Moisés Naím, author of Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy, explains how black-market networks have corrupted global politics.
How is illicit trade a new phenomenon?
First, the size. An indirect measure is money laundering. It has grown at least tenfold since 1990, reaching $1.0 to $1.5 trillion today, according to IMF estimates. The total size of the drug trade is estimated at $800 billion. The annual value of counterfeiting is estimated to be between $400 and $600 billion. But you don't need the numbers to assume they're changing the world. Buying a bunch of ministers in a lot of countries is not that expensive buying and influencing judges, customs officials, heads of police, presidents even. You can gain immense influence in Bolivia or in Belarus without spending a lot of money. But the central point is that this has acquired geopolitical consequences. The world is changing as a result of these networks. They're capable of operating at long distances and across continents, and they are far more political than they were in the past. They have adopted strategies that are common to all big business: diversify, legitimize, and politicize. Think about businesses in Russia or China or Ukraine, and you'd be hard pressed to define exactly which components are legal and which are illicit.
In your book, you write about the "Five Wars of Globalization": Can you explain this concept?
The five wars are the five largest markets of illicit trade: narcotics, weapons, people, counterfeits, and money. But I also write about the trafficking in human organs, endangered species, industrial waste, and art. All these trades have several things in common. They all pit governments against markets -- in all cases, governments are trying to contain profit-driven activities and trades. Geography is no longer an important factor. And governments are playing at great disadvantages because their natural habitat is domestic, within national boundaries, whereas the traffickers' natural habitat is in between. As a result, governments are losing.
What has the policy response been?
Governments everywhere use what I call the "Three C's" -- courts, classrooms, and churches. The first is a method of using law enforcement approaches to deal with criminal activities. The second assumes that there is an educational problem and that teaching can be a solution. The third holds that this is a moral problem and therefore calls for values and churches. This is not just about low morals but about high profits.
You say our picture of the gangster needs to change.
When we talk about crime that is large and influential, two phrases come to mind: one is "organized crime; " the second is "the mafia," or the yakuza in Japan or the triads in China. These are organizations that tend to have a very charismatic powerful figure at the top and are organized as a pyramid. The traders that I discuss in the book are organized more like al-Qaeda -- decentralized cells that are very autonomous, transnational, stateless, ruthless, highly motivated, and very agile. They are driven by profit and organize and recombine depending on market opportunities and threats. That is what makes them so elusive. You can read in the newspapers constantly that a given ring has been dismantled here, a network there, but others very quickly replace them.
Can you explain the connection between illicit trade and terrorism?
We know for a fact that the cell that blew up the train station in Madrid was funding its operations with illicit counterfeiting of DVDs and cigarette smuggling. We know that the same channels that are so easily exploited by traffickers are also available to terrorists. It is very important, however, to remember that it doesn't take a lot of money to be a terrorist. You don't need to build an aircraft carrier that costs five billion dollars or deploy a squadron of jet-fighters. Remember the attacks on 9/11 didn't cost a lot of money.
How do we deal with infringements on civil liberties while trying to battle illicit activity?
In the book, I talk about two technology shocks. One was the technology shock of the nineties that made borders more porous, and the other was the technology shock post-9/11 when governments decided that they had better start spending money in trying to protect borders and trying to make it harder to be anonymous. The book has a whole list of things coming our way that have to do with surveillance, with invasion of privacy -- all kinds of things that may erode civil rights and civil liberties. My concern there is who is going to use those technologies, because technologies are tools. Tools in the hands of incompetent or dishonest handlers can have very bad consequences. Now, am I against all forms of technology in the hands of law enforcement and government to stop these trades? No. But I do think this is a conversation that has more to do with policies than with technologies.
You argue that some illicit trade should simply be decriminalized, in spite of moral objections. Can you explain?
We're asking too many governments to fight the law of gravity. We are criminalizing everything with very little selectivity. We now have scarce government resources deployed in trying to contain the trafficking in DVDs and Gucci bags, and at the same time we're asking and hoping that governments are trying to stop the international trafficking in weapons or children. There should be a hierarchy in what we expect and pressure government to do for us. For example, it's very easy to decide that you don't want to decriminalize the trafficking of children or the sexual exploitation of women or the trading in nuclear weapons. Then there are other things that you better start thinking about decriminalizing -- like marijuana.
Are we culpable for supplying the economic incentives?
I would couch it less in terms of morality and culpability. The instinct that drives a Guatemalan woman to go through a harrowing ordeal to cross the border into the United States and work for less than the minimum wage but more than what she would earn in Guatemala to put food on the table for her children -- that's a basic human instinct. It is not completely different from the moment when you buy a $20 bag on the street that you know would go for $6,000 a block away. In both instances, someone is participating in an illicit activity. You can denounce both the Guatemalan woman and the person who purchases the bag as criminals, and yet here we are. When people ask me about the book and the essence of the book I say that first it's about basic human instincts. Second, it's about arbitrage. And third, it's about hypocrisy.
Hasdai Westbrook is a writer based in New York City. His work has appeared in The Nation and The Washington Post.
