lobbing five severed heads onto the 

floor of a crowded nightclub in Uruapan. Decapitated 

heads are often found with notes warning of the 

consequences of opposing the cartels. “See. Hear. Shut 

up. If you want to stay alive,” read one. 27 

Since 2006, these groups have increasingly turned 

their fire on the authorities. The cartels have reacted 

viciously to the Calderon government’s anti-drug 

campaign, responding to arrests and drug seizures by 

launching a sustained, bloody war against those that 

seek to disrupt their activities. Ambushes of police 

convoys and well-coordinated attacks against isolated 

government outposts in the northern part of the country 

have become frequent. 28 The cartels regularly murder 

the officials in charge of designing and prosecuting 

government counternarcotics operations, including 

police chiefs in Nuevo Laredo and elsewhere and the 

head of Mexico’s federal police. 29 The anti-government 

violence has become so intense in recent months as to 

cause speculation that the two warring cartel alliances 

may have agreed to a truce so as to focus on fighting 

the government. Argues one observer, “We’re seeing a 

transition from the gangsterism of traditional hitmen 

to paramilitary terrorism with guerrilla tactics.” 30 

Cartel attacks are thus not meant solely to batter 

the police and the military, but also to sow fear and 

demonstrate that the cartels—not the government—are 

dominant in Mexico. Many drug-related killings are 

10

spectacularly violent, aimed at achieving the maximum 

psychological impact. In one instance, the Zetas stuffed 

four Nuevo Laredo police officers inside barrels of diesel 

fuel and burned them to death. 31 Decapitations such as 

those occurring in Acapulco serve the same purpose. 32 

Cartel enforcers have begun to publish lists of officials 

to be targeted for assassination, post execution videos 

on YouTube, and coerce newspapers into providing 

graphic coverage of their deeds. 33 “They are openly 

defying the Mexican state,” says one analyst. “They 

are showing that they can kill anybody at any time.” 34 

Third-Generation Gangs and the Extent 

of the Threat. 

All told, the effects of this violence have been 

devastating. There were more than 5,000 drug-related 

murders in Mexico between January 2007 and October 

2008, with 3,800 of these deaths occurring in the first 

10 months of 2008 alone. 35 This bloodshed has become 

more wanton as it becomes more common; in September 

2008, unknown assailants threw grenades into a crowd 

in Morelia during an Independence Day celebration. 

Aside from inflicting a mounting toll in lives, the 

violence has occasioned something approaching mass 

psychological trauma. A palpable sense of fear has 

spread across much of the population. Says one woman, 

“We are prisoners in our own homes.” 36 In some 

regions—particularly in areas of Chihuahua, Durango, 

and Sinaloa—the cartels have become so powerful as to 

render government authority nominal or nonexistent. 

One DEA official describes the prevailing situation in 

northern Mexico as “somewhere between Al Capone’s 

Chicago and an outright war.” 37 

This breakdown of government authority in certain 

areas touches on one of the most troubling long-term 

11

implications of the narcotics-fueled insurgency in 

Mexico: the possibility that it may lead to what one 

expert calls the “decomposition of the State.” 38 This 

phenomenon, in which government power gives way 

amid the violence and terror sown by sophisticated 

criminal organizations, has become increasingly 

common in Latin America over the past 2 decades. 

Several countries have witnessed the rise of what are 

known as “third-generation gangs.” Larger, more 

complex, and more powerful than street gangs, thirdgeneration 

gangs use violence and intimidation to 

weaken government institutions and corrode the 

authority of the state. 39 Such groups dominate the 

favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the barrios of Central 

America, which now constitute “no-go” zones for 

law enforcement and government officials. Thirdgeneration 

gangs have emerged as the chief threat 

to internal stability and security in Latin America. 40 

Their activities have given Latin America the highest 

homicide rates in the world, dampened economic 

activity, and dramatically lowered popular confidence 

in government. 41 

The Mexican cartels and their paramilitary organizations 

fit firmly within this trend. Drug-related 

violence in Mexico has contributed markedly to what 

Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution 

calls “the hollowing out of the state.” 42 Through their 

violence, the cartels have laid bare the limits and 

weaknesses of the Mexican authorities, leading to a 

dramatic souring of popular views on the competence 

and credibility of the central government. If current 

trends continue, many observers fear, the government 

may lose its status as the ultimate arbiter of internal 

order, thereby crippling the Mexican state. “The danger 

in Mexico,” argues Tony Payan of the University 

12

of Texas at El Paso, “is that the drug organizations 

become so powerful they can challenge the federal 

government.” 43 

The threat from the cartels does not end at the 

border. The deteriorating situation in Mexico could 

easily trigger a wave of illegal immigration to the 

United States; there were more than five times as many 

such migrants in 2007 as there were in 2006. 44 Rising 

political instability could also imperil the $364 billion in 

annual commerce that crosses the U.S.-Mexican border 

and more than $84 billion in U.S. direct investment. 45 

Finally, Mexico’s turmoil has already begun to spill 

over into Texas, Arizona, and other southwestern 

states. Cartel hit squads have carried out murders 

in Phoenix and other U.S. cities, 46 and an individual 

linked to the Zetas is currently wanted in the killing 

of a Dallas police officer. 47 Traffickers ran down and 

killed a U.S. border patrol agent during a cross-border 

trafficking operation in January 2008, 48 and enforcer 

groups like the Zetas are suspected of mounting 

armed incursions across the frontier to protect drug 

shipments. 49 As former State Department official Ray 

Walser observes, “Not since the Mexican Revolution 

of 1910-1917 has violence in Mexico presented such a 

worrisome challenge to U.S. security.” 50 

The Government Response: Why So Ineffective? 

The Mexican government has hardly been inactive 

in seeking to meet the cartels’ challenge. In 2005, Vicente 

Fox, Mexico’s first post-PRI president, promised to 

wage “the mother of all battles” on the narcotraficantes. 51 

He purged corrupt police commanders (and in 

some cases, entire police forces), targeted high-level 

traffickers, and deployed federal troops to the northern 

13

part of the country. Felipe Calderon, who took office 

in late 2006, has been even more aggressive in his 

response. “There will be no truce and no quarter to the 

enemies of Mexico,” he says, sometimes donning an 

army uniform to underline his resolve. 52 Calderon has 

sent 12,000 federal police officials and 20,000 soldiers 

to 12 states in a series of “lightning strikes” aimed at 

containing drug-related violence. 53 

These efforts have not been without effect. Under 

Calderon, the government has detained more than 

14,000 suspects (including a number of high-profile 

targets) and seized large quantities of heroin, cocaine, 

marijuana, and methamphetamines. Massive police 

and troop deployments have temporarily tamped 

down violence in certain areas, and have somewhat 

weakened the cartels. Los Pelones have become less 

effective, and the Zetas have seen several of their 

leaders arrested or killed. 54 

Unfortunately, the positive effects of the government 

offensive have been transitory at best. The 

recent upsurge in violence indicates that these programs 

have not brought the cartels to heel. While increased 

seizures and interdictions have caused increases 

of up to 20 percent in the street price of cocaine 

and heroin, these measures seem to have made little 

more than a dent in the overall volume and value of the 

drug trade. According to the U.S. Government 

Accountability Office (GAO), Calderon’s offensive 

“does not appear to have significantly reduced drug 

trafficking in Mexico.” 55 

Why this disappointing outcome? One reason 

is that the Mexican government simply does not 

possess the enforcement capabilities necessary to 

confront the cartels. Coordination between Mexico’s 

two federal and more than 1,600 local and state police 

14

forces is weak and inconsistent, complicating efforts 

to mount large-scale operations. The Mexican police 

and military lack the manpower to remain in all drug 

hot-spots indefinitely, and in many cases, the cartels 

simply wait for the troops to depart before resuming 

operations. (One DEA agent calls this the “whack-amole” 

effect.) 56 When the cartels do stand and fight, the 

results are often little better, as groups like the Zetas 

and FEDA are frequently better-armed and bettertrained 

than the authorities. “They are professionals,” 

comments one analyst of the paramilitaries. “The 

authorities don’t have the resources to face up to a 

phenomenon like this.” 57 In such circumstances, it is 

hardly surprising that a majority of Mexicans now feel 

that the government is losing its war on drugs. 58 

But Calderon’s difficulties are not just a matter of 

firepower and numbers. An ability to blunt the antidrug 

offensive is also intimately tied to several deeper 

issues, ranging from widespread poverty, to the 

pervasive deficiencies of Mexican governance, to the 

persistent U.S. role in abetting the drug trade and the 

violence that attends it. 

Of these issues, official corruption looms as perhaps 

the most important. Corruption has long been endemic 

to Mexico, and among aspiring elites, a government 

post is still often seen more as a means of personal 

enrichment than as a vehicle for disinterested public 

service. This mindset is well-captured in the remarks 

of a PRI politician who, upon being elected to serve as 

a federal deputy, told the residents of his town—his 

nominal political base—to “take a good look at my face 

because you are never going to see it again in this flyspecked, 

chicken-shit little village.” 59 

The lucrative and brutal nature of the drug trade 

has compounded this perennial problem. Honest 

15

public servants—whether local cops or prominent 

politicians—who oppose the drug traffickers risk a 

violent, painful death. “Why would anyone want to be 

a cop,” asks one Mexican commentator, “when no one 

can guarantee their safety, less so their life?” 60 Those 

who collaborate with the cartels, on the other hand, 

are in line for massive payoffs—up to $450,000 per 

month for high-ranking officials, according to recent 

reports. 61 

The cartels have used this time-tested formula of 

plata o plomo (“money or lead”) to co-opt large segments 

of the Mexican government. Local police officers have 

reportedly kidnapped the Zetas’ competitors and 

delivered them to that paramilitary organization to be 

tortured and killed. 62 More commonly, the local police 

provide the cartels with early warning of impending 

government operations. “Everyone in the world knows 

we’re coming,” one federal police official complains. 63 

The scope of the corruption is difficult to overstate. 

In several instances, local police forces have become 

so thoroughly infested with informers that the federal 

government has been forced to disband them entirely. 

This same problem applies to the federal police; within 

the Federal Investigative Agency (AFI), an organization 

that was itself created to replace Mexico’s hopelessly 

corrupt Federal Judicial Police, 2,500 of 7,000 agents 

were being investigated for crimes as of late 2005. 64 

Since July 2008, Mexican intelligence agencies have 

warned that the cartels have secured the cooperation 

of members of the national legislature, officials at 

the highest levels of the attorney general’s office, 

and perhaps even the U.S. embassy. 65 The traffickers, 

warns Guillermo Valdes, Mexico’s intelligence chief, 

are “trying to take over the power of the state.” 66 Given 

this level of corruption, it is not difficult to understand 

16

why Calderon’s programs have not produced the 

desired results. 

The armed forces are generally thought to be far 

more honest and trustworthy than the police, which 

is one reason why Calderon has relied so heavily on 

the military since taking office. Even this institution, 

however, is highly vulnerable to the predations of the 

cartels. Low pay and difficult working conditions led 

to an astounding 100,000 desertions between 2000 and 

2006, and nearly 50,000 more since Calderon’s ascension 

to the Presidency. The Zetas and other paramilitary 

organizations tempt soldiers to switch sides by offering 

salaries of up to $3,000 per week (in comparison to 

the $1,100 per month earned by most members of the 

armed forces). 67 Banners hung by the Zetas promise “a 

good salary, food, and medical care for your families,” 

as well as “loans and life insurance.” 68 The undeniable 

allure of these offers has led many Mexican officials 

to fear that militarizing the drug conflict will simply 

lead to greater corruption within the armed forces, 

weakening the one relatively reliable pillar of public 

order in the country. 69 

Calderon’s reliance on the military has proved 

problematic in other respects as well. The Mexican 

army has a sorry history of human rights abuses, 

symbolized by the Tlatelolco massacre of 1968. The 

armed forces’ record has improved in recent decades, 

but violations have increased since the military 

became the essential implement of Calderon’s strategy. 

According to one estimate, there have been more than 

600 human rights violations since late 2006. 70 These 

abuses allegedly include extrajudicial executions, 

illegal detentions, and torture. Soldiers are accused of 

stealing from residents during drug-related searches, 

and of sexually assaulting 14 women in the state of 

17

Coahuila in 2006. 71 These practices, troubling in their 

own right, also come at a cost in terms of weakening 

the effectiveness of government counternarcotics 

programs. Human rights abuses destroy trust between 

the armed forces and the public, making it less likely 

that citizens will cooperate in the fight against the 

drug traffickers. Such a backlash has already occurred 

in several locations. Only 18 percent of residents in 

Ciudad Juarez approve of the army’s presence in that 

city, and the border town of Ojinaga recently witnessed 

public protests against military brutality. 72 One Nuevo 

Laredo resident concisely expresses the hostility bred 

by military and police excesses: “I trust the Zetas more 

than the thieving police and soldiers.” 73 

The structural and institutional weaknesses 

dramatized by police and military malfeasance 

reach far beyond these organizations, extending into 

numerous realms of Mexican governance. The judiciary 

is particularly ill-suited to participate in a vigorous 

attack on drug-related crime. Mexico’s legal system has 

no specific anti-gang laws that could be used to target 

the cartels, and the system as a whole is no less corrupt 

than the law enforcement community. 74 Most Mexican 

courts operate according to arcane, colonial-era rules, 

and the system is so weak that only 1-2 percent of 

all crimes are punished. 75 This remarkably low rate 

of conviction serves as a virtual guarantee that most 

criminals will escape punishment, thus constituting an 

immense deterrent to citizen cooperation with ongoing 

investigations. 

The list of institutional inadequacies goes on. 

The Mexican financial system, for instance, is largely 

opaque to government oversight, and the fact that the 

government cannot compel the banks to report large 

deposits makes investigating money laundering and 

18

corruption all the more difficult. 76 Across these and 

other examples, one thus encounters the same theme: 

In their current state, Mexico’s political and government 

institutions are simply not strong enough to support 

a vigorous counterdrug strategy. 

An equally entrenched impediment to such a 

program is the poverty that afflicts much of Mexican 

society. Despite relatively strong macroeconomic 

growth over the past 15 years, roughly 40 percent 

of Mexico’s population lives in poverty, with 18 

percent living in extreme poverty. Moreover, because 

Mexico’s macroeconomic successes occurred under 

a model that emphasized cutting social programs, 

deregulating wages, and allowing prices to rise freely, 

the government has been slow to deploy meaningful 

initiatives to ameliorate the adverse effects of this 

deprivation on the standard of living. 77 

The cartels thrive on the resentment that often 

results. While the narcotraficantes use violence to silence 

those who oppose them, they also use the proceeds from 

the drug trade to cultivate a loyal following among the 

poor and disaffected. The Gulf Cartel donates food, 

bicycles, clothing, and toys to Nuevo Laredo residents, 

and drug kingpins throw festivals for the residents of 

their strongholds. 78 In many cases, these overtures find 

a receptive audience. Guzman, the leader of the Sinaloa 

Cartel, is the subject of admiring narcorridos, or folk 

songs, that tout his generosity and his ability to elude 

the authorities. 79 In the same vein, the combination of 

desperate poverty and cartel largesse provides a steady 

stream of recruits for these organizations. Young boys 

proclaim, “I want to be a Zeta,” and recipients of the 

group’s benevolence have said, “We are all Zetas.” 80 

As Adolfo Franco of the U.S. Agency for International 

Development (USAID) notes, “The poverty, lack 

19

of opportunity, and feelings of hopelessness that 

characterize many lives in Latin America are often no 

match for the cash flow, livelihood, and social cohesion 

offered by many gangs.” 81 

Finally, efforts to rein in the drug trade have 

foundered on two hugely important U.S. contributions 

to this industry: demand and guns. With respect to 

demand, American buyers continually provide a 

lucrative outlet for drugs smuggled through Mexico, 

and the billions of dollars in annual profits shipped 

back across the border provide the grease that lubricates 

the narcotics trade. “In significant measure,” one U.S. 

official acknowledges, the perpetuation of drug-related 

problems in Mexico “grows out of violent people 

taking advantage of the continuing strong demand in 

the United States.” 82 

Similarly, the United States acts as an inexhaustible 

arsenal for the cartels. While Mexico has very strict gun 

laws, the United States does not, and the vast majority 

of weaponry (90-95 percent) used by the traffickers 

originates north of the border. Cartel operatives and 

middlemen acquire these arms through gun shows, 

pawn shops, and dealers in the United States, or 

by stealing them from U.S. military facilities. The 

weapons are then taken across the border in ones and 

twos, forming what Mexican officials call “the iron 

river.” 83 Though, as one ATF official notes, there is 

“no real way to put a metric” on the number of guns 

taken into Mexico, some observers estimate as high as 

several hundred per day, and there may be up to 40 

million illicit weapons in Mexico. 84 Neither Mexico nor 

the United States has yet fashioned a solution to this 

problem; this failure ensures that U.S. guns continue to 

play an integral role in Mexican violence. 

In sum, the apparent intractability of the drug trade 

and drug-related violence in Mexico does not testify 

20

simply to the paramilitary strengths of the cartels and 

the operational deficiencies of the police and military. 

It is also inextricably linked to the broader context 

of Mexican politics and society, that is, the glaring 

institutional failures of Mexican governance and the 

U.S. role in perpetuating the narcotics industry. In 

short, Mexico’s problems are exceedingly complex and 

deep-seated; any real solution to these problems will 

have to be no less encompassing. 

THE MERIDA INITIATIVE: CHARACTERISTICS, 

AIMS, AND PROSPECTS 

The Merida Initiative, signed into law by President 

George W. Bush on June 30, 2008, represents the U.S 

response to this situation. Named for the Mexican city 

in which it was agreed upon at an October 2007 summit 

between Presidents Bush and Calderon, the initiative 

is a 3-year, $1.4 billion counternarcotics package 

destined for Mexico and Central America, with the 

former country set to receive the vast majority of these 

funds ($400 million of the $465 million to be disbursed 

in the first year, and similar proportions thereafter). 

U.S. counternarcotics aid to Mexico had previously 

hovered around $55-60 million annually in the 7 years 

since 2000; the Merida Initiative thus represents a 

roughly sevenfold expansion of this assistance. For 

its part, the Calderon government has committed $7 

billion in counternarcotics funding over the next 3 

years. 85 Officials on both sides of the border have said 

that they envision the Merida Initiative as the first step 

in a long-term partnership between Washington and 

Mexico City. 86 

The essential thrust of the Merida Initiative is 

to better enable Mexican authorities to contain and 

21

oll back the violence that has roiled that country of 

late. It is designed to complement Calderon’s recent 

offensive, which U.S. officials have characterized in 

highly laudatory terms. Calderon “has shown great 

leadership and great strength of character,” Bush said 

in 2007, “which gives me good confidence that the plan 

we’ll develop will be effective.” 87 U.S. assistance will 

help “increase the operational capabilities of Mexican 

agencies and institutions,” explains a State Department 

official, thereby allowing them “to break the power 

and impunity of drug and criminal organizations that 

threaten the health and public safety of their citizens 

and the stability and security of the region.” 88 

The funding scheme for the Merida Initiative 

reflects this hope. Over the next 3 years, the United 

States will provide equipment and training to 

Mexican law enforcement (which will receive 59 

percent of these resources) and the armed forces (41 

percent). This aid is to be disbursed in three clusters. 

The first is Counternarcotics, Counterterrorism, and 

Border Security; the second, Public Security and Law 

Enforcement; the third, Institution Building and the 

Rule of Law. 89 

By far the largest chunk of funding (about $327 

million of the $400 million allotted for the first year, 

or nearly 82 percent) is devoted to the first and second 

clusters, which are very similar in their enforcementfirst 

approach to the drug problem. Roughly 60 

percent of this money (slightly more than $200 million) 

will pay for eight transport helicopters, designed to 

facilitate the rapid deployment of Mexican troops, 

and two surveillance aircraft to give the government 

greater awareness of cartel activities. The remainder of 

these funds will be used to provide law enforcement 

agencies with tools to aid detection and interdiction: 

ion scanners, Gamma- and X-ray inspection equipment, 

22

and training for the drug-sniffing dogs of Mexican 

police and customs; the modernization of computer 

and information systems used by several agencies; 

and secure communications equipment to allow more 

efficient exchange of information and intelligence. 

These programs will substantially increase the antidrug 

capabilities of the Mexican authorities, U.S. 

officials believe, and when combined with Calderon’s 

recent decision to increase military spending and 

nearly double the size of the federal police, should tilt 

the balance in favor of the government. 

The remainder of first-year funding (about $73.5 

million, or around 18 percent) will go to the third 

cluster, Institution Building and the Rule of Law. This 

money will be directed toward addressing certain of 

the institutional failures that have so far obstructed 

more effective government action. It will fund 

prison and judicial reform, training in how to handle 

evidence, assistance in vetting new police recruits and 

commanders, and a limited expansion of Mexican drug 

treatment and prevention programs. Examples of aid 

to be provided under this cluster include polygraph 

technology that can be used to screen police officials 

and assistance in improving witness protection capabilities. 

90 

As the allocation of more than 81 percent of firstyear 

funds to clusters one and two indicates, the central 

priorities of the Merida Initiative are interdiction and 

enforcement, with institution-building, anti-corruption, 

social projects, and economic programs receiving 

considerably less (if any) emphasis. Various observers 

in the United States and Mexico have criticized this 

apparent imbalance, but on the whole there is strong 

official support for such an approach. 91 President 

Calderon has called for the Merida Initiative to be 

23

extended throughout Latin America. Within the U.S. 

Government, backing for the program is bipartisan. 92 

Prominent Democrats such as Bill Richardson, 

Christopher Dodd, and Patrick Leahy support the 

measure, and executive branch officials argue that the 

program’s stress on interdiction and enforcement is 

essential to a successful showdown with the cartels. 93 

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: “I see no 

other way than to be very tough on organized crime, 

to be capable of dealing with these very violent people 

who are trying to terrorize the population, who are 

trying to carry out their criminal activities. I see no 

other way.” 94 Scott Burns, the second-ranking U.S. antidrug 

official, offered a similar assessment, predicting 

that the Merida Initiative would “build the capacity of 

our friends to permanently shut the door on the largest 

inflow of illegal drugs into the United States.” 95 

Evaluating the Supply-Side Paradigm. 

The Merida Initiative was hardly fashioned 

from whole cloth. Aside from building on President 

Calderon’s anti-drug offensive, it also represents 

the latest incarnation of the dominant paradigm in 

U.S. counternarcotics policy. Over the past several 

decades and especially since the 1980s, counterdrug 

initiatives have steadily taken on greater importance 

in U.S. diplomacy. With hundreds of tons of cocaine, 

heroin, and other drugs entering the United States 

annually, drug-related upheaval afflicting U.S. allies 

in Latin America, and proceeds from this illicit trade 

benefiting terrorist organizations such as al-Qai’da 

and the Taliban, Washington has taken a variety of 

steps to impede international drug smuggling. Coca 

and poppy eradication programs in the Andes and 

24

Afghanistan, an Air Bridge Denial initiative meant 

to disrupt narcotics shipments from South America, 

projects aimed at eroding the financial bases of the 

drug trade, and numerous other initiatives all fit within 

this context. The amount of money devoted to such 

endeavors has increased greatly over the past several 

years, rising from roughly $3 billion in FY 2002 to $5.4 

billion for FY 2009. 96 

The dominant feature of U.S. counternarcotics 

policy is, and long has been, a supply-side approach. 

This paradigm, reaffirmed in the provisions of the 

Merida Initiative, was also recently restated in the Bush 

administration’s 2008 National Drug Control Strategy. 

This document assigns the greatest importance to 

disrupting the operations of major foreign cartels 

rather than restricting domestic demand, promoting 

social and economic development in source countries, 

or pursuing alternative strategies for combating the 

drug trade. The five goals of the strategy are: "(1) reduce 

the flow of drugs into the United States; (2) disrupt 

and dismantle major drug trafficking organizations; 

(3) focus on the nexus between the drug trade and 

other potential transnational threats to the United 

States, including terrorism; (4) deny drug traffickers, 

narcoterrorists, and their criminal associates their 

illicit profits and money laundering activities; and (5) 

assist foreign countries threatened by illegal drugs in 

strengthening their governance and law enforcement 

institutions." Funding for counterdrug programs 

reflects these priorities, as the Bush administration 

increased the proportion of the narcotics control 

budget devoted to interdiction and capacity-building 

for foreign law enforcement and military agencies, 

reduced the percentage of funds spent on domestic 

demand restriction, and resisted congressional efforts 

25

to place greater stress on promoting alternative 

development programs in source countries. 97 

How effective is this paradigm? There is no 

shortage of debate. U.S. officials aver that American 

counternarcotics programs have helped combat drugrelated 

violence in South America and elsewhere, and 

argue that these initiatives reduce the flow of illegal 

drugs into the United States. Critics dispute these 

claims, contending that the current counterdrug model 

is politically popular but fundamentally misguided. 

One way of assessing these arguments, and of 

evaluating the efficacy of the current paradigm, is to 

examine the emblematic example of that strategy: Plan 

Colombia. 

Case Study: Plan Colombia. 

Between 2000 and the announcement of the Merida 

Initiative in late 2007, Plan Colombia dominated U.S. 

counterdrug policy. During this period, the Clinton 

and Bush administrations poured more than $7 billion 

in foreign and military aid into Colombia in hopes 

of quelling a drug-fueled insurgency and staunching 

the flow of cocaine and heroin to the United States. 

U.S. contractors, civilian officials, and uniformed 

military were (and continue to be) deeply involved in 

counterinsurgency and counternarcotics missions in 

Colombia, leading observers to refer to Plan Colombia 

as America’s “number three war.” 98 

Plan Colombia originated in response to a 

dangerous synergy between criminal activity and 

political violence. By the late 1990s, the Colombian 

drug trade had become a major national security issue 

for both Colombia and the United States. Colombian 

exports accounted for nine-tenths of the cocaine 

26

entering the United States, and contributed heavily to 

the perhaps 20,000 drug-related deaths that occurred 

in the United States per year. 99 Within Colombia, the 

drug trade was fueling massive corruption that reached 

as high as the office of the president, driving intense 

internal violence (around 30,000 murders per year, a 

sixfold increase from 2 decades prior), and feeding the 

ambitions of a powerful Marxist insurgency. 100 The 

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) 

used the approximately $380 million it garnered from 

the drug trade each year to acquire advanced weapons 

and entice new recruits. By 2000, the FARC boasted 

around 20,000 combatants, was able to overwhelm and 

annihilate isolated army garrisons, had Bogota nearly 

cut off from the rest of the country, and controlled 

roughly 40 percent of Colombian territory. 101 The 

group also staged hundreds of attacks on U.S. interests 

in Colombia; according to one count, the FARC was 

responsible for 55 percent of terrorist attacks against 

American targets in 2001. 102 

Plan Colombia represented a joint U.S.-Colombian 

response to these interlocking threats. U.S. aid would 

allow a besieged government to take strong action 

against the FARC and hundreds of Colombian cartels, 

as the thinking went, thereby restricting drug exports 

and restoring internal order. “The ultimate test of 

success,” said DEA administrator Donnie Marshall, 

“will come when we bring to justice the drug lords 

who control their vast empires of crime which bring 

misery to so many nations.” 103 Of the roughly $7 billion 

in aid granted under the initiative, nearly 80 percent 

went to facilitating interdiction and strengthening 

Colombia’s military and National Police, with 10-20 

percent devoted to economic and social programs 

meant to provide alternative sources of income for 

27

poor farmers and thus undercut the economic basis of 

the drug trade. 104 

Plan Colombia has been touted by the Bush 

administration as a striking success, and damned by 

its critics as an utter failure. In reality, its results were 

ambiguous, demonstrating both the strengths and 

weaknesses of the current counternarcotics paradigm. 

With respect to internal security and interdiction, 

Plan Colombia has produced clear-cut gains. Since 

2000, U.S. assistance has had pronounced benefits in 

the fight against the FARC. The training of three elite 

counternarcotics battalions (totaling around 3000 

soldiers) and 30 Ranger-style strike teams has roughly 

doubled the number of elite troops that the Colombian 

army can put into the field, while the provision of more 

than 70 Blackhawk and Huey II helicopters has greatly 

increased the mobility and combat effectiveness of 

these forces. U.S. intelligence support has been similarly 

beneficial, allowing the Colombian military to target 

high-level FARC commanders and aiding in the bold 

rescue of 15 high-profile hostages in July 2008. 105 

Combined with the assertive counterinsurgency 

program of President Alvaro Uribe, this aid has 

helped deal the FARC a series of staggering blows. The 

insurgent leadership has been decimated by targeted 

strikes and the deaths of top commanders. Desertions, 

captures, and overall guerrilla casualties have risen 

dramatically, severely reducing the guerrillas’ numerical 

strength. 106 Colombian forces have largely 

cleared the FARC from the departments surrounding 

Bogota and substantially weakened the guerrillas 

even in traditional redoubts like Putumayo, Caqueta, 

and the slums of Medellin. 107 The FARC retains a hard 

core of some 8,000-10,000 fighters and receives arms 

and funding from Venezuela, but its overall military 

28

effectiveness has declined sharply, and the survival of 

democratic government in Colombia is no longer in 

imminent peril. 108 

The interdiction component of Plan Colombia 

has (numerically, at least) produced similarly strong 

advances. The delivery of ground radar systems, 

forward-looking infrared radar (FLIR) for Colombian 

intelligence aircraft, patrol boats for riverine 

interdiction, and other equipment and training have 

greatly increased Colombian interdiction capabilities. 

109 The number of cocaine laboratories destroyed 

rose from 241 in 1999 to nearly 2,200 in 2006, dozens of 

drug-carrying aircraft have been captured or destroyed, 

and arrests and extraditions are up. 110 Additionally, 

as part of a program that is complementary to but 

not explicitly a part of Plan Colombia, cooperation 

among U.S., Colombian, and international assets has 

allowed the Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) of 

U.S. Southern Command to make major strides in 

disrupting narcotics shipments through the Caribbean. 

The number of seizures in the transit zone (the area 

between Colombia and the United States) has increased 

from 90 to 260 metric tons per year, with the proportion 

of shipments seized rising as well. 111 

These are impressive statistics, but in many ways 

they conceal the less successful reality of Plan Colombia. 

With respect to an overarching goal of the program— 

significantly reducing the quantities of cocaine and 

heroin delivered into the United States—the picture 

is one of little progress. Between 2000 and 2004, street 

prices for cocaine actually decreased, indicating a 

steady if not expanding supply. Prices have increased 

somewhat since 2005, but on the whole supply is still 

more than adequate to meet the continuing domestic 

demand for the drug. The Justice Department’s 

29

National Drug Intelligence Center acknowledges that 

“there have been no sustained cocaine shortages or 

indications of stretched supplies in domestic markets,” 

and shipments to the United States still overwhelmingly 

originate in Colombia. 112 

The reason for this unsatisfying outcome is that 

Plan Colombia—and the counternarcotics paradigm 

it represents—has suffered from a fundamental 

lack of balance. The United States has failed to join 

the security and interdiction components of Plan 

Colombia with sufficiently bold efforts to reduce U.S. 

domestic demand or alter the economic calculus that 

drives many Colombians to participate in the drug 

trade. Accordingly, seized shipments are quickly 

replaced, coca still dominates the rural economy, and 

the Colombian-American drug trade continues to 

flourish. 

Within the United States, the chief marker of this 

imbalance is that Plan Colombia was not accompanied 

by a parallel push to restrict domestic cocaine and 

heroin consumption. In fact, the trend has been just the 

opposite, with the percentage of the U.S. drug control 

budget devoted to treatment and prevention declining 

from 46 percent to 35 percent between FY 2002 and 

FY 2007. 113 U.S. domestic demand for cocaine and 

other drugs remains strong, and it appears that this 

continuing demand has led Colombian traffickers to 

compensate for the much-touted rise in seizures over 

the past several years by simply increasing the quantity 

of narcotics shipped. 114 

Within Colombia, the chief weakness of U.S. 

policy has been its failure to reduce the economic 

incentives that push poor farmers to provide a steady 

supply of coca to the groups that refine and ship it. 

As of 2006, Colombian farmers could earn 4-12 times 

30

more by cultivating coca than by participating in 

the licit economy, roughly the same ratio as before 

Plan Colombia. 115 “There is nothing as economically 

profitable as coca,” concedes one U.S. official. 116 

Plan Colombia did include programs meant to 

redress this problem. USAID and its Colombian 

counterparts ran financial and technical assistance 

programs that offered cows, cash, and tools to farmers 

who signed pledges to abandon coca cultivation. 

These agencies also sponsored the construction of 

food-processing plants, concrete factories, and other 

industrial facilities designed to provide employment 

alternatives and promote economic growth in the 

countryside. 117 

Given the pronounced slant of Plan Colombia 

funding toward military and police programs, 

however, these projects never received the necessary 

emphasis. From 2000 to 2005, for instance, U.S. agencies 

spent $1.2 billion on aerial spraying programs that 

eradicated hundreds of thousands of acres of coca, but 

only $213 million on the development programs meant 

to lock in these gains by giving the affected farmers 

another source of income. 118 As a result, economic 

development projects have foundered. In 2006, USAID 

withdrew from Caqueta in part because of an inability 

to sustain alternative development programs, and coca 

cultivation in the area has surged since. 119 Guaviare, the 

second-most sprayed region in Colombia, received just 

$500,000 in development assistance between 2000 and 

2004, resulting in similar problems. 120 In Putumayo, 

aerial spraying was devoted to roughly 400,000 acres 

of farmland, but, reports the Center for International 

Policy’s Adam Isaacson, nonmilitary aid was “slower 

to arrive, haphazardly planned, and . . . largely failed 

to improve lives and livelihoods.” Farmers regularly 

31

complain of having signed coca eradication pacts but 

never receiving the cows, tools, or money promised in 

return. Accordingly, coca eradication programs brought 

only temporary improvement, with cultivation having 

actually risen since 2003. 121 United Nations reports 

indicate that at least 70 percent of the land sprayed for 

eradication purposes was later reconverted to coca, 

and the overall acreage under cultivation actually 

increased by 36 percent between 2000 and 2004. 122 

With the economic incentives for cultivation having 

stagnated, the Colombian drug trade has shown no 

sign of abating. 

Indeed, the void left by the weakening of the FARC 

and certain of the cartels has simply been filled by new 

actors. During the late 1990s, Colombian commanders 

forged an alliance of convenience with an often-brutal 

paramilitary group known as the United Self-Defense 

Forces of Colombia (AUC) based on a common 

hostility to the FARC. 123 The AUC played no small role 

in the defeats subsequently inflicted on the FARC, but 

given the persistent profitability of the drug trade, the 

organization exploited these victories by insinuating 

itself into the narcotics industry. According to one 

estimate, former members of the AUC (which was 

technically demobilized in 2003, though many observers 

doubt the authenticity of the demobilization) are now 

responsible for 40 percent of cocaine production in 

Colombia. 124 The drug trade has not been defeated, but 

simply made subject to new masters. 

Overall, Plan Colombia thus rates as only a very 

qualified success. Its security accomplishments are 

undeniable, as are the upticks in seizures, arrests, 

and extraditions. But U.S. policy during this period 

has consistently failed to integrate these programs 

into a comprehensive counternarcotics strategy that 

32

fully exploits alternative development programs and 

domestic prevention and treatment initiatives. While 

Plan Colombia has therefore helped alleviate certain 

adverse effects of the drug trade within Colombia, it 

has done little to address the deeper factors that drive 

that commerce. If Plan Colombia can fairly be said to 

represent the current U.S. counternarcotics paradigm, 

then that paradigm remains sadly incomplete. 

The Merida Initiative: Prospects for Success. 

Will the Merida Initiative be more successful than 

Plan Colombia, or will it display the same lack of 

balance—and therefore produce the same ambiguous 

outcome—of that earlier program? In answering this 

question, we should stress that the Merida Initiative 

is not a carbon copy of Plan Colombia, any more than 

the situation in Mexico today exactly duplicates that in 

Colombia a decade ago. In 1999 Colombia was afflicted 

by a relatively unified insurgency; in 2009 the Mexican 

cartels are a far more disparate—and often fratricidal— 

bunch. Plan Colombia involved hundreds of U.S. troops 

and private contractors that were intimately involved 

in Colombian military operations; Mexican officials 

have made clear that no U.S. military personnel will be 

allowed to operate in Mexico. 

If the differences are important, however, the areas 

of convergence are perhaps more significant. The basic 

conceptual outlines are the same, as is the emphasis 

on interdiction and capacity-building. Moreover, the 

comments of U.S. officials reveal an expectation that the 

Merida Initiative is, in fact, the follow-on to previous 

U.S. programs in Colombia. “Just as the Medellin and 

Cali cartels were destroyed when law enforcement 

was provided with the equipment and intelligence 

33

it needed to attack them,” reports Scott Burns, 

ONDCP official, in testimony before a U.S. House of 

Representatives Subcommittee, “the Merida Initiative 

provides tools to dismantle today’s leading cartels and 

leave them with little space to regroup.” 125 The Mexican 

government seems to be on the same wavelength, as 

groups of officials have recently visited Colombia for 

consultations on counternarcotics policy. 126 

There are scant indications, however, that the Merida 

Initiative will provide a better-rounded approach 

to counternarcotics than its antecedent. With respect to 

security and interdiction issues, to be sure, it does seem 

likely that the initiative will produce beneficial results. 

The delivery of helicopters will enhance the mobility of 

the government forces, augmenting their ability to react 

quickly, while the provision of surveillance aircraft and 

intelligence support will give the authorities greater 

informational awareness and allow them to deploy 

troops and police more intelligently. In light of the 

current “whack-a-mole” dynamic in Mexico, the value 

of these contributions is not to be underestimated. 

U.S. equipment and training can be similarly useful 

in addressing some of the operational weaknesses 

that have hampered the performance of Mexican law 

enforcement. Advanced inspection equipment will 

force the cartels to adopt new smuggling tactics and 

routines. Secure communications capabilities can 

help Mexican police agencies overcome persistent 

coordination gaps, facilitate intelligence sharing, and 

allow them to mount a more cooperative effort. 127 

The Merida Initiative is also conducive to the 

expansion and institutionalization of existing bilateral 

projects. Since 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs 

Enforcement (ICE) officials have conducted training 

programs designed to aid their Mexican counterparts 

34

in impeding cash smuggling and other illicit financial 

flows. 128 Federal police units trained under Garcia Luna 

(who has a reputation for honesty and professionalism) 

have performed well when aided by intelligence 

gathered by the interagency Border Enforcement and 

Security Task Force (BEST) and other U.S. offices. 129 

The Merida Initiative provides greater funding and a 

more regularized approach to such exchanges, and thus 

constitutes a way of locking in their positive effects. 

Yet, as the history of Plan Colombia shows, a fully 

effective approach to counternarcotics will require 

going far beyond interdiction and security issues, and 

in this regard the outlook for the Merida Initiative is 

not particularly promising. Like Plan Colombia, the 

Merida Initiative focuses primarily on the most visible 

manifestations of the drug trade, rather than grappling 

seriously with the deeper, more difficult issues that 

drive that business. 

This is certainly the case with respect to problems 

like corruption, human rights abuses, and the culture 

of impunity that have consistently undermined 

Calderon’s counternarcotics program. The Merida 

Initiative is not silent on these issues (it contains a 

small amount of aid for judicial reform, several million 

dollars for police vetting purposes, and restrictions to 

ensure that U.S. officials do not interact with military 

units implicated in human rights violations), and 

Mexico is included in stand-alone U.S. human rights 

and anti-corruption programs. Still, the current 

American commitment to anti-corruption and the rule 

of law in Mexico is insufficient. Resources devoted 

to these issues pale in comparison to those spent on 

helicopters and inspection equipment, despite the 

fact that these tools will prove useful only if Mexico’s 

institutions of internal order actually function in an 

35

honest, professional manner. The Merida Initiative has 

only $1 million per year slated to aid in the reform of 

Mexico’s courts—roughly one-quarter of 1 percent of 

first-year funding. Vetting programs receive similarly 

minor emphasis, and there are a number of issues 

central to any meaningful anti-corruption initiative— 

efforts to lessen the opacity of the banking system, for 

instance—that are not addressed at all. In short, while 

anti-corruption and human rights issues are not absent 

from U.S. policy toward Mexico under the Merida 

Initiative, they are not accorded the salience necessary, 

given the gravity and scope of these problems. 130 

The Merida Initiative is little better equipped to 

confront the other factors that have so far impeded 

progress in Mexico’s drug war. As currently designed, 

the plan contains no social programs aimed at 

preventing youths from gravitating toward the cartels, 

nor does it feature economic development or povertyalleviation 

initiatives. The U.S. experience in Colombia 

since 2000 demonstrates that a failure to present poor 

workers with legitimate work alternatives to criminal 

activity can have a debilitating impact on even the 

most aggressive counterdrug programs. On this score, 

the Merida Initiative leaves much to be desired. 

Nor will the Merida program likely do much to 

deflect or impede the iron river of guns that supports 

drug-related violence in Mexico. The Merida Initiative 

overlaps somewhat a preexisting program known as 

Operation GUNRUNNER, which has received a recent 

funding increase. GUNRUNNER is meant to combat 

the illicit arms flow by tracing guns used in Mexico 

back to their origin in the United States. As this project 

has unfolded, however, it has been overwhelmed by 

the sheer volume of weapons heading south. While the 

ATF seized nearly 1,300 guns headed for Mexico last 

year, that number represents only a minuscule fraction 

36

of the weapons that crossed the border each month. 131 

Speaking anonymously, U.S. officials have conceded 

that, given the comparative laxity of U.S. gun laws, 

the difficulty of tracing weapons acquired through 

pawn shops or gun shows, and the porous nature of 

America’s southern frontier, seeking to staunch the 

flow of guns with a few dozen extra ATF agents is a 

quixotic quest. 132 “If you can’t deal with the issue of 

guns,” one U.S. congressional aide involved in the 

drafting of the Merida Initiative admits, “you’re not 

going to see much progress.” 133 

The Merida Initiative is thus not being partnered 

with any real efforts to ramp up prevention, treatment, 

or other demand-side programs in the United States. 

Rather, the money spent on the Merida Initiative 

seems to have come at the expense of such programs. 

The budget for anti-drug-use advertising in the 

United States fell by more than half (from $140 million 

annually to $60 million) under the Bush administration, 

and the approval of the Merida Initiative occurred 

concurrent with a $73 million cut in domestic treatment 

programs. 134 

This is a short-sighted strategy. The GAO has recently 

released a study concluding that the U.S.-Mexican 

border is so porous that constricting cross-border 

drug flows is virtually impossible as long as a lucrative 

market for these products exists. “Given the temptation,” 

says Garcia Luna, “there are people who are always 

going to play the game, whether by airplane or 

helicopter, by land, by sea, because there is a real market.” 

135 The Merida Initiative thus violates the inescapable 

mandate required of effective counternarcotics 

strategy: that while supply-side programs are politically 

popular and produce attractive statistics, unless 

they are paired with demand-side initiatives, they tend 

to produce few long-lasting gains. 

37

In congressional hearings on the Merida Initiative 

prior to its passage, Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY), 

head of the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, 

offered a pessimistic appraisal of the program: 

As long as there is demand for illegal narcotics in the 

United States, suppliers will sell their cocaine and 

heroin and other drugs on our streets, and as long as the 

narcotraffickers are armed with guns from the United 

States the brutal violence of the drug gangs will continue 

unabated. . . . This is my concern with the Merida 

Initiative. . . . We will spend more than $1 billion on 

security assistance for Mexico and Central America over 

the next 2 years, but it is not clear that we are stepping 

up our efforts so we can cement the gains the Merida 

Initiative is designed to achieve abroad. 136 

In view of the evidence adduced earlier, it is hard 

to quarrel with this assessment. The Mexican drug 

trade thrives on deeply embedded pathologies such 

as U.S. demand, cross-border gunrunning, poverty 

and corruption in Mexico, and the institutional 

deficiencies of the Mexican state. So far, a combination 

of these problems has frustrated President Calderon’s 

offensive, ensuring that record numbers of arrests and 

seizures have resulted in little lasting reduction in 

either internal violence or drug exports. At present, it 

is unrealistic to expect that the Merida Initiative will 

contribute substantially to resolving these ills. It thus 

seems improbable that the initiative will be more than 

of temporary benefit in reducing the drug trade and 

drug-related violence in Mexico. 

THE WAY FORWARD 

A thoroughgoing revision of U.S. counterdrug policy 

is therefore needed. U.S. officials must craft a more 

38

comprehensive and coherent strategy than currently 

exists, one that addresses not just the symptoms of the 

disease, but its causes as well. Admiral James Stavridis, 

head of U.S. Southern Command, has recently 

commented that the United States and its partners 

must adopt a “more holistic, integrated approach” to 

security threats in the Western Hemisphere. Those 

charged with making U.S. counternarcotics policy 

would do well to heed his advice. 137 

Such an approach should consist of five essential 

elements: (1) traditional counternarcotics operations 

such as security and interdiction; (2) anti-corruption 

and human rights; (3) government institutional 

development; (4) economic and social development; 

and (5) measures to reduce America’s homegrown 

contributions to the drug trade. Unlike the current 

paradigm, under which several of these themes are included 

but relegated to a distinctly secondary position, 

each of these five elements must be an integral part 

of counterdrug policy and receive adequate funding 

and official attention. A useful analogy in this regard 

would be a successful counterinsurgency in which 

the use of force must be integrated seamlessly into a 

larger scheme of political, military, social, diplomatic, 

and economic programs, all of which reinforce—rather 

than competing with or undermining—one another. 

Security and Interdiction. 

For all the liabilities of security- and interdictionfocused 

efforts, they remain vital components of any 

comprehensive counterdrug program. Economic 

development and political reform cannot occur in 

a context of violent anarchy, any more than internal 

order can be sustained if these deeper problems remain 

39

unresolved. Similarly, while interdiction has often 

been treated as a panacea, if practiced successfully it 

can keep the cartels off-balance by disrupting their 

operations and raising the costs of doing business. 

The assistance currently accorded priority under the 

Merida Initiative (aid in developing rapid deployment, 

surveillance, and detection capabilities, and training in 

counternarcotics operations) constitutes a good start 

in this regard, and should be complemented with 

additional initiatives in the coming years. The United 

States can provide nonlethal aid like body armor to 

the Mexican police, establish institutional frameworks 

for intelligence-sharing and cross-border interagency 

cooperation on issues like money laundering, and 

assist the Mexican police and military in conducting 

psychological and information operations. The 

brutality of groups like the Zetas—and their skill in 

publicizing these exploits—currently permits the 

cartels to dominate the information environment. The 

Mexican government must confront this issue if it 

hopes to redress the current sense of public insecurity. 

Since 2000, U.S. advisers in Colombia have helped 

that country’s military and law enforcement agencies 

implement psychological operations to defeat guerrilla 

propaganda and weaken insurgent morale; similar 

efforts would seem to be in order under the Merida 

Initiative. 138 

Anti-Corruption and Human Rights. 

Of course, any benefits reaped from such assistance 

will be ephemeral at best if the forces of order in Mexico 

continue to be penetrated by cartel informants and 

perceived by the public as “brutal corrupt thugs.” 139 

The current U.S. prohibition on training foreign 

40

military units implicated in human rights violations 

and the allocation of several million dollars for vetting 

purposes represent a basic recognition of this issue, but 

in going forward Washington must place much greater 

stress on this problem than is presently the case. 

Beyond augmenting the resources devoted to 

Calderon’s anti-corruption campaign, the United States 

can take several other steps. As they have already 

begun to do in Central America, U.S. agencies should 

offer regular personnel exchanges meant to promote 

a culture of professionalism within Mexican law 

enforcement and greater awareness of human rights 

issues within the military. Similarly, the United States 

should pay particular attention to helping Calderon 

create the small, specially vetted units that he intends 

to use for sensitive missions, and insist that any police 

units receiving access to U.S. intelligence or funding 

undergo rigorous, comprehensive screening. Finally, 

while Mexican political and historical sensitivities 

preclude direct military-to-military human rights 

training within that country, the United States can 

strengthen the human rights framework in Mexico 

by offering financial and technical assistance to the 

agencies charged with investigating and prosecuting 

suspected abuses. Though it would be wildly 

unrealistic to expect that these measures will end the 

problems of corruption and immunity to punishment 

in Mexico, they can, if sustained, begin to ameliorate 

these difficulties and create a core of professionalized 

security officials. 

Institutional Development. 

Efforts to help strengthen weak judicial institutions 

so far make up a very small part of the Merida Initiative, 

41

ut improving and expanding U.S. engagement on 

these issues is critical. The United States should offer to 

assist Mexico in developing specific anti-gang and anticartel 

laws, and the various U.S. agencies with special 

expertise in fighting organized crime can provide aid in 

fashioning effective prosecution strategies. The United 

States already has professional exchanges that focus on 

these issues in place vis-à-vis several Central American 

nations; if extended to Mexico, such programs can offer 

a relatively inexpensive way of making that country’s 

legal system better suited to tackling current threats. 

Even more important will be greater support for 

President Calderon’s new initiative to modernize 

judicial procedures by permitting the use of oral evidence, 

conducting open rather than secret proceedings, 

and improving the transparency and efficiency of 

the Mexican court system. Central American countries 

working with the financial and technical assistance 

of USAID have had some success in conducting such 

reforms and making their legal systems more accessible 

to the population. Similar cooperation will be essential 

in Mexico. 140 

Economic and Social Development. 

Over the long term, the success of counternarcotics 

in Mexico will hinge in no small part on the government’s 

ability to address the economic grievances and 

social alienation that often inform criminal activity. 

The security threats that the United States confronts 

in the Western Hemisphere, Admiral Stavridis has 

recently written, “are symptoms of the deeper endemic 

problems of poverty and inequality.” 141 

Setting aside the herculean economic and financial 

problems now facing Mexico—and indeed all the 

42

world’s nations—as a result of the current global economic 

meltdown, efforts to relieve the endemic strains 

should focus on the micro level rather than the macro. 

The need will be for small-scale, precisely targeted 

projects that alleviate the endemic poverty that has long 

afflicted much of the country and provide economic and 

social alternatives to criminal activity for populations 

at risk. Micro-finance and vocational training programs 

provide good examples of such initiatives, which 

have already been used for counternarcotics and antiorganized 

crime purposes in Central America. A pilot 

program in El Salvador recently reintegrated roughly 

300 former gang members into society by offering 

training in carpentry, screen-printing, and other such 

activities, and the Inter-American Development Bank 

has approved a $32 million loan to Honduras for a 

micro-entrepreneurship program aimed at vulnerable 

youths. 142 These programs should be replicated on 

a broader scale in Mexico, along with sustained and 

sufficiently funded alternative development projects 

that will provide economic incentives for marijuana 

farmers to switch to legal crops. 

Guns and Users: U.S. Domestic Contributions. 

Due to the political controversy that surrounds 

issues like gun laws and U.S. domestic demand, 

these questions may well prove to be the thorniest 

aspects of counternarcotics policy. With respect to 

demand, the debate on this issue is often framed as 

a choice between legalization and enforcement. In 

reality, this is false dichotomy. Studies by the RAND 

Corporation have shown that, if funded properly, 

prevention and treatment initiatives—running the 

gamut from anti-drug-use advertising to education to 

43

addict rehabilitation—can have a significant impact in 

countering domestic drug use and thereby lowering 

demand. These studies conclude, in fact, that in a 

dollar-for-dollar sense, prevention and treatment are 

far more efficient and economical than enforcement 

and interdiction. One dollar spent on the former 

category, RAND calculates, carries the same effect 

as 7.3 dollars spent on the latter. 143 Accordingly, the 

Merida Initiative must be married to an expansion— 

rather than the present contraction—of a wide range of 

treatment and prevention programs. Doing so would 

hardly solve the problem of domestic drug use, but it 

could have a strong positive impact on the problem 

and bring Washington’s internal efforts in line with its 

energetic counternarcotics programs abroad. 

Regarding guns, one relatively uncontroversial 

solution would be a dramatic expansion of funding 

for ATF programs designed to trace weapons used 

in Mexico to their sources in the United States and 

impede them from being smuggled across the border. 

Such an undertaking would certainly have a positive 

effect on the current discouraging situation, but the 

beneficial impact would likely not be sufficient. The 

U.S.-Mexican border is simply too porous to prevent 

determined smugglers from carrying their goods 

across the frontier, and U.S. gun laws currently 

impede the ATF and other federal agencies from being 

aggressively proactive in their efforts to restrict sales 

to potential smugglers. 144 “There are very, very strict 

limits set on what [the ATF is] allowed to do,” says one 

expert. 145 In short, dealing successfully with the “iron 

river” may require far more controversial changes in 

U.S. gun laws, such as renewing the assault weapons 

ban, establishing a national registry of arms sales, and 

other restrictive measures. Admittedly, whether such 

proposals are politically feasible remains to be seen. 

44

CONCLUSION 

As the apparent intractability of the gun issue 

demonstrates, crafting a comprehensive counternarcotics 

strategy will be no easy undertaking. Doing 

so will require going past the politically popular aspects 

of counternarcotics, such as interdiction, and zeroing 

in on more contested issues like guns and demand. In 

financial terms, funding at the necessary levels all of the 

programs discussed above will involve expenditures 

considerably beyond those already approved for Plan 

Merida. Moreover, creating such a program will entail a 

determined effort by the White House Office of National 

Drug Control Policy to ensure that counternarcotics 

receives sustained executive-level attention and that 

the myriad agencies involved—ranging from the ATF 

to USAID—achieve the coordination necessary to 

preclude one aspect of this strategy from countering 

the efforts of the others. Finally, it bears repeating that 

the inter-hemispheric drug trade is so entrenched that 

even a “perfect” counternarcotics strategy will produce 

meaningful progress only over the long term. 

The costs of action are therefore high, but the price 

of inaction would be exponentially greater. The effects 

of drug use in the United States and the potential for the 

economic and political destabilization of Mexico make 

counternarcotics an immensely significant national 

security issue. Addressing this problem effectively will 

require substantial economic resources and political 

capital, but, given the stakes, the investment is a 

necessary one. American policymakers must seize on 

the current crisis to achieve a balanced counternarcotics 

policy, one that not only strengthens Mexico’s forces 

of order but also addresses the underlying issues that 

45

have long nourished the drug trade and made it so 

violent. If they do so, the United States may finally 

begin to make sustainable progress in curbing narcotics 

smuggling and its devastating effects. It they do not, 

the Merida Initiative will simply go down as one more 

failed offensive in the long campaign against drugs. 

ENDNOTES 

1. “Es provocación cabeza arrojada en alcaldia de Acapulco” 

(“Head Thrown at Acapulco Mayor’s Office is Provocation”), La 

Crónica, June 30, 2006. 

2. Ibid. 

3. Office of the Spokesman, “Joint Statement on the 

Merida Initiative: A New Paradigm for Security Cooperation,” 

Washington, DC: Department of State, October 22, 2007, www. 

state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/oct/93817.htm, accessed September 22, 

2008. 

4. John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “State of Siege: Mexico’s 

Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, August 19, 2008, pp. 

1-2, smallwarsjournal.com/mag/docs-temp/84-sullivan.pdf, accessed 

September 12, 2008. 

5. Adam Isacson, “The U.S. Military in the War on Drugs,” in 

Coletta Youngers and Eileen Rosin, eds., Drugs and Democracy in 

Latin America, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005, p. 45; Antonio 

Nicao and Lee Lamothe, Angels, Mobsters, and Narco-Terrorists: The 

Rising Menace of Global Criminal Empires, Ontario, Canada: John 

Wiley and Sons, 2005, p. 196. 

6. Colleen Cook, Mexico’s Drug Cartels, Washington, DC: 

Congressional Research Service, February 25, 2008, p. 4; “‘La 

Barbie’ Part of New Gang Generation,” El Universal, December 5, 

2005. 

7. National Drug Intelligence Center, National Drug 

Threat Assessment 2007, October 2006, www.usdoj.gov/ndic/ 

46

pubs21/21137/21137p.pdf, accessed December 2, 2008; “Does the 

Merida Initiative Represent a New Direction in U.S.-Mexico 

Relations, or Does it Simply Refocus the Issue Elsewhere?” 

Washington, DC: Council on Hemispheric Affairs, December 14, 

2007, www.coha.org/2007/12/does-the-merida-initiative-represent-anew-direction-for-us-mexico-relations-or-does-it-simply-refocus-theissue-elsewhere/, 

accessed November 2, 2008. 

8. Manuel Roig-Francia, “Mexican Drug Cartels Move North,” 

Washington Post, September 20, 2007. 

9. Richard B. Craig, “Mexican Narcotics Traffic: Binational 

Security Implications,” in Donald J. Mabry, ed., The Latin 

American Narcotics Trade and U.S. National Security, Westport, CT: 

Greenwood, 1989, pp. 28-30, 33-34. 

10. George Grayson, “Mexico and the Drug Cartels,” Foreign 

Policy Research Institute E-Note, August 2007, www.fpri.org/ 

enotes/200708.grayson.mexicodrugcartels.html, accessed September 

14, 2008. 

11. Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, “The Long War of Genaro García 

Luna,” New York Times, July 13, 2008. 

12. Ibid. 

13. Good descriptions of the cartels and their alliances can 

be found in “‘La Federación,’ el cártel mas poderoso de México” 

(“‘The Federation’: Mexico’s Most Powerful Cartel”), El Universal, 

January 22, 2008; U.S. Assistance Has Helped Mexican Counternarcotics 

Efforts but the Flow of Illicit Drugs into the United States Remains 

High, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 

October 2007, pp. 10-11; Cook, Mexico’s Drug Cartels. 

14. Quoted in “Alianza entre narcos forma nuevo cártel, ‘La 

Federación’: DEA” (“Alliance Between Narcos Forms New Cartel, 

‘The Federation’: DEA”), El Universal, August 18, 2006. 

15. Gustavo Castillo Garcia, “Los Beltrán Leyva y el cártel 

Milenio se separan de la Federación” (“The Beltran Levyas and the 

Milenio Cartel Separate from the Federation”), La Jornada, January 

30, 2008; “Los Beltrán se unen al cártel del Golfo y Zetas” (“The 

47

Beltrans Join the Golf Cartel and Zetas”), Aldíatx.com, May 20, 

2008, accessed November 26, 2008. 

16. David Freddoso, “Mexican Deserters Cast Shadow on 

Border City,” Human Events, February 9, 2004, findarticles.com/p/ 

articles/mi_qa3827/is_/ai_n9385997, accessed October 14, 2008; 

George Grayson, “Los Zetas: The Ruthless Army Spawned by 

a Mexican Drug Cartel,” www.fpri.org/enotes/200805.grayson. 

loszetas.html, accessed July 17, 2008. There appears to be no truth 

to the rumor that the Zetas were trained by U.S. instructors. It 

is possible, however, that the group was trained by instructors 

who had themselves received U.S. training. Telephone interview 

conducted by the author with DEA official (#1), July 24, 2008. 

17. Telephone interview conducted by the author with 

DEA official (#2), July 24, 2008; Alfredo Corchado, “Drug 

Cartels Operate Training Camps near Texas Border Just inside 

Mexico,” Dallas Morning News, April 4, 2008; “Drug Cartels and 

Regional Integration,” The New American, October 31, 2005, www. 

accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-11898149_ITM, accessed 

December 1, 2008; Grayson, “Los Zetas.” 

18. National Drug Intelligence Center, National Drug Threat 

Assessment 2008, www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs25/25921/25921p.pdf, accessed 

July 24, 2008. 

19. Grayson, “Los Zetas.” 

20. Colleen W. Cook, Mexico’s Drug Cartels, Washington, DC: 

Congressional Research Service, October 16, 2007, p. 8. 

21. Kurtz-Phelan, “Long War.” 

22. Sullivan and Elkus, “Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” p. 7. 

23. Laurence Iliff, “Violence Erupting Throughout Mexico 

Linked to Drug Cartels,” Dallas Morning News, February 6, 2007. 

24. Telephone interview conducted by the author with ATF 

official Ralph Jones, Houston Field Division, December 22, 2008; 

Luis Acosta, “Mexico: The Cartels Adopt Improvised Incendiary 

Devices,” Stratfor Today, July 16, 2008; “Mexico’s Drug War: 

48

A Society at Risk,” Washington, DC: Council on Hemispheric 

Affairs, May 22, 2007, www.coha.org/2007/05/mexicos-drug-war-asociety-at-risk-soldiers-versus-narco-soldiers/, 

accessed July 28, 2008; 

“Detienen a 11 narcos al catear 3 casas en el DF” (“11 Narcos 

Detained in Search of 3 Houses in Federal District”), El Siglo de 

Torreón, January 23, 2008. 

25. John Baram, “An ‘Iron River of Guns,’ Flows South,” 

Security Management, June 2008; www.securitymanagement.com/ 

article/iron-river-guns-flows-south, accessed November 24, 2008. 


27. Corchado, “Drug Cartels Operate Training Camps”; “Mexican 

Government Sends 6500 Troops to State Scarred by Drug 

Violence, Beheadings,” International Herald Tribune, December 11, 

2006; Grayson, “Mexico and the Drug Cartels.” 

28. Sean Matteson, “Commando Attack Leaves 7 Officers 

Dead,” San Antonio Express-News, December 29, 2007. 

29. Grayson, “Los Zetas”; Barnard Thompson, “Military 

Casualties in Mexico’s Anti-Drug War,” May 7, 2007, Mexidata, 

mexidata.info/id1358.html, accessed November 22, 2008; Manuel 

Roig-Franzia, “Federal Police Official Killed in Mexico City,” 

Washington Post, June 27, 2008. 

30. Quoted in Stephanie Hansen, “Mexico’s Drug War,” 

Council on Foreign Relations Backgrounder, November 20, 2008, 

www.cfr.org/publication/13689/#6, accessed December 4, 2008. On 

recent truce talks, see Tracy Wilkinson, “Mexico Drug Bosses May 

Have Set Truce,” Los Angeles Times, January 29, 2009. 

31. Corchado, “Drug Cartels Operate Training Camps.” 

32. Mark Stevenson, “Mexican Candidates Tough on Drug 

Issue,” Washington Post, June 18, 2006. 

33. Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Mexican Drug Cartels Making 

Audacious Pitch for Recruits,” Washington Post, May 7, 2008; Kurtz- 

Phelan, “Long War.” Opponents of the Zetas have responded in 

kind; a video of a Zeta being decapitated was posted on YouTube 

49

in 2007. “Homicidio de presunto zeta en Internet” (“Homicide of 

Presumed Zeta on Internet”), Correo, April 2, 2007. 

34. Grayson, “Los Zetas.” 

35. Jens Erik Gould, “Mexico’s Drug War Turns into Terrorism 

After Grenades,” Bloomberg, October 20, 2008, www.bloomberg. 

com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a0FjWAwPxUY8&refer=hom 

e, accessed November 25, 2008; Adam Thomson, “Drug Cartels 

‘Threaten’ Mexican Democracy,” Financial Times, July 13, 2008; 

David McLemore, “U.S. Officials Praise Mexico for Anti-Drug 

Efforts,” Dallas Morning News, August 12, 2008. 

36. George Grayson, “Surge Two,” Center for Immigration 

Studies Report, October 27, 2008, www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ 

Read.aspx?GUID=3841DDDC-CF92-43EC-BB94-E1C071D31220, 


37. Interview conducted by the author with a DEA official, 

July 23, 2008. On this point, see also Max G. Manwaring, A 

Contemporary Challenge to State Sovereignty: Gangs and Other Illicit 

Transnational Criminal Organizations in Central America, El Salvador, 

Mexico, Jamaica, and Brazil, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 

U.S. Army War College, 2007, pp. 27-29. 

38. Grayson, “Surge Two.” 

39. See, for instance, John P. Sullivan, “Transnational Gangs: 

The Impact of Third-Generation Gangs in Central America,” Air 

& Space Power Journal, July 2008, www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/ 

apjinternational/apj-s/2008/2trimes08.htm, accessed July 15, 2008; 

and Sullivan, “Third Generation Street Gangs: Turf, Cartels and 

Net Warriors,” Crime and International Justice, Vol. 13, November 

1997, pp. 95-108. 

40. See Max Manwaring, Street Gangs: The New Urban 

Insurgency, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army 

War College, March 2005; and Manwaring, Contemporary Challenge 

to State Sovereignty. 

41. United Nations Development Program, Cuanto Cuesta la 

Violencia a El Salvador? New York: UNDP, 2005, esp. pp. 9, 37; “Gangs 

50

and Crime In Latin America,” Hearing before the Subcommittee 

on the Western Hemisphere of the Committee on International 

Relations, U.S. House of Representatives, 109th Cong., 1st Sess., 

April 20, 2005, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

2006, p. 9; U.S. Agency for International Development, Central 

America and Mexico Gang Assessment, Washington, DC: Office of 

Regional Sustainable Development, April 2006, pp. 20-22. 

42. Vanda Felbab-Brown, “Tackling Transnational Crime: 

Adapting U.S. National Security Policy,” July 18, 2008, www. 

brookings.edu/articles/2008/spring_latin_america_felbabbrown. 

aspx?p=1, accessed September 28, 2008. 

43. Gould, “Mexico’s Drug War.” 

44. Silvia Garduño, “Crece con Calderón la migración a 

EU” (“Migration to the U.S. Grows with Calderon”), Reforma, 

September 21, 2008. 

45. Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, “Background 

Note: Mexico,” Washington, DC: Department of State, April 2008, 

www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35749.htm, accessed July 28, 2008; Ray 

Walser, “Mexico, Drug Cartels, and the Merida Initiative: A Fight 

We Cannot Afford to Lose,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 

2163, July 23, 2008, www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/bg2163. 

cfm, accessed October 31, 2008. 

46. Telephone interview conducted by the author with 

DEA agent, El Paso Field Office, November 25, 2008; U.S. 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Statement of Marcy 

M. Forman, Director,” March 1, 2006, www.ice.gov/doclib/pi/news/ 

testimonies/060301homeland.pdf, accessed October 18, 2008. 

47. Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, “Mexican Cartels and the 

Fallout from Phoenix,” Stratfor, July 2, 2008, www.stratfor.com/ 

weekly/mexican_cartels_and_fallout_phoenix, accessed December 1, 

2008; Corchado, “Drug Cartels Operate Training Camps.” 

48. David T. Johnson, “The Merida Initiative: Examining U.S. 

Efforts to Combat Transnational Criminal Organizations,” June 

5, 2008, www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/rm/105695.htm, accessed November 

14, 2008. 

51

49. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Statement 

of Marcy M. Forman, Director.” 

50. Walser, “A Fight We Cannot Afford to Lose.” 

51. “México promete luchar la ‘madre de todas las batallas’ 

contra el narcotráfico” (“Mexico Promises to Fight the ‘Mother 

of All Battles’ against the Drug Trade”), January 22, 2005, VOA 

News, www.voanews.com/spanish/archive/2005-01/a-2005-01-22-2-1. 

cfm?renderforprint=1&textonly=1&&TEXTMODE=1&CFID=70719 

036&CFTOKEN=37020507, accessed November 1, 2008. 

52. Ioan Grillo, “Mexico’s Narco-Insurgency,” Time, June 

23, 2008, www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1707070,00.html, 


53. Manuel Roig-Franzia, “Mexico Launches 8th Offensive 

in Its Drive Against Drug Cartels,” Washington Post, December 1, 

2007; Cook, Mexico’s Drug Cartels, p. 13. 

54. White House Office of National Drug Control 

Policy, “White House Drug Czar Releases Southwest Border 

Counternarcotics Strategy,” October 2, 2007, whitehousedrugpolicy. 

gov/news/press07/100207.html, accessed July 23, 2008; Grayson, 

“Los Zetas.” 

55. U.S. Assistance Has Helped Mexican Counternarcotics Efforts, 

p. 11; White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, “White 

House Drug Czar Releases Southwest Border Counternarcotics 

Strategy,” October 2, 2007, whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/news/press07/ 

100207.html, accessed July 23, 2008. 

56. Telephone interview conducted by the author with a DEA 

official, July 23, 2008. 

57. Catherine Bremer, “Once-Quiet Towns Engulfed by 

Mexico Drugs War,” Reuters, July 17, 2007, uk.reuters.com/article/ 

worldNews/idUKN1731355220070718, accessed October 14, 2008. 

52

58. Laurence Iliff and Alfredo Corchado, “Mexican President 

Losing War on Drugs, Polls Indicate,” Dallas Morning News, June 

7, 2008. 

59. Quoted in Grayson, “Surge Two.” 

60. Alfredo Corchado, “In Nuevo Laredo, Death Becoming a 

Way of Life,” Dallas Morning News, May 23, 2006. 

61. Jose de Cordoba and David Luhnow, “Mexican Officials 

Allege Drug Cartel Infiltrated Attorney General’s Office,” Wall 

Street Journal, October 28, 2008. 

62. Cook, Mexico’s Drug Cartels, p. 9. 

63. Roig-Franzia, “Mexico Launches 8th Offensive”; Kurtz- 

Phelan, “Long War.” 

64. Cook, “Mexico’s Drug Cartels,” p. 9. 

65. De Cordoba and Luhnow, “Mexican Officials Allege Drug 

Cartel Infiltrated Attorney General’s Office.” 

66. Thomson, “Drug Cartels ‘Threaten’ Mexican Democracy.” 

67. Alberto Najar, “Desertaron 100 mil militares con Fox” 

(“100,000 Soldiers Deserted under Fox”), Milenio, July 20, 2007; 

“Mexico’s Internal Drug War,” Power and Interest News Report, 

August 14, 2006, www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_ 

id=540&language_id=1, accessed December 1, 2008; Grayson, 

“Surge Two.” 

68. Roig-Franzia, “Mexican Drug Cartels Making Audacious 

Pitch for Recruits.” 


70. Dan Keane, “Mexican Military Losing Drug War Support,” 

Washington Post, July 25, 2008. 

53

71. Sarah Miller Llana, “Military Abuses Rise in Mexican Drug 

War,” Christian Science Monitor, June 24, 2008; “Does the Merida 

Initiative Represent a New Direction in U.S.-Mexico Relations, 

or Does it Simply Refocus the Issue Elsewhere?” Council on 

Hemispheric Affairs. 

72. Keane, “Mexican Military Losing Drug War Support.” 



74. USAID, Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment, pp. 

40-41. 

75. Laurence Iliff and Alfredo Corchado, “2 Mexican States 

Trying Out New Justice System,” Dallas Morning News, August 

18, 2008. 

76. Grayson, “Mexico and the Drug Cartels.” 

77. “Mexico Country Brief,” Washington, DC: World Bank, 

web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/LACEXT/M 

EXICOEXTN/0,contentMDK:20185184~menuPK:338403~pagePK:1 

497618~piPK:217854~theSitePK:338397,00.html, accessed February 

9, 2009. 



79. Grayson, “Mexico and the Drug Cartels.” 



81. “Gangs and Crime in Latin America,” p. 14. 

82. Kurz-Phelan, “Long War.” 

83. Baram, “‘Iron River’”; Gustavo Castillo García, “Armas 

Robadas en EU, en poder de narcos” (“Arms Stolen in the U.S., in 

Possession of Narcos”), La Jornada, January 23, 2008; “Statement of 

54

William Hoover, Assistant Director for Field Operations, Bureau 

of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives,” February 7, 2008, 

foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/hoo020708.htm, accessed October 10, 

2008. 


official Ralph Jones, Houston Field Office, December 22, 2008; 

Mario Vázquez Raña, “‘No vamos a fallar,’ compromiso del 

secretario de Seguridad Publica” (“‘We Are Not Going to Fail’: 

Promise of the Secretary of Public Security”), El Sol del Bajío, 

July 6, 2008; Peter DeShazo and Johanna Mendelson Forman, 

“Making the Most of Merida,” August 2008, www.csis.org/media/ 

csis/press/080809_merida_op_ed__english.pdf, accessed December 3, 

2008. 

85. “Confirma México 7 mil mdd para ‘Iniciativa Mérida’” 

(“Mexico Confirms $7 Billion for ‘Merida Initiative’”), OEM en 

linea, October 23, 2007. 

86. “Pide FCH extender Iniciativa Mérida en todo el continente” 

(FCH Seeks to Extend Merida Initiative to the Entire Continent”), 

Diario de México, October 8, 2008; “Ampliaría Obama ayuda de 

Iniciativa Mérida” (“Obama Would Expand Merida Initiative 

Aid”), El Universal, May 23, 2008; David T. Johnson, “Remarks 

on the Merida Initiative,” March 11, 2008, www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/ 

rm/102111.htm, accessed November 14, 2008. 

87. “The Merida Initiative: United-States-Mexico-Central 

America Security Cooperation,” Department of State Fact Sheet, 

October 22, 2007, www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/oct/93800.htm, 

accessed August 11, 2008. 

88. “Joint Statement on the Merida Initiative.” 

89. U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, The Merida 

Initiative: “Guns, Drugs, and Friends,” 110th Congr., 1st Sess., 

December 21, 2007, pp. 3-4. 

90. Funding breakdowns can be found in “Guns, Drugs, and 

Friends”; Colleen Cook, Rebecca Rush, and Clare Ribando Seelke, 

Merida Initiative: Proposed U.S. Anticrime and Counterdrug Assistance 

55

for Mexico and Central America, Washington, DC: Congressional 

Research Service, June 3, 2008, pp. 1-6. 

91. See, for instance, Antonio Aguilera, “La Iniciativa Mérida 

vendría a incrementar las violaciones a las garantías individuales” 

(“The Merida Initiative Would Come to Increase Violations of 

Individual Guarantees”), La Jornada, June 26, 2008; Laura Carlsen, 

“Hemispheric Conference Against Militarization Says No to 

Merida Initiative, U.S. Military Bases,” October 17, 2008, americas. 

irc-online.org/am/5605, accessed December 3, 2008. 

92. Vázquez Raña, “‘No vamos a fallar’”; “Pide FCH extender 

Iniciativa Mérida en todo el continente.” 


40-41. 

94. “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Is Interviewed by 

Televisa,” Political Transcript Wire, October 24, 2008, Proquest 

Newspaper Database, www.proquest.com, accessed December 1, 

2008. 

95. U.S. House of Representative, Committee on Foreign 

Affairs, Subcomittee on the Western Hemisphere, U.S. Obligations 

under the Merida Initiative, 110th Congr., 2nd Sess., February 7, 

2008, p. 20. 

96. Liana Sun Wyler, International Drug Control Policy, 

Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, June 23, 2008, 

p. 3. 

97. Ibid., pp. 2-3, 12. 

98. Thomas Marks, “A Model Counterinsurgency: Uribe’s 

Colombia (2002-2006) vs. FARC,” Military Review, March-April 

2007, p. 41. 

99. Angel Rabasa and Peter Chalk, Colombian Labyrinth: The 

Synergy of Drugs and Insurgency and Its Implications for Regional 

Stability, Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001, p. 11; 

“Pentagon Official Testifies Before House Committee on Plan 

Colombia,” September 21, 2000, www.fas.org/irp/news/2000/09/irp- 

000921-colombia.htm, accessed August 28, 2008. 

56

100. Rabasa and Chalk, Colombian Labyrinth, pp. 6, 17. 

101. Francisco E. Thoumi, Illegal Drugs, Economy, and Society 

in the Andes, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, 

p. 105; Rabasa and Chalk, Colombian Labyrinth, pp. 17, 24, 35-42; 

Peter DeShazo, Tanya Primiani, and Phillip McLean, Back from the 

Brink: Evaluating Progress in Colombia, 1999-2007, Washington, DC: 

Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2007, p. 

7. 

102. Stephen P. Weiler, Colombia: Gateway to Defeating 

Transnational Hell in the Western Hemisphere, Carlisle, PA: U.S. 

Army War College, May 2004, pp. 3-4. 

103. Donnie Marshall, “Plan Colombia: An Initial Assessment,” 

February 28, 2001, drugcaucus.senate.gov/colombia01marshall.html, 

accessed November 22, 2008; see also General Peter Pace, “Plan 

Colombia: An Initial Assessment,” February 28, 2001, drugcaucus. 

senate.gov/colombia01pace.html, accessed November 22, 2008. 

104. Virginia Bouvier, “Evaluating U.S. Policy in Colombia: A 

Policy Report from the IRC Americas Program,” May 11, 2005, pp. 

6-7, americas.irc-online.org/pdf/reports/0505colombia.pdf, accessed 

November 3, 2008; Drug Control: U.S. Nonmilitary Assistance 

to Colombia Is Beginning to Show Intended Results, but Programs 

Are Not Readily Sustainable, Washington, DC: U.S. Government 

Accountability Office, July 2004, pp. 1-8; Steven Dudley, “U.S. 

Pulls Out of Colombian Coca Region,” Miami Herald, November 

20, 2006. 

105. “Written Statement of General James T. Hill before the 

Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” October 29, 2003, www. 

globalsecurity.org/security/library/news/2003/10/sec-031030-usia03. 

htm, accessed August 26, 2008; “Civilian Contractors and U.S. 

Military Personnel Supporting Plan Colombia,” May 15, 2001, 

www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/fs/2001/3509.htm, accessed August 26, 

2008; “Link between the Manta Air Base and Bombing Raid by 

Colombia on a FARC Guerrilla,” Noticias Financieras, March 24, 

2008. 

57

106. Gabriel Marcella, The United States and Colombia: The 

Journey from Ambiguity to Strategic Clarity, Carlisle, PA: Strategic 

Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2003, p. 44; Michael 

Easterbrook, “Colombia Enticing Tired Guerrillas to Give up 

Arms,” Boston Globe, July 20, 2003. 

107. Marks, “A Model Counterinsurgency,” pp. 46-48; Connie 

Veillette, Plan Colombia: A Progress Report, Washington, DC: 

Congressional Research Service, June 22, 2005, pp. 10-11. 

108. G. Guillen, “Venezuela ya entregó armas a las FARC” 

(“Venezuela Already Turned Over Arms to the FARC”), El Nuevo 

Herald, May 19, 2008. 

109. “Pentagon Official Testifies Before House Committee on 

Plan Colombia,” September 21, 2000, www.fas.org/irp/news/2000/09/ 

irp-000921-colombia.htm, accessed August 28, 2008. 

110. Robert Charles, “Foreign Policy and Colombia,” 

Washington Times, April 23, 2007; Veillette, Plan Colombia, p. 5. 

111. “General Discusses U.S. Strategic Objectives for 

Hemisphere,” UNINFO Webchat Transcript, June 12, 2007, www. 

america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/June/20070612142728xjsnommis 

0.6757013.html, accessed August 28, 2008; Office of National Drug 

Control Policy, “Transit Zone Interdiction Operations,” undated, 

www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/international/factsht/ 

transit_zone_interdic_op.html, accessed September 22, 2008. 

112. Michelle L. Farrell, Sequencing: Targeting Insurgents and 

Drugs in Colombia, Newport, RI: Naval Postgraduate School, 

Master’s Thesis, 2007, p. 14; Department of Justice, National 

Drug Threat Assessment 2007, Washington, DC: U.S. Government 

Printing Office, 2007, p. 3. 

113. Sun Wyler, “International Drug Control Policy,” p. 27. 

114. The GAO estimates that in 2002, total estimated cocaine 

flow to the United States was between 460 and 760 metric tons, 

with 21-35 percent of those shipments either seized or disrupted. In 

2006, total estimated cocaine flow was between 460 and 1010 metric 

58

tons, with 22-47 percent seized or disrupted. According to these 

estimates, the amount of cocaine satisfying U.S. domestic demand 

was thus between 299 and 600 metric tons in 2002, and between 

244 and 787 metric tons in 2006. At best, then, U.S. consumption 

declined by 55 metric tons, while at worst it may have increased 

by more than 187 metric tons. For these figures, see Drug Control: 

Cooperation with Many Major Drug Transit Countries Has Improved, 

but Better Performance Reporting and Sustainability Plans Are Needed, 

Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, July 

2008, p. 24. 

115. Steven Dudley, “An Imperfect Plan,” Miami Herald, April 

9, 2006; Ted Galen Carpenter, Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington’s 

Futile War on Drugs in Latin America, New York: Palgrave, 2003, p. 

107. 

116. Michael Deal, “USAID Official Testifies on Andean 

Regional Initiative,” July 11, 2001, bogota.usembassy.gov/topics_of_ 

interest/alternative-development/toiad071101.html, accessed August 

28, 2008. 

117. USAID Data Sheets, www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2005/ 

lac/pdf/514-009.pdf, accessed August 26, 2008; Alan Borque, 

Changing U.S. Strategy in South America: Adjusting and Exporting 

Plan Colombia, U.S. Army War College, Master’s Thesis, 2004, p. 

4. 

118. Danna Harman, “Rethinking Plan Colombia: Some Ways 

to Fix It,” Christian Science Monitor, September 29, 2006. 

119. Dudley, “U.S. Pulls Out of Colombian Coca Region.” 

47. 

120. Farrell, Targeting Insurgents and Drugs in Colombia, pp. 46- 

121. Adam Isacson, “Plan Colombia—Six Years Later: Report 

of a CIP Staff Visit to Putumayo and Medellín, Colombia,” 

International Policy Report, November 2006, pp. 3-7. 

122. Bouvier, “Evaluating U.S. Policy in Colombia”; Harman, 

“Rethinking Plan Colombia.” 

59

123. “Visit to Cucuta, on Colombian-Venezuelan Border,” 

November 15, 1999, Electronic Briefing Book 166, National 

Security Archive, www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB166/ 

index.htm, accessed August 26, 2008. 

124. Colombia: Issues for Congress, Washington, DC: Congressional 

Research Service, November 9, 2007, p. 10. 

125. Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, U.S. 

Obligations under the Merida Initiative, p. 20. 

126. “Mexico/USA Politics: Anti-Drug Aid on the Way,” 

Stratfor Today, Economist Intelligence Unit ViewsWire, July 2, 2008, 

Proquest Newspaper Database, www.proquest.com, accessed 

November 26, 2008. 

127. “Mexico: The Long Road to Security Reform,” Stratfor 

Today October 1, 2008, www.stratfor.com/analysis/20081001_mexico_ 

long_road_security_reform, accessed December 4, 2008. 

128. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “Statement 

of Marcy M. Forman, Director”; U.S. Assistance Has Helped 

Mexican Counter-Narcotics Efforts, but Tons of Illicit Drugs Continue 

to Flow into the United States, Washington, DC: U.S. Government 

Accountability Office, August 2007, pp. 22-23. 

129. Kurtz-Phelan, “Long War”; U.S. Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement, “Statement of Marcy M. Forman.” 

130. Iliff and Corchado, “2 Mexican States Trying Out New 

Justice System.” 

131. Baram, “‘Iron River of Guns.’” 

132. Telephone interview conducted by the author with an 

ATF official, December 22, 2008. 



Obligations under the Merida Initiative, p. 43; Marcela Sanchez, 

“U.S. Antes Up to Fight Drugs in Mexico, As It Cuts Funding for 

Programs Here,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 15, 2008. 

60

135. U.S. Assistance Has Helped Mexican Counternarcotics 

Efforts, but the Flow of Illicit Drugs into the United States Remains 

High, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Accountability Office, 

October 2007, pp. 5-6; Kurtz-Phelan, “Long War.” 


Obligations under the Merida Initiative, p. 2. 

137. Admiral James Stavridis, U.S. Navy, “We’re All in This 

Together,” Americas Quarterly, Fall 2007, p. 36. 

138. Michael Hirsh, “A Smarter Way to Fight,” Newsweek, July 

21, 2008, pp. 40-41. 

139. Felbab-Brown, “Tackling Transnational Crime.” 


13-14. 

141. Stavridis, “We’re All in This Together,” p. 38; see also 

Jorge Castaneda and Patricio Navia, “Of Democracy and Dinero,” 

National Interest Online, July 2, 2008, www.nationalinterest.org/ 

Article.aspx?id=18702, accessed July 10, 2008. 

142. USAID, Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment, 30. 

143. C. Peter Rydell and Susan Everingham, Controlling 

Cocaine: Supply Versus Demand Programs, Santa Monica, CA: RAND 

Corporation, 1994, www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2006/ 

RAND_MR331.sum.pdf, accessed August 20, 2008. 


official, December 22, 2008. 

145. Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “Does the Merida 

Initiative Represent a New Direction in U.S.-Mexico Relations, or 

Does it Simply Refocus the Issue Elsewhere?” 

61

FROM THE NEW MIDDLE AGES 

TO A NEW DARK AGE: 

THE DECLINE OF THE STATE 

AND U.S. STRATEGY 

Phil Williams 

June 2008 

Visit our website for other free publication downloads 

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This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined 

in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. As such, it is in the 

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***** 


and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the 

Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. This report is cleared for public release; distribution 

is unlimited. 

***** 

The author would like to express his deep appreciation to 

Professor Douglas Lovelace and Dr. Steven Metz for their helpful 

and incisive comments on an earlier draft of this monograph. 

He would also like to thank Dr. Paul Kan, Dr. Max Manwaring, 

Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Freier, and Dr. Alex Crowther for 

many helpful discussions and ideas which are reflected in the 

analysis. Other colleagues at the Strategic Studies Institute 

provided a wonderfully welcoming, congenial, and stimulating 

environment within which to research and write this monograph, 

and the author has benefited from their individual and collective 

wisdom and insight. Special thanks also to Ms. Marianne Cowling 

and Ms. Rita Rummel for their invaluable editorial assistance. 

Errors of any kind are solely the responsibility of the author. 

***** 




***** 





ii

***** 









ISBN 1-58487-358-2 

iii

FOREWORD 

National security policymakers are continuously 

challenged to ensure that the judgments and assumptions 

underlying policy, force posture, and provision 

are congruent with the international environment and 

the role the United States is playing within it. This 

has become problematic in the 21st century security 

environment characterized by complexity, connectivity, 

and rapid change. This analysis offers key insights 

into what is a shifting security environment and considers 

how the United States can best respond to it. Dr. 

Phil Williams argues that we have passed the zenith 

of the Westphalian state, which is now in long-term 

decline, and are already in what several observers 

have termed the New Middle Ages, characterized by 

disorder but not chaos. Dr. Williams suggests that both 

the relative and absolute decline in state power will 

not only continue but will accelerate, taking us into a 

New Dark Age where the forces of chaos could prove 

overwhelming. He argues that failed states are not an 

aberration but an indication of intensifying disorder, 

and suggests that the intersection of problems such 

as transnational organized crime, terrorism, and 

pandemics could intersect and easily create a tipping 

point from disorder into chaos. 

Dr. Williams suggests that analysts and policymakers 

are reluctant to acknowledge the pace and 

scope of state decline. He argues that continued 

assumptions about the central role and vitality of 

states—a phenomenon he terms “stateocentrism”— 

blinds us to emerging challenges. The exception is the 

Joint Operational Environment, which offers critically 

important insights into emerging challenges. Yet 

even this, Dr. Williams argues, focuses on defeating 

enemies rather than managing conditions of chaos 

v

and restoring order, and remains overly optimistic. He 

suggests that many of the problems which are proving 

particularly intractable in Iraq exemplify—albeit on a 

small scale—the kind of challenges associated with a 

New Dark Age. Against this background, Dr. Williams 

outlines the strengths and weaknesses of three major 

choices: preventive interventionism, disengagement 

and mitigation, and triage or selective interventionism. 

He suggests that for both a continuation of the 

current approach and for selective intervention, 

U.S. policymakers have to design a far more holistic 

approach to the exercise of power. In the future, for 

any substantial U.S. military intervention (by the 

United States acting alone or with allies) to have any 

chance of success will require what is termed in this 

monograph a transagency organizational structure. A 

whole of government approach cannot simply replicate 

in the field the institutional rivalries and divergences 

prevalent in Washington. Military forces, diplomats, 

reconstruction specialists, and legal experts must be 

integrated into one organization designed to assist a 

target state in reestablishing its authority, legitimacy, 

and effectiveness. Whether or not one agrees with the 

gloomy prognosis of this analysis, the author identifies 

trends and potential challenges that will have an impact 

on U.S. strategy and military posture in the next few 

decades and offers some suggestions about possible 

responses. 


Director 


vi

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 

PHIL WILLIAMS is currently Visiting Research 

Professor, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War 

College, and Professor of International Security in the 

Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at 

the University of Pittsburgh. From 1992 to 2001, Dr. 

Williams was the Director of the University’s Matthew 

B. Ridgeway Center for International Security Studies. 

His research has focused primarily on transnational 

organized crime, and he was founding editor of the 

journal, Transnational Organized Crime (now Global 

Crime). He has published on alliances among criminal 

organizations, global and national efforts to combat 

money laundering, and trends in cyber crime. Dr. 

Williams has been a consultant to both the United 

Nations and various U.S. Government agencies. 

He has edited or co-authored books on the Carter, 

Reagan, and Bush Presidencies, Russian Organized 

Crime, Illegal Immigration and Commercial Sex: The New 

Slave Trade, and Combating Transnational Crime. He 

recently published book chapters on the financing of 

terrorism, the relationship between organized crime 

and terrorism, trafficking in women, complexity theory 

and intelligence analysis, and intelligence and nuclear 

proliferation. He has also conducted research on how 

to attack terrorist networks. At the Strategic Studies 

Institute, Dr. Williams is working on monographs on 

organized crime in Iraq and the Madrid bombings. Dr 

Williams is a National Intelligence Council Associate 

and works closely with the Office for Warning. 

vii

SUMMARY 

Security and stability in the 21st century have little 

to do with traditional power politics, military conflict 

between states, and issues of grand strategy. Instead, 

they revolve around governance, public safety, 

inequality, urbanization, violent nonstate actors, and 

the disruptive consequences of globalization. This 

monograph seeks to explore the implications of these 

issues for the future U.S. role in the world, as well as 

for its military posture and strategy. 

Underlying the change from traditional geopolitics 

to security as a governance issue is the long-term decline 

of the state. Despite state resilience, this trend could 

prove unstoppable. If so, it will be essential to replace 

dominant state-centric perceptions and assessments 

(what the author terms “stateocentrism”) with alternative 

judgments acknowledging the reduced role 

and diminished effectiveness of states. This alternative 

assessment has been articulated most effectively in the 

notion of the New Middle Ages in which the state is 

only one of many actors, and the forces of disorder 

loom large. The concept of the New Middle Ages is 

discussed in Section II, which suggests that global 

politics are now characterized by fragmented political 

authority, overlapping jurisdictions, no-go zones, 

identity politics, and contested property rights. 

Failure to manage the forces of global disorder, 

however, could lead to something even more forbidding—a 

New Dark Age. Accordingly, Section III 

identifies and elucidates key developments that are not 

only feeding into the long-term decline of the state but 

seem likely to create a major crisis of governance that 

could tip into the chaos of a New Dark Age. Particular 

attention is given to the inability of states to meet the 

ix

needs of their citizens, the persistence of alternative 

loyalties, the rise of transnational actors, urbanization 

and the emergence of alternatively governed spaces, 

and porous borders. These factors are likely to interact 

in ways that could lead to an abrupt, nonlinear shift 

from the New Middle Ages to the New Dark Age. This 

will be characterized by the spread of disorder from the 

zone of weak states and feral cities in the developing 

world to the countries of the developed world. When 

one adds the strains coming from global warming and 

environmental degradation, the diminution of cheaply 

available natural resources, and the proliferation of 

weapons of mass destruction, the challenges will be 

formidable and perhaps overwhelming. 

These challenges will also have profound implications 

for U.S. security policy and military strategy. Reflecting 

this, Section IV considers the extent to which 

these trends and challenges have been incorporated 

into official thinking about U.S. national security 

policy, military posture, and strategy. Although there 

is considerable sensitivity to the need to adapt to a more 

complex, dynamic, and unpredictable environment, 

the continued focus on defeating enemies rather than 

managing conditions of complexity and even chaos is 

overly narrow. At best, the official assessments remain 

linear in terms of projections about states—and even 

when the focus is on state weakness, the emphasis 

remains on adversaries rather than the environment 

itself. 

Consequently, Section V considers how—in the 

event the prognosis of state decline and emerging 

chaos is correct—the United States might seek to 

adapt its policies and strategies. Several different 

options are explored. These range from the adoption of 

vigorous preventive measures at one extreme to global 

x

disengagement at the other. The first option seeks 

to quarantine and contain disorder and chaos as far 

from the United States as possible. The second option 

seeks to quarantine the United States itself, thereby 

protecting it from the most serious consequences of 

an inexorable trend. A third option, lying somewhere 

between these extremes, offers a more selective and 

differentiated strategy. For both the first and the third 

options, the United States would need a far more 

holistic approach to the exercise of power and a far 

more coherent organizational structure than currently 

exist. In responding to security challenges, the United 

States develops several strands of distinct and often 

independent activities rather than a sustained strategic 

approach that integrates multiple activities and directs 

them towards a common purpose. 

In a world where the United States seeks to 

combat extensive disorder and restore stability, 

military, economic, and diplomatic power have to 

be targeted in ways that create synergies rather than 

seams, that reinforce rather than undercut, and that 

provide maximum efficiency and effectiveness. U.S. 

interventions would have to be smarter, not harder. 

The problem is that effective strategies of intervention 

and reconstruction require more than the coordination 

of disparate elements. Strategy cannot be patched 

together. At the very least, it requires going beyond 

interagency collaboration to develop what might be 

termed transagency organizational structures. Based 

on but extending the task force concept, a transagency 

structure would be a central core of U.S. interventionist 

capabilities. It would include military forces, diplomats, 

reconstruction specialists, and legal experts 

integrated into one organization designed to assist a 

target state in reestablishing its authority, legitimacy, 

xi

and effectiveness. Notions of joint operations would be 

extended beyond the military to civilian institutions, 

replace departmental loyalties with a sense of loyalty 

to the mission, and focus on synergistic effects. 

Without both organizational innovation and a shift of 

organizational cultures and loyalties, tactical success 

is unlikely—even if there is selective and limited 

intervention. 

The caution is that tactical success might not 

translate into strategic success. After all, the state does 

not necessarily represent the optimum set of political 

arrangements for meeting people’s needs or for ensuring 

peace and stability. More organic, bottom-up 

forms of governance, for all their shortcomings, might 

be the best available in a world of increasingly hollow 

and failing states. The fixation with the centralized state 

needs to confront realities that point towards serious 

consideration of alternatives. The problem is that the 

stateocentric mode of thinking is so highly normative 

that consideration of alternative forms of governance, 

which does more than treat them as threats, is typically 

regarded as heretical, irrelevant, or misguided. Yet if 

we fail to see the decline of the state and to recognize 

the underlying realities, the prospect of a cascade of 

strategic surprises and a series of strategic disasters is 

inescapable. 

xii

FROM THE NEW MIDDLE AGES 

TO A NEW DARK AGE: 

THE DECLINE OF THE STATE 

AND U.S. STRATEGY 

I. FRAMING THE ISSUE 

In the 21st century in most parts of the world, 

issues of security and stability have little to do with 

traditional power politics, military conflict between 

states, and issues of grand strategy. Instead they revolve 

around the disruptive consequences of globalization, 

governance, public safety, inequality, urbanization, 

violent nonstate actors and the like. This monograph 

seeks to explore the implications of these disruptions 

for the future of the U.S. role in the world, as well as for 

its military posture and strategy. 

Underlying the change from traditional geopolitics 

to security as a governance issue is the long-term decline 

of the state. Despite state resilience, this trend could 

prove unstoppable. If so, it will be essential to replace 

dominant state-centric perceptions and assessments 

with alternative judgments acknowledging the 

reduced role and diminished effectiveness of states. 

This alternative assessment has been most effectively 

articulated in the notion of the New Middle Ages in 

which the state is only one of many actors, and the 

forces of disorder loom large. Consequently, the New 

Middle Ages is discussed in Section II. Failure to 

manage the forces of global disorder, however, could 

lead to something even more forbidding—a New Dark 

Age. Accordingly, Section III identifies and elucidates 

key developments that are not only feeding into the 

long-term decline of the state, but seem likely to create 

a major crisis of governance that could tip into the 

1

chaos of a New Dark Age. At the very least, such a 

crisis will have profound implications for U.S. security 

policy and military strategy. 

Reflecting this, Section IV considers the extent 

to which these trends and challenges have been 

incorporated into official thinking about U.S. national 

security policy, military posture, and strategy. 

Although there is considerable sensitivity to the need to 

adapt to a more complex, dynamic, and unpredictable 

environment, the continued focus on defeating enemies 

rather than managing conditions of complexity and 

even chaos is overly narrow. At best, the official 

assessments remain linear in terms of projections about 

states—and even when the focus is on state weakness, 

the emphasis remains on adversaries rather than the 

environment itself. 

Consequently, Section V considers how—in the 

event the prognosis of state decline and emerging 

chaos is correct—the United States might seek to 

adapt its policies and strategies. Several different 

options are explored. These range from the adoption of 

vigorous preventive measures at one extreme to global 

disengagement at the other. The first option seeks 

to quarantine and contain disorder and chaos as far 

from the United States as possible. The second option 

seeks to quarantine the United States itself, thereby 

protecting it from the most serious consequences of 

an inexorable trend. A third option, lying somewhere 

between these extremes, offers a more selective and 

differentiated strategy. Whatever strategic choices are 

made, however, the consequences for the U.S. military 

and its roles and missions will be far-reaching. Before 

examining the menu of choices, it is necessary to explore 

more fully why the state is in long-term decline. 

2

Observers who see the dominance of states in 

world politics as immutable reject the decline thesis. 

They dismiss the weakness of many states with the 

argument that most of these were never more than 

“quasi-states” in the first place. 1 Moreover, the contrast 

between states in Africa, for example, and the advanced 

post-industrial states of the developed world is so stark 

that assessments of the former seem to have little or 

no applicability to the latter. Consequently, arguments 

about the decline of the state tend to be dismissed— 

like reports of Mark Twain’s death—as somewhat 

premature. Certainly, it is “too early to schedule a wake 

for the sovereign-state system.” 2 The state remains the 

main construct for political allegiance and affiliation, 

the ostensible provider of security to its citizens, and 

the key organizing device for world politics. 

None of this is inconsistent with the notion that 

the Westphalian state system is in a long recession. 

States, having reached the zenith of their power in the 

totalitarian systems of the 20th century, are in a period 

of absolute decline. The challenges from contemporary 

globalization and other pressures are neither novel nor 

unique, but are more formidable than in the past— 

while the ability of states to respond effectively to 

these challenges is not what it was. In a sense, states are 

being overwhelmed by complexity, fragmentation, and 

demands that they are simply unable to meet. They are 

experiencing an unsettling diminution in their capacity 

to manage political, social, and economic problems 

that are increasingly interconnected, intractable, 

and volatile. States are also undergoing a relative 

decline, challenged in both overt and subtle ways by 

the emergence of alternative centers of power and 

authority. 3 Sometimes decline is dramatic and overt, 

but much of it is subtle and gradual. At some point, 

3

however, changes in degree can become a change in 

kind. A multitude of incremental shifts, especially if 

combined with powerful trigger events, can create a 

major tipping point, where the Westphalian state moves 

from stability to instability, from high to low levels of 

performance and legitimacy, and from untrammeled 

dominance to a loss of centrality. 

Scholars and policymakers who remain staunchly 

state-centric dismiss this notion of a fundamental 

long-term transformation. In effect, they suffer from 

“stateocentrism”—a term having the same kind of 

pejorative connotations as ethnocentrism. To argue this 

is not to ignore the power of the ingrained assumptions 

and attitudes underlying the “stateocentric” mindset. 

After all, for the most part, states follow certain norms 

and rules, are predictable in their behavior, and exhibit 

high levels of rationality. Stateocentrism is very 

comfortable—it is parsimonious, reflects powerful if 

partial realities, and has the great virtue of familiarity. 

In the immediate aftermath of September 11, 2001 

(9/11), for example, there were arguments from 

many quarters—including former Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) Director James Woolsey—suggesting 

that a transnational network was incapable of carrying 

out such an operation without state sponsorship or 

at the very least state support. 4 Such an assessment 

underestimated the capacity of violent nonstate actors 

to develop plans that were simultaneously simple and 

sophisticated, exploited U.S. infrastructure as a delivery 

system, and had effects grossly disproportionate to 

their capabilities. 

Similarly, failed states are seen as aberrations 

or anomalies rather than as indications of a longterm 

structural decline of the Westphalian state. 

More specifically, in Iraq the idea of a viable central 

4

government has dominated U.S. planning and policy 

even though the political and sectarian divisions seem 

to preclude the central government from developing 

the level of legitimacy and effectiveness that is 

necessary for the restoration of an effective Iraqi state. 5 

Moreover, Iraq is a powerful example of how violent 

nonstate actors such as militias can become proxies for 

the state in the provision of security to portions of the 

population. Stateocentrism tends to blind its adherents 

to the democratization and diffusion of coercive power 

to these nonstate actors. This has more recently been 

evident, for example, in a growing tendency to dismiss 

9/11 as simply a blip rather than an indicator of a 

major change in world politics. 6 Skepticism of this kind 

about the terrorist threat is unlikely to be dispelled by 

anything less than another major attack on the U.S. 

homeland. Yet, even without such an attack, these 

stateocentric perspectives are increasingly tenuous. 

Transnational networks and forces of disorder are 

seriously redrawing the maps of the world—and 

the lines that demarcate nation-states are becoming 

increasingly notional, if not wholly fictional. At the 

same time power and authority are moving away 

from states to other actors. These trends must now be 

examined. 

II. THE NEW MIDDLE AGES 

Many of the characteristics of the state system that 

have long been taken for granted are now in question— 

and will become increasingly so in the future. Robert 

Kaplan forcefully articulated this view in the 1990s. 

Unfortunately, the hyperbole inherent in his vision 

of the coming anarchy enabled critics to dismiss the 

alarming trends and developments he identified. 7 

5

Ironically, most of these trends and developments 

have subsequently intensified rather than abated. 

Had Kaplan argued not that the future of the world 

was Sierra Leone, but simply that the future of large 

swaths of the world was Sierra Leone, then his thesis 

would have been compelling. The kind of future he 

discussed has been captured systematically in the 

notion variously characterized as the New Middle 

Ages, new medievalism, or neo-medievalism. 

Initially developed and dismissed by both Arnold 

Wolfers and Hedley Bull, the concept of the New Middle 

Ages has been best articulated in a doctoral thesis at 

the University of Pittsburgh by Gregory O’Hayon and 

in articles by Philip Cerny and Jorg Friedrichs. 8 Mark 

Duffield, in a succinct summary of Cerny’s analysis, 

suggests that global politics is characterized by several 

mutually interlocking and reinforcing conditions 

which give it a neo-medieval quality. These include: 

• “Competing institutions with overlapping 

jurisdictions” between states and other actors. 9 

As societies and economies have become more 

complex, states no longer have a monopoly on 

functions or responsibilities. Even strong and rich 

states choose to privatize certain functions or coopt 

nongovernmental organizations. For weak 

states, however, the sharing of responsibilities 

and indeed authority is not so much a choice as 

a result of their own shortcomings. The irony, 

as discussed more fully below, is that when the 

state is already weak, the sharing of governance 

tends to undermine rather than strengthen state 

authority and legitimacy. 

• “More fluid territorial boundaries (both within 

and across states).” 10 Borders have never been 

fully impermeable. Nevertheless, in what has 

6

ecome regarded as a global “space of flows,” 

control over borders is increasingly problematic. 

11 This, too, is discussed more fully below. 

Suffice it to suggest here, however, that borders 

are not lines on maps but organic spaces which 

develop their own character and dynamism— 

often in ways that are inconsistent with the 

objectives and values of central governments. 

• “Inequality and marginalization of various 

groups.” 12 These groups exist to one degree 

or another within all societies, although the 

proportion of a country’s population they 

represent varies enormously from developed to 

developing countries. In many African and Latin 

American countries, marginalized individuals 

and groups make up the large majority of 

the population. Their deprivation is starkly 

underlined by its juxtaposition with the wealth 

of the political and business elites, wealth that is 

often displayed in very ostentatious ways. 

• “Multiple or fragmented loyalties and identities.” 

13 Largely obscured by the Cold War, 

issues of identity, ethnicity, and loyalty have 

come back to the forefront. In the Balkans during 

the 1990s, they resulted in ethnic cleansing and 

large-scale atrocities; in some African countries, 

the result was genocide. In other parts of the 

world, identity politics has resulted in the rise 

of militant Islamic groups with a propensity for 

violence. 

• “Contested property rights, legal statutes, and 

conventions.” 14 In some parts of the world, 

especially urban slums in many developing 

countries—which are discussed more fully 

below—the contest is between formal property 

7

ights and the de facto property rights of 

slum dwellers who often live off the informal 

economy and are typically outside the orbit of 

state largesse, if not state control. 

• “The spread of geographical and social ‘no go 

areas’ where the rule of law no longer extends.” 15 

Notions of ungoverned spaces or lawless areas 

increasingly have been seen as a dangerous 

phenomenon, especially because they provide 

safe havens for terrorists. In fact, many of them 

are not so much ungoverned as alternatively 

governed by groups which act as surrogates for 

the state. The “dons” in the slums of Kingston, 

Jamaica, for example, are not merely the heads 

of drug trafficking organizations; they are also 

the social and economic patrons of marginalized 

people who have little or no assistance from 

the state. As John Rapley has noted, the dons 

provide “a rudimentary welfare safety net by 

helping locals with school fees, lunch money, 

and employment—a function that the Jamaican 

government used to perform. But over the last 

couple of decades, keen to reduce spending, 

it has scaled back many of its operations, 

leaving a vacuum. As one kind of authority has 

withdrawn, another has advanced.” 16 While 

particularly stark in Jamaica, this phenomenon 

is also present in many other countries. 

• “A growing disarticulation between the 

dynamic and technologically innovative north 

and the south.” 17 At one level, this observation 

is very compelling—and is hard to disagree 

with. Yet, within the south, there are varying 

degrees of growth and deprivation. Paul Collier, 

for example, has noted that there is “a group of 

8

countries at the bottom that are falling behind, 

and often falling apart.” 18 Encompassing what 

Collier terms the “bottom billion” people, these 

countries “coexist with the 20th century, but 

their reality is the 14th century: civil war, plague, 

ignorance.” 19 Emphasizing this, however, makes 

Cerny’s argument even more compelling. 

Cerny himself, having fully elucidated each of these 

characteristics of neo-medievalism, concludes with the 

suggestion that these elements constitute a long-term 

“durable disorder” in which the system as a whole 

stumbles along with problems managed and contained 

rather than solved. 20 

Friedrichs, while identifying many of the same 

characteristics, adds that the “Middle Ages in Western 

Christendom between the 11th and the 14th centuries” 

was nevertheless held together by the dual yet competitive 

universalistic claims of the Empire and the 

Church. 21 In his view, the notion of the Middle Ages 

as a disorderly system ignores the forces which gave it 

coherence. He then argues that a similar dualism exists 

today with regard to the state on the one side and the 

globalized market economy on the other. 22 There are 

several difficulties with this, however. First, Friedrichs’ 

discussion of the Middle Ages is highly selective, 

both geographically and temporally. Second, even if 

we accept that the universalistic claims he identifies 

provided a critical degree of order, it is not clear that 

either the state or the transnational market economy 

can do the same in the 21st century. On the contrary— 

as suggested below—globalization, far from helping 

to impose a degree of order, actually compounds the 

disorder. 

9

Clearly, Cerny’s encapsulation of the new 

medievalism is far more compelling than Friedrichs’, 

especially in terms of its emphasis on disorder. 

Unlike Friedrichs, Cerny sees contemporary forces 

such as globalization and connectivity as having 

profoundly negative as well as positive effects. When 

combined with technology that has become more 

diffused and easily acquired, the result is not only an 

empowerment of what James Rosenau almost 20 years 

ago termed “sovereignty-free actors,” but also a turbocharging 

of global politics. 23 The speed of travel and 

communications, the ease and low cost of business 

transactions, the volume and velocity of financial flows, 

the pervasiveness of television, and the growing reach 

of the Internet have created a world that would be 

unintelligible not only to citizens in the Middle Ages, 

but also to many of those who lived in the first half of 

the 20th century. We live in a somewhat paradoxical 

era when political conditions and the dispersion of 

authority increasingly resemble the Middle Ages, but 

the forces of modernity, technology, and globalization 

add a whole new set of challenges to the viability and 

integrity of the state system and make the provision 

of security—at the national, public, and individual 

levels—increasingly problematic. Cerny, of course, 

recognizes all this and sums it up in his notion of the 

“security deficit.” 24 This is based on the contention that 

traditional state approaches to the provision of security 

such as the maintenance of a global or regional balance 

of power are increasingly irrelevant to contemporary 

and future challenges. 

At the same time, Cerny contends that “such 

turbulence does not necessarily mean chaos.” 25 

10

The medieval order was a highly flexible one that created 

a wide range of spaces that could accommodate quite 

extensive social, economic, and political innovations— 

eventually laying the groundwork for the emergence of 

the post-feudal, nation-state-based international order. 

The 21st-century globalizing world order similarly provides 

manifold opportunities as well as constraints. 26 

In effect, he suggests that what is essentially a dark 

prognosis has a silver lining. Yet, this might not be 

the case. The problem with even this limited degree 

of optimism is that disorder itself could prove highly 

unpredictable rather than “durable.” It does not 

require much imagination to see disorder spread, 

intensify, or tip into chaos. The danger is that the New 

Middle Ages, rather than being a stopping point, will 

be simply an interim stage on the road to a New Dark 

Age. The world is already facing not only a “security 

deficit” but also, as Cerny acknowledges, a governance 

deficit. 27 Both will accelerate rather than diminish 

in the next few decades. Moreover, the security 

deficit and the governance deficit will reinforce one 

another in pernicious, unpredictable, and potentially 

unmanageable ways. 

III. STATE DECLINE, GLOBAL CRISIS 

OF GOVERNANCE AND THE NEW DARK AGE 

There are many reasons why the state is in decline, 

and why this decline is likely both to accelerate 

and to intensify. The difficulty is not so much with 

identifying the underlying structural conditions 

contributing to what appears to be a long-term secular 

trend, but with understanding the cumulative impact 

of drivers which are not only interdependent but also 

mutually reinforcing. Interdependence, combined with 

11

persistent and reinforcing feedback loops, ensures that 

the impact of these factors is much more than the sum 

of their parts. Indeed, decline can easily become selfperpetuating: 

as states go into decline, other forms of 

governance become more important, simultaneously 

acting as proxies for states while further reducing 

state legitimacy. Keeping this in mind, several 

considerations clearly feed into the continued erosion 

of state dominance. 

The Inability of Most States to Meet the Needs 

of Their Citizens. 

Many states are increasingly unable to meet the 

needs of their citizens. In part this reflects the rise of 

complex or “wicked” problems that resist short-term 

or readily salable solutions as well as what might be 

termed the long-term demography of unemployment. 28 

Job creation in most countries of the developing world 

is already inadequate and will fail to meet the needs of 

growing populations, while even in developed countries 

large segments of immigrant populations—especially 

youths—remain unemployed, underemployed, 

or employed only for the most menial of tasks. For countries 

such as Nigeria, even if they succeed in overcoming 

the mix of corruption and incompetence that pervades 

governance structures, it is unlikely that they will 

create sufficient job opportunities for a rapidly growing 

population. The result is that the disenfranchised and 

alienated segments of society will grow as will disputes 

over resources—such as the oil in the Niger Delta. This 

is also likely in other African societies where the state, 

rather than being above politics, is simply the prize of 

politics. 29 In these circumstances, politics becomes a 

zero-sum game, and the distribution of spoils is heavily 

12

skewed in the direction of the ethnic group, tribe, clan, 

or sectarian faction that is in power. Inevitably this 

leads to instability of the kind that erupted in Kenya 

in late December 2007 and early 2008, even though the 

country was long regarded as one of Africa’s success 

stories. Dynamics of this kind have also been evident in 

Iraq since the U.S. invasion and have complicated both 

reconstruction and the reestablishment of a legitimate 

and effective government. The conflict in Basra among 

competing Shiite factions and militias, for example, has 

little to do with sectarianism and revolves primarily 

around the control of oil and oil smuggling. 30 

Even where this zero-sum dynamic is absent, 

weaknesses of the state are debilitating. These 

weaknesses can be understood in terms of capacity 

gaps and functional holes. 31 Gaps in state capacity 

lead to an inability to carry out the “normal” and 

“expected” functions of the modern Westphalian 

state and to make adequate levels of public goods or 

collective provision for large parts of the citizenry. 

In Latin America, this has resulted in what Gabriel 

Marcella described as “inadequate public security 

forces, dysfunctional judicial systems, inadequate 

jails which become training schools for criminals, and 

deficiencies in other dimensions of state structure such 

as maintenance of infrastructure.” 32 Indeed, Marcella 

goes on to argue that “at the turn of the 21st century, 

Latin American countries have essentially two states 

within their boundaries: the formal and the informal. 

They are separate entities often walled off from each 

other, though they interact with the informal state 

supporting the other.” 33 Similar observations have been 

made by John Rapley who has argued not only that the 

state “lacks the largesse needed to buy the loyalty of an 

ever-increasing number of players,” but also that other 

13

informal forms and structures of governance move in 

to replace the state. 34 

Where the State can no longer provide employment, 

build houses, pave roads or police the streets, or where 

the police are so woefully underpaid that they supplement 

their incomes from corruption, sometimes turning 

on the very citizens they are meant to protect, in such 

cases, private armies and mini-states might fill the vacuum 

left behind by a retreating state. 35 

One reason for the resurgence of Sendero Luminoso 

in Peru, for example, has been that in most respects, 

the state does not exist outside Lima. Over the next 

several decades, the state is likely to retreat from more 

and more sectors and more and more geographical 

areas. Although Marcella and Rapley focus primarily 

on Latin America and the Caribbean, their comments 

apply equally in many other parts of the world, most 

particularly Africa and Central Asia. 

The Persistence of Alternative Loyalties. 

A second problem for states is what might be 

described as alternative loyalties of significant portions 

of the population. This can have several reasons, the 

most obvious of which is the lack of congruence between 

state and nation. For the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, for 

example, national citizenship is less important than 

ethnic identity. It could be argued, of course, that this 

is simply because the Kurds want their own state—so 

it is the particular state arrangement in question rather 

than the state itself. Even if this is accepted in the 

Kurdish case, a broader trend is apparent in which lack 

of primary affiliation with the state and the resurgence 

of primordial loyalties—to family, clan, tribe, ethnic 

14

group, religion, or sect—has created a crisis of loyalty 

among significant and often growing segments of 

“national” populations. Indeed, David Ronfeldt has 

described tribes as “the first and forever form” of social 

organization. 36 As he has noted: “even for modern 

societies that have advanced far beyond a tribal stage, 

the tribe remains not only the founding form but also 

the forever form and the ultimate fallback form.” 37 It 

is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that “many of the 

world’s current trouble spots—in the Middle East, 

South Asia, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and Africa— 

are in societies so riven by embedded tribal and clan 

dynamics that the outlook remains terribly uncertain 

for them to build professional states and competitive 

businesses that are unencumbered by tribal and clan 

dynamics.” 38 In Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan in 

particular, clans and tribes have complicated efforts to 

engage in state making. Nowhere have the fractured 

and diffused loyalties been more obvious than in the 

Facilities Protection Service, a force set up to guard 

ministries and other government installations and 

infrastructure in Iraq. Although it is nominally under 

the control of the Ministry of Interior, the “allegiance of 

many Facilities Protection service personnel has been 

to individual ministries, parties, tribes, and clans rather 

than to the central government, and such division of 

loyalties undermines their ability to provide security.” 39 

Even the much-vaunted U.S. alliance with Sunni tribes 

against al-Qaeda in Iraq has been based on an important 

if belated recognition of the significance of tribes and 

has led to some short-term success. The danger is that 

the long-term construction of a centralized and viable 

Iraqi state becomes even more difficult. 

Tribes, clans, and the warlords who sometimes 

lead them typically define their interests and identities 

15

in ways that implicitly or explicitly challenge notions 

of public interest and collective identity as symbolized 

in state structures and institutions. 40 This is both 

possible and persuasive because, in some respects, the 

nonstate actors have more legitimacy then the state. As 

Zonabend noted: “The lineage or clan is more than a 

group of relatives united by privileged ties; it is also 

a corporate group, whose members support each 

other, act together in all circumstances, whether ritual 

or everyday, jointly own and exploit assets and carry 

out, from generation to generation, the same political, 

religious, or military functions.” 41 Few states have 

this kind of unity—except under conditions of total 

warfare. 

Significantly, criminal organizations also exhibit 

some of the same features as tribes and clans. Many 

criminal organizations—although certainly not all— 

have an ethnic, family, tribal, or even geographical 

basis. Even when this is not the case, bonding mechanisms—which 

can include time spent together in prison 

or simply working together in risky conditions— 

play an important role. 42 Although an increasing number 

of criminal organizations appear to be cosmopolitan in 

membership, the more important ones are still based 

on family ties or common ethnicity. Strong internal 

affiliation is often accompanied by hostility towards 

outsiders. It is not surprising, therefore, that warfare 

between competing criminal organizations is often 

based on family or clan rivalries in which revenge 

and vendettas are the contemporary forms of blood 

feuds. The clash between the Mexican drug trafficking 

organizations led by the Arellano Felix family and 

the Gulf drug trafficking organization on the one 

side and by Chapo Guzman of the Sinaloa and Juarez 

organizations on the other have been partly about the 

16

control of drug trafficking routes and markets, but they 

have also been fuelled and intensified by the killing of 

family members and the desire for revenge. Inherent 

in both the sense of identity and the willingness to use 

force is a challenge to state dominance. This has even 

been true in the United States where the Mafia which 

arose from medieval conditions in Sicily . . . succeeded 

precisely as a medieval anachronism in counterpoint to 

modern culture, each provoking and irritating the other. 

Modernity broke society down into atoms of mobile, 

free-floating unaffiliated individuals with ultimate loyalties 

only to the state and its laws. The Mafia insisted on 

the enduring primacy of family, geography, ethnicity, 

and ultimate loyalties to persons and the Mafia itself— 

the group over the individual. Instead of contractual, 

legalistic, or economic ties, the Mafia bound its men 

with personalized relations of reciprocal obligation. 43 

For the members, the organization was more important 

than the state or its laws. A similar dynamic is evident 

in Islamic terrorist organizations. 

Perhaps nowhere have identities, loyalties, 

and obligations surpassing and transcending the 

relationship with the state been more evident than 

in the rise of al-Qaeda and affiliated groups. The 

real genius of bin Laden and Zawahiri, as well as of 

jihadi theorists such as Setmariam Nasr, has been in 

the use of “grievance narratives” to create a sense of 

Moslem identity. 44 This sense of identity, loyalty, and 

obligation, encouraged through radical mosques, 

personal affiliations, and the Internet, not only 

transcends and trumps citizenship but also encourages 

citizens’ hostility towards the states in which they live. 

The vision of the new Islamic Caliphate—even though 

merely a long-term aspiration—is at one level a frontal 

challenge to the nation-state, especially as the loyalties 

17

it creates are most evident in radicalization and have 

as their ultimate expression the suicide bomber. It 

also suggests that although Huntington’s clash of 

civilizations is not necessarily the defining framework 

for understanding global politics in the 21st century, it 

does feed into the new medievalism. 45 Religious wars 

were an important feature of the Middle Ages and 

have resurfaced today. 

In sum, the sense of affiliation with other groups, 

while often coexisting easily with loyalty to the state, 

can also work against the state. Moreover, as the state 

increasingly fails to provide adequately for its citizens, 

it is likely that these alternative loyalties and the 

organizational forms that accompany them will become 

increasingly important. From a state perspective, this 

can be understood as negative synergy. 

The Rise of “Sovereignty Free” Transnational 

Actors. 

The relative decline of the state is also linked very 

closely to the rise of empowered nonstate actors in 

the form of “dark networks.” 46 In part, this reflects the 

fact that many states have inadequate social control 

mechanisms, and weak law enforcement and criminal 

justice systems. Yet other considerations have also fed 

into the rise of transnational criminal organizations. 

When states are failing or inadequate in terms of 

economic management and the provision of social 

welfare, the resulting functional hole creates pressures 

and incentives for citizens to engage in criminal 

activities. Amid conditions of economic hardship, 

extra-legal means of obtaining basic needs often become 

critical to survival. For countries in which there is no 

social safety net, resort to the informal economy and 

18

to illicit activities is a natural response to the economic 

and social gaps created by the weakness or failure of the 

state. From this perspective, the growth of organized 

crime and drug trafficking, along with the expansion 

of prostitution, can be understood as rational responses 

to dire economic conditions and circumstances. Such 

activities are, in part, coping mechanisms in countries 

characterized by poverty, poor governance, and 

ineffective markets. Furthermore, organized crime is a 

highly effective form of entrepreneurship, providing 

economic opportunities and multiplier benefits that 

would otherwise be absent in feeble or dysfunctional 

economies. Illicit means of advancement offer 

opportunities that are simply not available in the licit 

economy. The difficulty, of course, is that the filling of 

functional spaces by organized crime perpetuates the 

weakness of the state. 

In contrast, the power of criminal organizations 

(along with that of clans, warlords, and ethnic factions) 

is increased by connections outside the state. According 

to Shultz and Dew, “one of the more disturbing trends 

of nonstate armed groups is the extent to which 

such groups, including these clan-based groups, 

are cooperating and collaborating with each other 

in networks that span national borders and include 

fellow tribal groups, criminal groups, and corrupt 

political elements.” 47 Similarly, many transnational 

criminal organizations have recognized the benefits 

of cooperation with their counterparts elsewhere. 

Russian criminals and Colombian drug trafficking 

organizations, Italian mafias, and Albanian clans, and 

even Japanese and Chinese criminals have worked 

together when it has been mutually advantageous. 

Criminals also seek to co-opt representatives of the 

state, in some cases creating what Roy Godson termed 

19

the “political–criminal nexus.” 48 In the past, the political 

elites such as the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) 

in Mexico and the Communist Party in the Soviet Union 

were often the dominant partner in this relationship; 

increasingly though, criminal organizations appear 

to be in the stronger position. This, in turn, further 

erodes state authority. In yet other cases, there is also 

cooperation between criminals and terrorists. Although 

this should not be exaggerated—and it typically occurs 

when terrorist organizations are engaged in criminal 

activities to fund themselves—it cannot be ignored. 

Even where such collaboration does not occur, many 

criminal networks operate in a transnational manner, 

engaging in jurisdictional arbitrage to both maximize 

profits (selling illicit and trafficked commodities where 

the price is high) and minimize risk. In effect, therefore, 

state authority is subject to challenge both from within 

by nonstate armed groups and from without by 

transnational movements, organizations, and forces. 

In this connection, it bears emphasis that it was 

a network based organization, al-Qaeda, which, at 

least symbolically, challenged U.S. hegemony when 

there was no peer state competitor. The more modest, 

but highly disconcerting, ability of nonstate actors to 

become spoilers has been evident in Iraq. The United 

States, in turn, has rediscovered the challenge of 

transforming its overwhelming military and economic 

power into an effective strategy for rebuilding a viable 

Iraqi state. The old notion that power is relative to the 

contingencies for which it is used has been underlined 

by the contrast between the rapid U.S. victory on the 

battlefield and the protracted difficulties it has faced 

in developing adequate responses to the challenges 

of security, stability, and reconstruction. Indeed, 

in looking at Iraq what emerges most clearly is the 

20

ability of the various nonstate actors such as the 

Shiite militias—especially the Badr Organization and 

Jaish al Mahdi—as well as the Sunni tribes to hinder, 

complicate, and undermine the efforts to establish an 

effective and legitimate Iraqi state. 

The Rise of Cities and the Emergence 

of Alternatively Governed Spaces. 

One area in which the New Middle Ages resembles 

the Middle Ages of the past is in the importance of cities. 

In the medieval world, towns and cities, although much 

smaller than those of today, became centers of social 

activity and hubs of commerce as well as incubators 

of disease. In the last 50 years or so, the rise of cities 

has become an enduring and significant trend and has 

reached a point at which more than half the world’s 

population lives in cities. A possible implication of this 

is that cities will increasingly become an alternative 

focus to the state as an organizing device for economic, 

political, and social activities. Many cities are also 

becoming increasingly ungovernable—a trend that can 

only feed into what appears to be an impending crisis 

of governance at national, regional, and global levels. 

The latter half of the 20th century was characterized 

by the large-scale migration of population from rural 

to urban areas. This movement—and the resulting 

transformation of urban spaces—was particularly 

pronounced in the developing world. In 1950, New 

York was the only city in the world with more than 

10 million inhabitants. By 1995, there were 14 such 

cities—mostly in the developing world. 49 By 2015, 

there will be 23—with 19 in the developing world. 50 

In addition, by 2015, “the number of urban areas with 

populations between five and ten million will shoot 

from 7 to 37.” 51 

21

According to UN-Habitat, almost one billion 

people (one out of every six people in the world) 

live in slums which typically lack adequate shelter 

and basic services. 52 The problems in these spaces 

include widespread poverty, overcrowding, disease, 

environmental degradation, and pervasive crime and 

violence. Many have areas which are so violent that 

even law enforcement agencies regard them as no-go 

zones. Furthermore, conditions are unlikely to improve 

in the near future as slums continue to expand. The UN- 

Habitat Report on the State of the World’s Cities, 2006/7 

described slums as the “emerging human settlements 

of the 21st century.” 53 It also noted that “urbanization 

has become virtually synonymous with slum growth, 

especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Western Asia, and 

Southern Asia.” 54 According to one analysis, “there are 

probably more than 200,000 slums on earth. The five 

great metropolises of South Asia (Karachi, Mumbai, 

Delhi, Kolkota and Dhaka) alone contain about 15,000 

distinct slum communities whose total population 

exceeds 20 million.” 55 Characterized by inadequate 

housing, over-crowding, limited access to water and 

sanitation, and lack of property rights, slums are areas 

where “the idea of an interventionist state strongly 

committed to social housing and job development 

seems either a hallucination or a bad joke, because 

governments long ago abdicated any serious effort to 

combat slums and redress urban marginality.” 56 What 

makes this all the more serious is that by 2030 the 

number of people living in slums worldwide is expected 

to reach two billion people. 57 To put this in perspective, 

the population of China today is somewhere around 

1.3 billion people. 

Against this background, Richard Norton developed 

the concept of “feral cities” to describe concentra- 

22

ted urban spaces that are no longer under the rule of 

law. 58 In effect, these cities are failed or failing. Using a 

term typically applied to domestic animals which have 

gone wild, Norton argues that the problems besetting 

mega-cities could also become evident in many smaller 

cities. These problems, of course, are not the result of 

urban growth per se, but its interaction with other factors 

such as economic crises, high levels of unemployment, 

and weak and inadequate governance—at both the 

state and city levels. 59 The result is that mega-cities 

and even many smaller cities are being transformed 

into disorderly spaces where aspirations are rarely 

fulfilled and most new urban dwellers find that they 

have merely traded a life of rural destitution for one 

of urban destitution. For unemployed young men 

suffering from what Castells describes as a process of 

social exclusion, crime, random or organized, is one of 

the few available career options. 60 

The growth of violent and organized crime is 

particularly evident where slum conditions and poverty 

are juxtaposed with the secure gated communities 

of the wealthy. The contrast is particularly stark in 

Brazil. In São Paulo, for example, “the rich are often 

unfathomably rich, and the poor are disastrously poor. 

Crime and violence flourish any place where jobs are 

few, youth are many, and the chasm between rich 

and poor becomes too deep and too obvious.” 61 For 

the poor in the favelas, the drug economy is a crucial 

safety net. Furthermore, in both Rio de Janeiro and São 

Paulo, drug traffickers who operate in, through, and 

out of the favelas have developed alternative forms of 

governance based on rudimentary but effective forms 

of paternalism, the provision of welfare services, 

a degree of protection against violence, and career 

opportunities for young men who would otherwise 

23

e unemployed. Governance of this kind is not 

altruistic; it is designed primarily to maintain a safe 

haven for the trafficking networks. Those helped by 

the traffickers become sources of information and 

support, thereby enhancing the intelligence capabilities 

of the criminal network. In this sense, a degree of 

reciprocity is expected. Nevertheless, the paternalism 

of the trafficking networks can also be understood 

as an organic form of governance which is at least 

partially attuned to the needs of the people deprived 

of economic opportunity. After all, these people have 

been neglected or ignored by the state and left to fend 

for themselves. In these circumstances, to suggest that 

the governance provided by the trafficking networks is 

an inferior form of governance is beside the point; it is 

the only form of governance—albeit one that inherently 

challenges the legitimacy of the state. 

Not surprisingly, therefore, favelas in both São 

Paulo and Rio de Janeiro suffer from regular outbreaks 

of violence as both rival trafficking organizations and 

police and traffickers vie for control. In effect, the 

organic or bottom-up governance is contested—at least 

intermittently—by the state. 62 Although the favelas 

have governance, therefore, they also have considerable 

violence, which sometimes spills over to other parts 

of the cities. In May 2006, for example, in response to 

a plan to move major drug traffickers to a different 

prison, the leaders of the First Capital Command in São 

Paulo orchestrated a wave of violence in which “more 

than 160 people, including at least 75 police and prison 

guards” were killed, police posts, bars, and banks were 

attacked, riots occurred in 80 prisons, and at least 59 

buses were burned. 63 In effect, the city was brought to 

a standstill. 

24

Although it might appear contrived to compare the 

problems in some of Iraq’s major cities with those in 

Rio and São Paulo, the parallels are, in many respects, 

very striking. In Sadr City, which is simultaneously a 

Shiite ghetto, one of Baghdad’s most deprived areas, 

and one of its most obvious concentrations of urban 

dwellers, governance, so far as it exists, is provided 

by Jaish al Mahdi (JAM). The Mahdi Army has been 

both protector and predator. 64 It controls black market 

activities, demands protection payments, and some 

of its factions are very violent even in their treatment 

of Shiites. At the same time, black market prices of 

some commodities are sometimes lower in Sadr City 

than elsewhere in Iraq, which suggests that there 

is an important paternalistic component to JAM’s 

activities. 65 Indeed, in early 2008 there were signs that 

JAM was taking steps to curb excessive predation and 

violence and was killing some of its own members who 

overstepped the boundaries of permissible behavior too 

often or too overtly. 66 When Iraqi government forces 

(which had incorporated many members of the Badr 

organization, a rival militia which has often clashed 

with Mahdi members) and U.S. forces did the same, 

however, Mahdi forces reacted violently, resulting in 

major fighting in both Basra and Baghdad in late March 

2008. 

So long as there is a continued juxtaposition 

between concentrations of people and the absence 

of services and opportunities, the trends towards 

urban disorder and the rise of alternative forms of 

governance are likely to continue and even intensify. 

Disorder in cities takes many forms: riots in Paris, 

contract killings in Yekaterinburg, kidnappings in 

Metro Manila, and child prostitution in Mumbai. All of 

these problems reflect the failure or abdication of the 

25

state and the rise of alternative forms of governance 

that are paternalistic, but are also both predatory and 

parasitic. Since it is in cities that the inability of states 

to meet the needs of their citizens is most pronounced, 

these agents and structures of alternative governance 

are essential. As suggested above, they are often the 

only form of governance that exists. Yet, even though 

they are organic, bottom up, and attuned to the needs 

of the population, they are far from ideal. They are 

exploitative and often violent in nature. Moreover, 

as alternative forms of governance, they are a major 

challenge to the dominance of the state. 

Another and more surprising challenge to the state 

has arisen in prisons. Paradoxically, prisons are both 

a monument to the coercive power of the state and 

an expression of the limits of that power. Although 

the ability to incarcerate (and in many cases execute) 

people starkly reflects the coercive power of the state, 

prisons are increasingly uncontrollable. At times, it 

appears that the prisoners run the prison. Although 

the formal structure of incarceration imposes outer 

controls, within limits prisoners have a great deal of 

freedom—especially where they have the resources 

to bribe some of the prison authorities. And prison no 

longer isolates inmates from the society in the way it 

once did. The widespread availability of “cell” phones 

has enabled some prisoners to continue running their 

criminal enterprises from prison. Osiel Cardenas, 

for example, continued to run his drug trafficking 

organization, the “Gulf Cartel” from La Palma prison in 

Mexico until, in January 2007, he was extradited to the 

United States. Moreover, major criminals can mobilize 

resources in the outside world in the event that the 

state adopts policies or initiates regulatory measures 

they oppose. This has certainly been the case in Brazil 

26

where the riots discussed above were orchestrated, at 

least in part, from prison. 

It has long been recognized that prison also acts as 

a training ground and finishing school for criminals. 

Not only do criminals develop their professional 

expertise in prison, but they also build up social capital 

that can be very important when they are released. In 

this sense, prisons inadvertently help to facilitate the 

emergence and expansion of criminal networks. They 

also provide an ideal environment in which terrorists 

can recruit members of criminal organizations who 

bring with them a skill set that can act as a multiplier for 

the terrorist organization. Indeed, prisons, especially 

in Western Europe and to a degree in the United 

States, have become a petri dish for radicalization of 

Moslems. 67 In other words, many prisons have become 

places where criminals conduct business, where they 

swell the ranks of terrorist organizations, and where 

the authority of the state is systematically undermined 

by the corruption of prison officers. 

Porous Borders. 

One of the most important aspects of sovereignty 

is the notion of territorial control—a notion which 

extends to determining who and what is allowed to 

enter the territory and under what conditions. Not 

surprisingly, therefore, the authority of the state is 

deeply and obviously embedded in formal points 

of entry and departure. In effect, this is where “the 

strategy of state territoriality is dramatized and state 

sovereignty is paraded. It is also here that many 

countervailing strategies contesting state territoriality 

are clustered. The struggle between these strategies 

continually reproduces, reconstructs, or undermines 

27

orders.” 68 It is also a struggle between customs officials, 

immigration service personnel, and border guards on 

the one side and smugglers, illegal migrants, criminals, 

and terrorists on the other. For these latter groups, 

borders are both obstacles and opportunities. Once the 

border has been crossed, all sorts of benefits accrue— 

job opportunities for illegal migrants or profits from 

illegal goods that have increased significantly in value 

from one side of the border to the other. Smugglers also 

exploit differential tax rates among countries—which 

explains why cigarette smuggling has become a major 

issue in Europe and why Turkey (with gasoline prices 

among the highest in the world) remained a favorite 

destination for smugglers of Iraqi oil and gasoline even 

after sanctions against Iraq were removed. Smugglers 

also seek to meet the demands for products that are 

illegal, regulated, prohibited, or stolen. 

The inability of states to control their borders and 

the global flows—of people, money, weapons, drugs, 

etc.—that cross these borders into their national 

territories is both a manifestation of the decline of the 

state and a major contributor to the strengthening and 

acceleration of this tendency. Although Stephen Krasner 

is correct in his observation that states “have never 

been able to perfectly regulate transborder flows,” 69 

it is also arguable that they have never before had to 

contend with the sheer volume, speed, and diversity 

of the people and commodities that cross their borders 

both legally and illegally. As Carolyn Nordstrom has 

observed, in the contemporary globalized world, “taxes 

and tariffs are obstacles, not obligations.” 70 Similarly, 

borders might be boundaries, but they are far from 

being barriers. 

One reason for this is the intermodal container, 

a development which both transformed the scale of 

global trade by reducing transaction costs, and—in 

28

spite of such measures as the Container Security 

Initiative rolled out by U.S. Customs—helped to deny 

states the ability to control what comes across their 

borders, unless they are willing to place global trade 

on hold. The container ship, with its large numbers 

of containers and the ability to move them from ship 

to shore quickly and efficiently, has compounded the 

inspection challenge. 71 The result is that states enjoy 

what Nordstrom termed “the illusion of inspection” 

but are unable to turn the illusion into reality. 72 The 

sheer volume of trade, the diversity of commodities, 

and the increased reliance of businesses on just-in-time 

deliveries all militate against the imposition of truly 

effective border controls. 

Those who want to bring commodities or people 

across borders undetected have a range of options 

to exploit. For example, they can simply circumvent 

customs posts and come in through remote areas 

where checks are nonexistent. Alternatively, they can 

facilitate their actions through corruption, which in the 

last few years has become a major problem on the U.S. 

side of the border with Mexico in spite of (or perhaps 

because of) U.S. efforts to impose more stringent border 

controls. More often than not, however, concealment 

and/or deception are sufficient given the volume of 

goods crossing borders and the limited capacity for 

search and discovery. The problem for states is that 

the smugglers’ toolkit is diverse and flexible in scope 

and innovative in method. Mexican drug traffickers, 

for example, have dug a significant number of tunnels 

from Mexico to the United States, through which 

they can move their drugs unhindered. Although 19 

of these tunnels were discovered and closed in 2007, 

clearly illegal movements across borders of prohibited, 

regulated, and stolen goods, as well as of people and 

dirty money, are flourishing. 73 

29

So, too, are cross-border digital signals. Ironically, 

the Internet, which was a product of the Cold War 

between the superpowers, has become a means of 

empowerment of individuals, small groups, and small 

businesses—often at the expense of the state. In some 

instances, states such as Burma are able to clamp 

down on Internet access and use, at least temporarily. 

Nevertheless, nonstate actors are generally able to use 

the Internet as a force multiplier in their competition 

with states. Although the Internet is not wholly 

unregulated, it is a haven for the sexual predator, 

the insurgent looking for international support, the 

criminal seeking to move his money covertly, and the 

terrorist who uses it to finance and plan and to recruit 

and train people for his next attack on state targets. 

Indeed, if borders are far more than simply lines on 

maps; in cyber-space, they are far less. 

Implications: From New Medievalism to the New 

Dark Age. 

Each of the drivers outlined above poses a formidable 

set of challenges to the state. The drivers also feed off 

one another in ways that are not only mutually reinforcing 

but multiply the difficulties in developing an adequate 

response. In complexity terms, they interact in an 

emergent system which makes the ultimate outcomes 

both synergistic and highly unpredictable. The extent 

to which states are able (or unable) to adapt and learn 

also adds to the uncertainties. Nevertheless, it is not 

hard to envisage the transformation of global politics 

and an abrupt, nonlinear shift from the New Middle 

Ages to the New Dark Age. 

The 21st century will see a continuing dialectic 

between the forces of order and the forces of disorder. 

Within this co-evolution, the limits of state power will 

30

ecome increasingly apparent, while the empowerment 

of nonstate actors will increase significantly. Although 

some strong legitimate states will continue to exist, the 

number of what might be termed qualified, restricted, 

notional, or hollow and collapsed states is likely to 

increase. Moreover, many of these weaker states will be 

neutralized, penetrated, or in some cases even captured 

by organized crime, terrorists, militias, warlords, and 

other violent nonstate actors. In effect, we will continue 

to see a world of formal state structures, but at least 

some of these will be little more than fronts for these 

other actors. In other instances, the emphasis on formal 

sovereignty will do little to obscure the dispersal of real 

authority and power among what Rapley described 

as “autonomous political agents, equipped with their 

own resource bases, which make them resistant to a 

reimposition of centralized control.” 74 

One of the corollaries of this is the spread of 

disorder from the zone of weak states and feral cities in 

the developing world to the countries of the developed 

world. This is recognized, for example, by Collier in 

his argument that the problem of the bottom billion 

matters, and not just to the . . . people who are living 

and dying in 14th century conditions. It matters to us. 

The 21st century world of material comfort, global travel, 

and economic interdependence will become increasingly 

vulnerable to these large islands of chaos. And it 

matters now. As the bottom billion diverges from an 

increasingly sophisticated world economy, integration 

will become harder not easier. 75 

This notion of spreading disorder is a very important 

antidote to an overly-optimistic Wilsonianism that 

sees democracy, liberty, or global economic integration 

as cure-alls. Thomas Barnett, for example, in 

31

a sophisticated variant of economic Wilsonianism, 

has argued that global security is simply a matter of 

inclusion, of bringing states on the periphery into the 

world of globalization and making them more like the 

core. 76 In some ways this is a variant of the argument 

developed in the 1990s by Singer and Wildavsky 

suggesting that the real world order was made up of 

both zones of peace and zones of turmoil. 77 For Singer 

and Wildavsky, the key was to export democracy and 

thereby contain and reduce the turmoil and enlarge 

the space in which there was a real sense of order and 

stability. Barnett’s twist on this is simply the emphasis 

on economic integration into the developed world— 

and in particular the need to integrate states which 

are economically isolated. He argues, for example, 

that one of the most positive consequences of the U.S. 

intervention in Afghanistan is the prospect that this 

will help to integrate the country into the core of the 

global economy. The problem with this argument is 

that Afghanistan is already fully integrated into the 

global economy—albeit the illicit global economy. 

Connectivity and integration have multiple layers and 

facets. Moreover, opium and heroin radiate out from 

Afghanistan, bringing with their market diffusion a 

cornucopia of violence and addiction. The Afghan 

experience directly challenges Barnett’s Wilsonianism 

as it suggests that the export of order from the core 

to the periphery can be far outweighed by the export 

of disorder from the periphery to the core. Another 

example of this is the spillover of conflicts between 

transnational criminal organizations from their home 

states to host states. Indeed, “gang warfare or apparently 

random murders in Toronto or London that seem 

senseless and anarchic within the context of those 

societies take on a new, brutally rational meaning when 

32

analyzed within the context of the activities of gangs 

back in Jamaica or Nigeria (or Russia, or Albania, or a 

host of other countries).” 78 

Some of the disorder, however, will be more 

widespread and even more intractable than criminal 

or drug-related violence. This is particularly likely 

in Western Europe where the clashes of religions 

and civilization will be fuelled by a continuation of 

demographic trends and the failure of policies designed 

to integrate immigrant communities. In retrospect, the 

Madrid and London bombings, as well as the Paris 

riots in 2005, will be seen as the first salvos in what 

is the functional equivalent of a low-grade civil war 

that is likely to wrack Europe in the coming decades. 

Some elements within immigrant Moslem populations 

in Western Europe are reluctant to accept the authority 

of the states within which they reside, and the backlash 

against this is almost certain to fuel indigenous 

nationalism. 79 

Another danger stemming from many of the 

conditions enunciated above is that of a pandemic 

of an emerging or reemerging disease. Urbanization, 

underdevelopment, the gap between health care 

services and needs in many cities, as well as urban 

populations whose immunity is compromised by 

both extreme environmental degradation and close 

proximity to animals and fowl in confined spaces, 

could all contribute to virulent outbreaks of emerging 

or reemerging diseases. Trade and travel could rapidly 

transform the outbreak from local to global in a few 

days. Even with no ill will, the prospect for a rapidly 

spreading epidemic is enormous. Add to this the 

possibility of malevolence and the ability of terrorists 

to deploy human biological weapons—infected people 

on planes at airports and other dispersal nodes— 

33

and the scenario rapidly becomes worst case. 80 If the 

carriers are asymptomatic, unless there is a cessation 

of international air travel, national borders will have 

all the stopping power of tissue paper. And even if 

there is a formal travel embargo, illegal migration is 

unlikely to cease. Trafficking and smuggling of peoples 

could undermine efforts at disease containment. 81 And 

even if they do not, the damaging consequences of a 

pandemic will not be confined to the health sector. 

The cascading effects into the economic domain could 

be enormously damaging—a kind of globalization 

interrupted that would hit the bottom one billion 

even harder than anyone else. At the same time, the 

inability of states to control and limit the pandemic 

would further undermine public faith and confidence 

in them. In extreme situations, people might even look 

for comfort and support not to the state but to the 

alternative forms of governance that are likely to be 

equally overwhelmed but at least have the virtue of 

proximity. To the extent that alternative governance 

can provide some help, alternative loyalties to these 

nonstate groups will be cemented, while faith in and 

loyalty to the state will diminish even further. 

Clearly, the prospects for global chaos are not as 

remote as might be thought. Problems such as transnational 

organized crime, terrorism, and pandemics 

could intersect and interact to create a tipping point 

from “durable disorder” into chaos. When one adds to 

the trends already discussed the strains coming from 

global warming and environmental degradation, the 

diminution of cheaply available natural resources, and 

the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the 

agenda becomes even more formidable. As states go 

further into decline, some will inevitably collapse. It is 

certainly not inconceivable that among these could be 

34

a nuclear weapons state. Conditions of chaos, looting, 

and violence are not conducive to secure command 

and control. A race for the acquisition of “loose nukes” 

between states and nonstate actors, therefore, is not 

out of the question. And if states lose this race, the 

radical and sudden empowerment of nonstate actors 

will demand an immediate reevaluation of many of 

the orthodoxies about weapons of mass destruction 

(WMD) terrorism. 

The point about such contingencies is not that they 

will necessarily happen, but that they represent a set of 

threats and challenges that have multiple implications 

for U.S. policy and strategy during the next few 

decades. A key issue, therefore, is the extent to which 

this has been recognized in the U.S. national security 

community. The next section addresses this. 

IV. U.S. THINKING ABOUT SECURITY 

AND STRATEGY 

There is no single or easy answer to the question 

about threat recognition. The National Security Strategy 

of 2006, for example, is unabashedly Wilsonian in 

tone and optimistic in outlook. Although the Bush 

administration is very different from its predecessor 

in its willingness to use military force, the underlying 

thrust of U.S. policy remains that articulated by the 

Clinton administration—“engagement and enlargement.” 

82 The emphasis is on spreading democracy 

and promoting development. Democracy is treated 

as synonymous with good governance, while the 

focus on development, although well-placed, does 

little to help the bottom billion or the urban poor. 

The idea of stability is given little attention. In terms 

of threats, four categories are identified: traditional 

threats from other states, irregular challenges from 

35

oth state and nonstate actors, catastrophic challenges 

involving acquisition and use of WMD, and disruptive 

challenges from state and nonstate actors who employ 

technologies and capabilities in novel ways to offset 

U.S. military superiority. Not surprisingly, the list of 

adversaries has broadened to include nonstate actors 

such as terrorist and criminal organizations. The 

strategy also recognizes that globalization presents 

challenges such as pandemics, as well as illicit trade 

and environmental destruction. The strategy notes that 

although these are not traditional national security 

concerns, “if left unaddressed they can threaten 

national security.” 83 The overall tone, however, is that 

the United States is powerful enough to deal with both 

threats and challenges. 

Other documents are somewhat more cautious 

in their optimism. The 2020 study conducted by 

the National Intelligence Council, entitled Mapping 

the Global Future, for example, focuses upon both 

opportunities and dangers. While noting that the 

likelihood of great power conflict is very low, it argues 

that many governments and publics do not feel secure. 

The study highlights both the positive and negative 

consequences of globalization while also acknowledging 

that the process itself could be derailed by “a pervasive 

sense of economic and physical insecurity.” 84 

Mass casualty terrorist attacks, widespread cyber 

attacks on infrastructures, or even a pandemic could 

trigger efforts by “governments to put controls on the 

flow of capital, goods, people,” and technologies, thereby 

increasing transaction costs and dampening economic 

growth. 85 Even if this is avoided, “lagging economies, 

ethnic affiliations, intense religious convictions, and 

youth bulges” could combine to create what the study 

describes as a “perfect storm.” 86 States with insufficient 

capacity to meet expectations or reconcile conflicting 

36

demands are likely to “encounter the most severe and 

most frequent outbreaks of violence.” 87 These states, 

for the most part, are in “a great arc of instability from 

Sub-Saharan Africa, through North Africa, into the 

Middle East, the Balkans, the Caucasus and South and 

Central Asia and through parts of Southeast Asia.” 88 

Clearly, the 2020 report recognizes “that troubled and 

institutionally weak states” will be a major security 

challenge. 89 For all its sophistication and subtlety, 

however, the report focuses on particular states and 

regions rather than systemic strains. It discusses the 

possibility of state failure in specific circumstances 

and locations but offers little more than a genuflection 

to the notion of systemic state decline. Whereas the 

2020 report suggests that some states will fail to meet 

the Westphalian ideal, the argument here is that the 

Westphalian system itself is increasingly eroding. 

Another government document that provides 

a highly sophisticated and very compelling, but 

only partial, assessment of the emerging security 

environment is The Joint Operational Environment (JOE). 

Produced by the Joint Forces Command and presented 

as a “living draft,” the JOE acknowledges that “the 

United States will not operate in a single, static, 

operational environment” but in “layers of operational 

environments, all constantly in flux.” 90 Inherent in 

this assessment is the recognition that complexity 

and connectedness will significantly influence the 

operational environment for future conflicts. Moreover, 

this environment will be characterized by nonlinearity 

and cascading effects: “some of the smallest activities 

and interactions cause the largest effects. No activity is 

subject to successful prediction. Instead, outcomes will 

be possibilities (potentialities unbound by constraint) 

that undergo confirmation or denial processes.” 91 

37

Although the JOE assessment of the future 

geostrategic landscape acknowledges the “diffusion 

of power away from central governments” 92 and the 

increasing influence of nonstate and transnational 

actors, it still assumes that “nation-states will remain 

principal actors.” 93 In other respects, however, it 

acknowledges the kind of dynamics that could tip the 

system from the New Middle Ages to a New Dark Age. 

Many of the developments envisaged in the report 

coincide with those discussed above. They include state 

weakness and collapse, demographic time bombs, the 

emergence of urban environments as centers of gravity 

(and, therefore, areas of operation) with potential 

for chaos and civil unrest, the likelihood that many 

traditional challenges will morph into irregular ones, 

the pervasiveness of criminal elements in operational 

environments, and the importance of tribes, extended 

families, and “super-empowered” individuals and 

groups. 94 Failed or failing states will be sanctuaries for 

enemies who are flexible and adaptive. In spite of this 

overlap, however, there are three critical differences 

between the JOE assessment and the central thesis of 

this monograph about the descent into the New Dark 

Age. 

The first is that the JOE very naturally focuses 

on enemies to be defeated, whereas the argument 

here is that the key issues revolve around conditions 

of chaos, contagion effects, and the capacity of the 

United States and other members of the international 

community to mitigate consequences, restore order, 

foster reconciliation and reconstruction, and ultimately 

provide good governance where none exists. The 

distinction is between purposeful threats from hostile 

actors and threats posed by unmanageable and 

chaotic conditions that have a significant prospect of 

38

spreading. To some extent, these conditions develop 

from what Liotta terms “creeping vulnerabilities.” 95 In 

the context discussed here, however, they have become 

dramatic, highly visible, and fast moving. To focus on 

these conditions is not to deny the existence of enemies 

who will flourish within chaos. Nor is it to ignore the 

likely existence of spoilers who will seek to prevent the 

restoration of order. Neutralizing enemies and dealing 

with spoilers will be essential if the United States is 

to have any chance of success in any intervention to 

restore order. Moreover, providing a congenial security 

environment will clearly be a prerequisite for success 

in reestablishing governance. If military successes are 

a necessary condition for successful management of 

the kinds of contingencies that are likely to arise in 

the New Dark Age, however, they are not a sufficient 

condition. 

Second, the analysis here is ultimately far more 

pessimistic than that continued in the JOE. The JOE 

assessment, at least implicitly, incorporates many of the 

characteristics of the New Middle Ages. The argument 

here is that we are already moving from the New Middle 

Ages to the New Dark Age, and that the challenges of 

security in an increasingly chaotic environment will be 

even more formidable than they already are. In terms 

of wicked problems, the frightening thing is that we 

have not seen anything yet. 

The third difference flows from this. Understandably 

there is a “can do” quality about the military operations 

envisaged as likely within the emerging joint 

operational environment. Military planning after all is 

designed for success not failure. Yet the difficulties the 

United States has confronted in Iraq—although they 

stemmed in part from no planning rather than poor 

planning—suggest that the challenges are formidable, 

39

victory is difficult to define, and that military success 

cannot easily be translated into political stability. Iraq 

has revealed that state building is complex, protracted, 

and expensive, and comes with no guarantee that 

desired or anticipated outcomes can be achieved. Yet 

Iraq also illustrates the kinds of conditions that are likely 

to characterize the New Dark Age—albeit in multiple 

locations rather than a single country. Unfortunately, 

Iraq at its most intractable might be little more than a 

poor approximation of the difficulties that will have to 

be confronted in a world where chaos is both extensive 

and intensive. 

To summarize, the National Security Strategy has little 

sense of the tectonic shocks that might be ahead, whereas 

both the 2020 report and the JOE suggest that we will 

typically have to confront quakes that are magnitude 

8 or above on the Richter scale. The problem is that 

future shocks could prove beyond the realm of current 

experience—creating what Nassim Taleb has called 

a “black swan” event. 96 Put differently, the paradigm 

shift involved in the transition from the New Middle 

Ages to the New Dark Age is so profound that it might 

require new kinds of responses to security challenges. 

If the world moves in this direction and confronts the 

United States with conditions of chaos rather than 

simply a “durable disorder,” U.S. policymakers will 

have to design a far more holistic approach to the 

exercise of power. Against this background, the final 

section explores the range of strategic options available 

to the United States as it prepares for the possibility 

that the New Middle Ages will be followed not by the 

revitalization of the Westphalian state system but by a 

decline into a New Dark Age. 

40

V. GLOBAL INSTABILITY AND U.S. STRATEGY 

Even if the notion of a New Dark Age is dismissed 

as a truly worst case scenario, a looming crisis of 

governance and widening security deficits are harder 

to ignore. They are inextricably linked to increasing 

global instability. The decline of the state will both 

reflect this rising tide and intensify it. Consequently, 

instability could all too easily degenerate into a 

tsunami of chaos—posing far-reaching challenges for 

U.S. military forces as well as U.S. diplomatic and 

global leadership. The signs are already evident. One 

of the lessons of Iraq, for example, is that the resource 

demands of state-building and economic reconstruction 

are far greater than expected. Although the United 

States, in effect, catalyzed the failure of the old Iraqi 

state, the resulting chaos, factionalism, and violence 

proved much harder to control than expected, even by 

those who had serious reservations about the invasion. 

If the outlook described above is even partially correct, 

the implications for U.S. security and strategy are farreaching. 

Yet the United States is not without some discretion 

in how it responds to this world of global chaos. 

Broadly speaking, there are three major choices: 

interventionism, disengagement and mitigation, and 

triage or selective interventionism. There are also, of 

course, significant variations within the first and third, 

depending on whether the United States acts alone or 

in concert with other powers which are also willing 

to try to shape the environment. For purposes of this 

analysis, however, the focus is simply on the three 

major options as this offers a clearer, not to say starker, 

picture of the advantages and shortcomings of each 

approach. 

41

The first of these is a highly interventionist strategy 

which is designed explicitly to uphold the state 

system, to contain disorder and chaos, and to reimpose 

order and stability. In many respects, this offers a 

continuation of the assertive and activist strategy 

pursued by the Bush administration. The logic was 

encapsulated in the National Security Strategy initially 

enunciated in 2002 and refined in 2006. In the words 

of the administration, this strategy reflects “the path of 

confidence,” the choice of “leadership over isolationism 

and the pursuit of free and fair trade and open markets 

over protectionism.” 97 It seeks to “deal with challenges 

now rather than leaving them for future generations . . . 

fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to 

arrive in our country . . . shape the world, not merely be 

shaped by it; to influence events for the better instead 

of being at their mercy.” 98 Although this is in some 

respects very appealing, there are major problems with 

a long-term extension of this highly activist strategy in 

a chaotic world. 

First, it suffers from stateocentrism. This has 

already been evident in Iraq where the United States, 

at the political level at least, has put all its faith into the 

recreation of a unified central state. The difficulty with 

this has been highlighted by the military’s alliance 

with Sunni tribes which led to the “awakening” and 

the defeat of al-Qaeda in Anbar province. This might 

actually make it harder rather than easier for the central 

government to consolidate its power. Empowering 

the Sunni tribes tacitly disempowers the central 

government. 

Second, an interventionist strategy can all too easily 

become indiscriminate. In some respects, this reflects 

the fact that since terrorist threats can emanate from 

anywhere to hurt the United States, security is globally 

42

indivisible. From this perspective, there are no longer 

primary and secondary interests—there is only an 

overriding interest in preventing disorderly spaces that 

can provide terrorists safe havens. If the United States 

envisages its role in terms of maintaining stability, 

shaping the environment, minimizing disorder, and 

preventing or eliminating chaos, the demands on 

national resources will be enormous—and perhaps 

unsustainable. For the United States to carry out a 

strategy of this kind, at the very least, it would have 

to expand the Army and Marine Corps—which are the 

keys to successful interventions—beyond the increase 

already projected. This would likely be at the expense 

of the Navy and Air Force—which are typically more 

concerned (again in a stateocentric way) about the 

emergence of peer competitors than about military 

interventions in chaotic contingencies. Even this, 

however, might not be enough for what is potentially 

an open-ended strategy. 

More important than the size of the intervention 

capability, however, would be its composition. In 

confronting a deteriorating security environment of 

the kind envisaged here, the United States would need 

a far more holistic approach to the exercise of power 

and a far more coherent organizational structure than 

currently exist. In responding to security challenges, 

the United States still tends to develop several strands 

of distinct and often independent activities rather than 

a sustained strategic approach that integrates multiple 

activities and directs them towards a common purpose. 

In a world where the United States seeks to combat 

extensive disorder and restore stability, military, 

economic, and diplomatic power have to be targeted 

in ways that create synergies rather than seams, that 

reinforce rather than undercut, and that provide 

43

maximum efficiency and effectiveness. Iraq has shown 

that throwing money at problems is no longer enough. 

In effect, U.S. interventions in the future would have to 

be smarter, not harder. 

Achieving this goal requires major institutional 

change. As suggested above, the United States is 

organized according to domains of activity—military, 

diplomatic, economic, and so on. The problem is that 

effective strategies of intervention and reconstruction 

require more than the coordination of disparate 

elements. Strategy cannot be patched together. At 

the very least it requires going beyond interagency 

collaboration to develop what might be termed 

transagency organizational structures. Based on 

but extending the task force concept, a transagency 

structure would be a central core of U.S. interventionist 

capabilities. It would include military forces, diplomats, 

reconstruction specialists, and legal experts integrated 

into one organization designed to assist a target 

state in reestablishing its authority, legitimacy, and 

effectiveness. For the United States, which historically 

has extolled the virtues of fragmented government 

structures in order to maintain checks and balances, 

this would be a radical departure—perhaps too radical. 

It would also run up against bureaucratic self-interest 

and standard operational procedures. The danger is 

that departments would ostensibly cooperate in what 

has been termed a “whole of government” approach, 

but that the deployment would simply reproduce in 

the field the fissures, tensions, and divergent operating 

philosophies that are so prevalent in Washington. 99 

The requirement, therefore, is to extend notions of joint 

operations beyond the military to civilian institutions 

and to develop transagency structures that are 

cohesive, replace departmental loyalties with a sense 

44

of loyalty to the mission, and focus on synergistic 

effects. Without both organizational innovation and a 

shift of organizational cultures and loyalties, success is 

unlikely. 

In the final analysis, however, the real problem 

with this activist strategy is cost. Even if the Iraq 

involvement is not followed by an Iraq syndrome 

resembling the Vietnam syndrome, the interventionist 

strategy will almost certainly be difficult to sustain 

because of resource constraints. Given the growing 

signs of U.S. economic weakness, domestic programs 

and demands, and the likelihood that other states 

will not fully share U.S. concerns or assessments, 

the prospects for long-term implementation of this 

strategy are minimal. Overstretch would be inevitable 

and would significantly erode mission effectiveness. 

There would also be a need to recognize that not all 

change can be successfully resisted—even when it is 

for the worse—and not all problems can be solved. 

Indeed, even if the United States did everything the 

strategy requires and even if its power was augmented 

on occasion by allies, the United States could end up 

with its finger in the dike as the walls are crumbling all 

around. 

It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that an 

alternative and in some respects very attractive strategy 

is one of distance and disengagement. Whereas the 

interventionist strategy involves a mix of preventive 

action and hands-on consequence management, 

this alternative strategy is a mix of insulation and 

mitigation. If the United States recognizes that disorder 

and chaos are inescapable and that even with the 

coherent deployment of all its military, diplomatic, and 

economic power it cannot change this, then it might opt 

for a strategy which focuses not on intervention but 

45

primarily on homeland security. In this case, it would 

seek to insulate itself from the worst effects of global 

chaos, try to ensure that it is not a primary target, and 

seek to mitigate adverse consequences of breakdown 

elsewhere. In effect, John Quincy Adams rather than 

Woodrow Wilson would provide the leitmotif for 

this strategy: America “goes not abroad, in search 

of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the 

freedom and independence of all. She is the champion 

and vindicator only of her own.” 100 This would be low 

cost in terms of “blood and treasure” spent on foreign 

interventions, and would allow the United States to 

focus on domestic problems and economic challenges. 

Attractive as this might appear, it has significant 

shortcomings. First, neglect is not always benign. 

Without a continued U.S. military role in upholding 

at least some of the vestiges of international order, 

the descent into chaos could be deeper, sharper, and 

more long-lasting in its effects. In effect, the Dark Age 

would be even darker without U.S. efforts to maintain 

or restore order. Second, there is no guarantee that the 

United States can effectively insulate itself and mitigate 

adverse consequences of chaos in a world with even the 

vestiges of globalization and connectivity. Even if the 

United States succeeds in taking itself out of the line of 

fire of terrorists, so long as it fosters trade and travel, 

it will remain vulnerable to microbes, to economic 

disruption, and to other spillover effects from the 

growing chaos outside its borders. A disengagement 

strategy, therefore, could prove to be both elusive and 

illusory. 

The third option offers a middle ground between 

these two and could be described variously as selective 

intervention, a triage strategy, or even as “prudential 

realism.” 101 In effect, this strategy would be based on the 

46

assumption that although these trends towards chaos 

are global, their impact varies according to location, 

circumstance, and even U.S. strategic interests. To put 

it crudely, chaos in Mauritania is not as important for 

the United States as chaos in Mexico. Even in a world 

of global terrorism, some interests are more important 

than others. Accordingly, the United States could opt 

for selective interventions to deal with chaos or disorder 

when it is a direct rather than indirect threat, when it is 

proximate rather than distant, or when it takes on such 

proportions that it could have highly disruptive and 

far-reaching spillover effects. 

This is a more differentiated approach than either 

of the other two alternatives. In many respects, it 

reflects a recent U.S. Army assessment of the strategic 

environment which noted that “the stability and 

legitimacy of the conventional political order in regions 

vital to the United States is increasingly under pressure 

from a variety of sources. There is now a nexus of 

dangerous new actors, methods, and capabilities that 

imperil the United States, its interests, and its alliances 

in strategically significant ways.” 102 These threats 

require a response which is carefully formulated, with 

an appropriate balance between ends, ways, and means, 

and a realistic prospect of reaching an end state that 

is less dangerous and unfavorable than it would be in 

the event of inaction. In effect, the Weinberger-Powell 

Doctrine could provide the framework for assessment, 

albeit with one addendum—the United States should 

not intervene if its intervention would lead to an increase 

rather than a decline in chaos and instability. 

Even a strategy of limited and selective intervention, 

however, has to be done right. Significantly, the Army 

has not only enunciated at least some of the preconditions 

for intervention, but also has emphasized the need 

47

for “integrated operations . . . in Joint, interagency, 

and multinational environments.” 103 In addition, it 

has acknowledged the need to integrate the elements 

of national power—diplomatic, military, economic, 

and information. 104 Taking this a step further and 

developing the transagency organizational structures 

discussed above might enhance the prospects that 

these selective interventions would create the desired 

results. Even selective interventions require the holistic 

exercise of power and a more coherent organizational 

approach than has been evident in Iraq. 

The difficulty is that adaptation by the United 

States is constrained by intense partisanship and by 

an anachronistic set of institutional arrangements and 

procedures for managing national security policy. 

Gone are the days when politics stopped at the water’s 

edge. Partisanship not only encourages the adoption 

of extremes rather than more prudent and moderate 

alternatives but also results in dramatic course 

shifts when presidential incumbents are replaced 

by members of the opposing party. Similarly, many 

institutional arrangements in the United States are 

unsuited to the demands of the 21st century. Reform 

of American government in general and the national 

security apparatus in particular might be a necessary— 

albeit not a sufficient—condition for the United States 

to function effectively in dealing with the challenges of 

emerging global chaos. 

The other constraints on the United States are 

the increasingly obvious fiscal and economic trends. 

In the short and medium terms, the possibility of a 

U.S. economic meltdown and a global realignment of 

economic power cannot be excluded. The ripple effects 

of such an event would greatly intensify the trends and 

tendencies towards the dissolution of the Westphalian 

48

order discussed above. Yet this might not be all bad. 

In the final analysis, it is important to recognize that 

state predominance is not immutable. The state does 

not necessarily represent the optimum set of political 

arrangements for meeting people’s needs or for 

ensuring peace and stability. More organic, bottomup 

forms of governance, for all their shortcomings, 

might be the best available in a world of increasingly 

hollow states. The fixation with the centralized state 

needs to confront realities that point at least towards 

the serious consideration of alternatives. The problem 

is that the stateocentric mode of thinking is so highly 

normative that serious consideration of alternative 

forms of governance, which does more than treat them 

as threats, is typically regarded as heretical, irrelevant, 

or misguided. Yet if we fail to see the decline of the 

state and to recognize the underlying realities, the 

prospect of a cascade of strategic surprises and a series 

of strategic disasters is inescapable. 

ENDNOTES 

1. The notion was even used as a title of a book. See Robert 

H. Jackson, Quasi-states: Sovereignty, International Relations, and 

the Third World, Cambridge, United Kingdom (UK): Cambridge 

University Press, 1990. It is also worth emphasizing that the 

state in Latin America never developed to the same extent as in 

Europe. The author is grateful to Dr. Gabriel Marcella for this 

observation. 

2. Stephen D. Krasner, “Abiding Sovereignty,” International 

Political Science Review, Vol. 22, No. 3, 2001, pp. 229-252. 

3. The author is grateful for the observation on absolute and 

relative decline to Dr. Paul Kan. 

49

4. For a quick summary, see Sandra Mackey, The Reckoning: 

Iraq and the Legacy of Saddam Hussein, New York: Norton, 2002, p. 

382. 

5. On this particular issue, the author benefitted from several 

lengthy discussions with Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Freier. 

6. See, for example, John Mueller, “Harbinger or 

aberration? A 9/11 provocation,” The National Interest, Fall 

2002, pp. 45-50, available at www.nationalinterest.org/General. 

aspx?id=92&id2=10700. 

7. Robert Kaplan, “The Coming Anarchy,” Atlantic Monthly, 

February 1994, available at www.TheAtlantic.com/atlantic/election/ 

connection/foreign/anarcf.htm. 

8. Gregory Laurent, Baudin O’Hayon, Big Men, Godfathers, and 

Zealots: Challenges to the State in the New Middle Ages, University 

of Pittsburgh: Dissertations and Theses, 2003; Hedley Bull, The 

Anarchical Society, New York: Columbia University Press, 1977; 

Jorg Friedrichs, “The Meaning of the New Medievalism,” European 

Journal of International Relations, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2001, pp. 475-502; 

Philip Cerny, “Neomedievalism, Civil War, and the New Security 

Dilemma: Globalization as Durable Disorder,” Civil Wars, Vol. 1, 

No. 1, Spring 1998, pp. 36-64. 

9. Mark Duffield, “Post-Modern Conflict: Warlords, Post- 

Adjustment States and Private Protection,” Civil Wars, Vol. 1, No. 

1, Spring 1998, pp. 65-102. 

10. Ibid., p. 70. 

11. The notion of the space of flows is developed in Manuel 

Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996, 

pp. 376-428. 

12. Duffield, p. 70. 

13. Ibid. 

14. Ibid. 

50

15. Ibid. 

16. John Rapley, “The New Middle Ages,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 

85, No. 3, May/June 2006, pp. 95-103. 

17. Duffield, p. 70. 

18. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion, New York: Oxford 


19. Ibid. 

20. Cerny, p. 58. 

21. Friedrichs, p. 482. 

22. Ibid., p. 488. 

23. James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics, Princeton, 

NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990, p. 253. 

24. This is developed more fully in Philip G. Cerny, “Terrorism 

and the New Security Dilemma,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 

58, No. 1, Winter 2005, pp. 11-33. 

25. Cerny, “Neomedievalism, Civil War, and the New Security 

Dilemma,” p. 60. 

26. Ibid. 

27. Cerny actually uses the term “governance gap.” See Ibid., 

p. 36. 

28. For a good overview of wicked problems, see Cognexus 

Institute at www.cogenxus.org/id42.htm. 

29. See Obi N. I. Ebbe, “Slicing Nigeria’s ‘National Cake’,” in 

Roy Godson, ed., Menace to Society: Political-Criminal Collaboration 

Around the World, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2003; and 

George B. N. Ayittey, Africa in Chaos, New York: St. Martin’s 

Griffin, 1999. 

51

30. This is argued more fully in the author’s forthcoming SSI 

monograph on organized crime in Iraq. 

31. This notion is developed in Phil Williams, “Transnational 

Organized Crime and the State” in Rodney Bruce Hall and 

Thomas J Biersteke, eds., The Emergence of Private Authority in 

Global Governance, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 

2002, pp.161-182. 

32. Gabriel Marcella, American Grand Strategy for Latin America 

in the Age of Resentment, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, 

U.S. Army War College, September 2007, p. 10. 

33. Ibid., p. 24. 

34. John Rapley, “Keynote Address—From Neo-Liberalism 

to the New Medievalism,” Australian National University 

Conference on “Globalization and Governance in the Pacific 

Islands,” October 2005. 

35. Ibid. 

36. David Ronfeldt, RAND Working Papers, In Search of How 

Societies Work: Tribes—The First and Forever Form, December 2006, 

available at www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR433. 

37. Ibid., p. 53. 

38. Ibid., p. 5. 

39. General James L. Jones, The Report of the Independent 

Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, September 6, 2007, p. 91, 

available at media.csis.org/isf.pdf. 

40. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States, Boulder, 

CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999. 

41. Quoted in Ronfeldt, p. 32. 

42. Francis Ianni, Black Mafia: Ethnic Succession in Organized 

52

Crime, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. 

43. Stephen Fox, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth- 

Century America, New York: Penguin, 1989, p. 62. The author is 

grateful for this reference to Dr. Paul Kan. 

44. The term “grievance narrative” is used in Jack Cashill, 

Sucker Punch, New York: Nelson, 2006. 

45. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the 

Remaking of World Order, New York: The Free Press, 2002. 

46. H. Brinton Milward and Jorg Raab, “Dark Networks,” 

paper presented at the International Conference on the Empirical 

Study of Governance, Management, and Performance,” Barcelona, 

Spain, October 4-5, 2002. 

47. Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew, Insurgents, Terrorists and 

Militias: The Warriors of Contemporary Combat, New York: Columbia 


48. This is developed in Roy Godson, ed., Menace to Society: 

Political-Criminal Collaboration Around the World, New Brunswick, 

NJ: Transaction, 2003. 

49. E. Zwingle, “Megacities: The Coming Urban World,” 

National Geographic, Vol. 202, No. 5, November 2002, p. 77. 

50. Summary Report: Governing Emerging Megacities— 

Challenges and Perspectives, December 7-8, 2006, Frankfurt, 

Germany, p. 4, available at www.geographie.uni-koeln.de/pearlpune/ 

downloads/2006-12_documentation.pdf. 

51. Zwingle. 

52. “Slum Dwellers to double by 2030: Millennium 

Development Goal Could Fall Short” UN-Habitat, 21st Session of 

the Governing Council, April 16-20, 2007, Nairobi, Kenya. 

53. UN-Habitat, State of the World’s Cities 2006/7, London: 

Earthscan, 2006, p. 19. 

53

54. Ibid., p. 11. 

55. M. Davis, Planet of Slums, New York: Verso, 2006, p. 26. 

56. Ibid., p. 62. 

57. “Slum Dwellers to double by 2030.” 

58. Richard Norton, “Feral Cities,” Naval War College Review, 

Vol. 56, No. 4, Autumn 2003, pp. 97-106, available at www.nwc. 

navy.mil/press/Review/2003/Autumn/pdfs/art6-a03.pdf. 

59. This point is emphasized by Thomas Homer-Dixon, 

“Standing Room Only,” Toronto Globe and Mail, March 6, 2002, 

available at www.homerdixon.com/download/why_population_growth. 

pdf. 

60. The notion of social exclusion is discussed in Manuel 

Castells, End of Millennium, Oxford: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 71-72. 

61. Zwingle, p. 83. 

62. In some favelas, there is tacit collaboration between 

the traffickers and the forces of the state as represented by the 

police. Their relationship is mediated by community associations 

which make up the third pillar in a triangle of governance. This 

is discussed more fully in Enrique Desmond Arias, Drugs and 

Democracy in Rio De Janeiro, Chapel Hill: University of North 

Carolina Press, 2006. 

63. “Dramatic Death Toll in São Paulo as Drug Gangs, Police 

Clash” May 19, 2006, available at stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/436/ 

Sãopaulo.shtml. 

64. This characterization is drawn from William Reno, 

‘“Protectors and Predators: Why Is There a Difference among 

West African Militias?” in Louise Andersen, Bjorn Moller, and 

Finn Stepputat, eds., Fragile States and Insecure People?: Violence, 

Security, and Statehood in the Twenty-First Century, New York: 

Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 99-122. 

65. “Militia Rule: A Benefit to the Consumer?” October 5, 

54

2007, posted by and available at www.iraqslogger.com. 

66. See Babak Dehghanpisheh, “The Great Moqtada 

Makeover,” Newsweek, January 28, 2008, available at www. 

newsweek.com/id/96370. 

67. Ian M Cuthbertson, “Prisons and the Education of 

Terrorists,” World Policy Journal, Vol. 21, No. 3, Fall 2004, pp. 

15-22. 

68. Willem V. Schendel, “Spaces of Engagement: How 

Borderlands, Illicit Flows, and Territorial States Interlock” in 

Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham, eds., Illicit Flows and 

Criminal Things, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005, pp. 

38-68. 

69. Krasner, p. 234. 

70. Carolyn Nordstrom, Global Outlaws, Berkeley: University 

of California Press, 2007, p. 116. 

71. Marc Levinson, The Box, Princeton: Princeton University 

Press, 2006. 

72. Nordstrom, p. 159. 

73. For a report on the tunnels, see Richard Esposito, 

“Exclusive: Drug Smugglers Dig Record Number of Tunnels,” 

ABC News, February 19, 2008, available at abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ 

story?id=4312482&page=1. 

74. Rapley, “Keynote Address.” 

75. Collier, pp. 3-4. 

76. Thomas Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map, New York: 

Putnam, 2004. 

77. Max Singer and Aaron Wildavsky, The Real World Order: 

Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil, Chatham, NJ: Chatham House 

Publishers, 1996. 

55

78. Rapley, “Keynote Address.” 

79. See Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is 

Destroying the West from Within, New York: Broadway, 2007. 

80. This is the theme of an interesting, entertaining, but 

ultimately very sobering novel by Daniel Kalla, Pandemic, New 

York: Tor, 2005. 

81. The author is grateful for this observation to members of 

his Capstone Seminar on Early Warning of Feral Cities, Graduate 

School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, 

2006-07. 

82. See A National Security Strategy of Engagement and 

Enlargement, The White House 1996, available at www.fas.org/spp/ 

military/docops/national/1996stra.htm. 

83. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 

March 2006, p. 47, available at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/ 

nss2006.pdf. 

84. National Intelligence Council, Mapping the Global Future, 

Washington DC: CIA, December 2004, p. 30. 

85. Ibid., p. 30. 

86. Ibid., p. 97. 

87. Ibid., p. 97. 

88. Ibid. 

89. Ibid., p. 14. 

90. See The Joint Operational Environment: The World Through 

2030 and Beyond, U.S. Joint Forces Command, May 2007, p. 1, 

available at www.policefuturists.org/pdf/1May07JOE.pdf. 

91. Ibid., p. 37. 

92. Ibid., p. 4. 

56

93. Ibid., p. 7. 

94. Ibid., p. 34. 

95. P. H. Liotta, “Through the Looking Glass: Creeping 

Vulnerabilities and the Reordering of Security,” Security Dialogue, 

Vol. 36, No. 1, 2005, pp. 49-70. 

96. Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly 

Improbable, New York: Random House, 2007. 

97. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, 

March 2006, p. 2. 

98. Ibid., p. 2. 

99. For a brief discussion of the “whole of government” 

approach, see David Wood, “U.S. Facing New World of Warfare,” 

Baltimore Sun, March 17, 2008, available at www.baltimoresun.com/ 

news/nation/bal-te.hybridwar17mar17,0,2596356.story. 

100. The text is available at www.fff.org/comment/AdamsPolicy. 

asp. 

101. The term prudential realism has been used by numerous 

scholars but can be traced back to E. H. Carr. See Hidemi Suganami, 

The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals, Cambridge, UK: 

Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 103. 

102. See “Annex D: The Security Environment” to Army 

Strategic Planning Guidance 2005, p. 1, available at www.army.mil/ 

references/ASPG-AnnexD.doc. 

103. Ibid., p. 8. 

104. Ibid. 

57

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