Drug Cartels and Gangs in Mexico and Central America: a View Through the Lens of Counterinsurgency - Mexican Cartels, COIN Doctrine, Colombia's Insurgency, Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs)

Drug Cartels and Gangs in Mexico and Central America: a View Through the Lens of Counterinsurgency - Mexican Cartels, COIN Doctrine, Colombia's Insurgency, Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) PDF Author: U. S. Military
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781521119709
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85

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Book Description
For decades, the United States, and its partner Latin American nations, have fought to stop the flow of illicit drugs from South America to the streets of North America, yet the drugs continue to feed the addiction of the 5.8 million cocaine users in the United States today. The Unites States has confronted the problem at all levels-- primarily demand reduction, source eradication, and interdiction. While addressing demand and supply are critical to ending the international drug trade, the transit zone countries of Mexico and Central America are caught in a crossfire of widespread violence, corruption, and weakened state security perpetuated by this multi-billion dollar drug industry. The situation in the region has regressed beyond criminal activity to a drug-fueled state of siege--a criminal insurgency, which has directly threatened the lawfulness and security of transit zone countries. This paper examines the drug war in Central America and Mexico, highlighting its similarities to other insurgencies, and offers ideas on how to apply counterinsurgency doctrine to influence the effort to deny secure transshipment points to drug cartels. In doing so, this paper highlights both the intellectual and physical linkages between the commonly accepted military history of insurgencies and the history of the fight against drug trafficking organizations. To that end the United States, Mexico, and Central America need to challenge drug trafficking organizations and gangs through a regional counterinsurgency strategy that denies impunity for drug cartels, and enables Central American and Mexican governments to reestablish the legitimacy of their governing and legal institutions and regain control over all of their territory for the long term.CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION * CHAPTER 2 - BRIEF HISTORY OF CONFLICT AND DRUG TRAFFICKING: THE ROAD TO TODAY'S DILEMMA * Generations of Conflict and Drug Trafficking: a Training Ground for Criminals * Squeezing the Balloon: Central America and Mexico Become DTO's Preferred Route * CHAPTER 3 - DRUG CARTELS, DRUG GANGS, AND INSURGENCIES * Defining Criminal Insurgency * Three Phases of Insurgency and the DTO Connection * Linking Drug Gangs and Insurgency * Mexican Drug Cartels: The Criminal-Insurgency Leadership * Lessons from Colombia's Insurgency * CHAPTER 4 - DEFEATING THE DTOS: A UNIFIED COIN APPROACH * Aligning Drug Control Strategy with COIN Doctrine * The Merida Initiative: Unprecedented Cooperation in Need of a Full Commitment * CHAPTER 5 - CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS * Central America and Mexico's History Provides Key Roots of Today's Dilemma * DTO and Gang Links to Insurgency Provide a New Lens to View the Problem * Colombia's Insurgency Offers Applicable Lessons for Central America and Mexico * Drug Control Strategy and COIN Doctrine Need to be Leveraged * BIBLIOGRAPHY

Drug Cartels and Gangs in Mexico and Central America: a View Through the Lens of Counterinsurgency - Mexican Cartels, COIN Doctrine, Colombia's Insurgency, Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs)

Drug Cartels and Gangs in Mexico and Central America: a View Through the Lens of Counterinsurgency - Mexican Cartels, COIN Doctrine, Colombia's Insurgency, Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) PDF Author: U. S. Military
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781521119709
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 85

Get Book

Book Description
For decades, the United States, and its partner Latin American nations, have fought to stop the flow of illicit drugs from South America to the streets of North America, yet the drugs continue to feed the addiction of the 5.8 million cocaine users in the United States today. The Unites States has confronted the problem at all levels-- primarily demand reduction, source eradication, and interdiction. While addressing demand and supply are critical to ending the international drug trade, the transit zone countries of Mexico and Central America are caught in a crossfire of widespread violence, corruption, and weakened state security perpetuated by this multi-billion dollar drug industry. The situation in the region has regressed beyond criminal activity to a drug-fueled state of siege--a criminal insurgency, which has directly threatened the lawfulness and security of transit zone countries. This paper examines the drug war in Central America and Mexico, highlighting its similarities to other insurgencies, and offers ideas on how to apply counterinsurgency doctrine to influence the effort to deny secure transshipment points to drug cartels. In doing so, this paper highlights both the intellectual and physical linkages between the commonly accepted military history of insurgencies and the history of the fight against drug trafficking organizations. To that end the United States, Mexico, and Central America need to challenge drug trafficking organizations and gangs through a regional counterinsurgency strategy that denies impunity for drug cartels, and enables Central American and Mexican governments to reestablish the legitimacy of their governing and legal institutions and regain control over all of their territory for the long term.CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION * CHAPTER 2 - BRIEF HISTORY OF CONFLICT AND DRUG TRAFFICKING: THE ROAD TO TODAY'S DILEMMA * Generations of Conflict and Drug Trafficking: a Training Ground for Criminals * Squeezing the Balloon: Central America and Mexico Become DTO's Preferred Route * CHAPTER 3 - DRUG CARTELS, DRUG GANGS, AND INSURGENCIES * Defining Criminal Insurgency * Three Phases of Insurgency and the DTO Connection * Linking Drug Gangs and Insurgency * Mexican Drug Cartels: The Criminal-Insurgency Leadership * Lessons from Colombia's Insurgency * CHAPTER 4 - DEFEATING THE DTOS: A UNIFIED COIN APPROACH * Aligning Drug Control Strategy with COIN Doctrine * The Merida Initiative: Unprecedented Cooperation in Need of a Full Commitment * CHAPTER 5 - CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS * Central America and Mexico's History Provides Key Roots of Today's Dilemma * DTO and Gang Links to Insurgency Provide a New Lens to View the Problem * Colombia's Insurgency Offers Applicable Lessons for Central America and Mexico * Drug Control Strategy and COIN Doctrine Need to be Leveraged * BIBLIOGRAPHY

Drug Trafficking, Corruption and States

Drug Trafficking, Corruption and States PDF Author: Luis Jorge Garay Salamanca
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781491759172
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Drug Trafficking, Corruption and States is cutting edge research. Garay Salamanca and Salcedo-Albarán, along with their contributing authors help document the transition from economic to political imperatives within transnational drug cartels. The break from the Zetas by La Familia Michoacana is one example contained in their empirical survey. Social Network Analysis is their tool for illuminating the varying dynamics of cartel-state inter-penetration and reconfiguration. In doing so they clearly discern between State Capture (StC) and Co-opted State Reconfiguration (CStR). As the drug wars and criminal insurgencies rage in the Americas and beyond, this seminal framework will facilitate efforts by scholars, law enforcement officials, intelligence analysts and policymakers to understand shifts in sovereignty, and to illuminate the mechanisms of transnational illicit networks and their interaction with the state.

Partnership for the Americas: Western Hemisphere Strategy and U.S. Southern Command

Partnership for the Americas: Western Hemisphere Strategy and U.S. Southern Command PDF Author: James G. Stavridis
Publisher: NDU Press
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Since its creation in 1963, United States Southern Command has been led by 30 senior officers representing all four of the armed forces. None has undertaken his leadership responsibilities with the cultural sensitivity and creativity demonstrated by Admiral Jim Stavridis during his tenure in command. Breaking with tradition, Admiral Stavridis discarded the customary military model as he organized the Southern Command Headquarters. In its place he created an organization designed not to subdue adversaries, but instead to build durable and enduring partnerships with friends. His observation that it is the business of Southern Command to launch "ideas not missiles" into the command's area of responsibility gained strategic resonance throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America, and at the highest levels in Washington, DC.

Deviant Globalization

Deviant Globalization PDF Author: Nils Gilman
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441178104
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
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Convergence

Convergence PDF Author: Michael Miklaucic
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781461937029
Category : Computer security
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description


Mortal Doubt

Mortal Doubt PDF Author: Anthony W. Fontes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520969596
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The fear of violent crime dominates Guatemala City. In the midst of unprecedented levels of postwar violence, Guatemalans struggle to fathom the myriad forces that have made life in this city so deeply insecure. Born out of histories of state terror, migration, and US deportation, maras (transnational gangs) have become the face of this new era of violence. They are brutal organizations engaged in extortion, contract killings, and the drug trade, and yet they have also become essential to the emergence of a certain kind of social order. Drawing on years of fieldwork inside prisons, police precincts, and gang-dominated neighborhoods, Anthony W. Fontes demonstrates how gang violence has become indissoluble from contemporary social imaginaries and how these gangs provide cover for a host of other criminal actors. Ethnographically rich and unflinchingly critical, Mortal Doubt illuminates the maras’ role in making and mooring collective terror in Guatemala City while tracing the ties that bind this violence to those residing in far safer environs.

Counternetwork

Counternetwork PDF Author: Angel Rabasa
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 0833095323
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Through an analysis of transnational criminal networks originating in South America, this report presents operational characteristics of these networks, strategic alliances they have established, and the multiple threats that they pose to U.S. interests and to the stability of the countries where they operate. It also identifies U.S. government policies and programs to counter these networks and examines the military’s role in that context.

Illicit

Illicit PDF Author: Moises Naim
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307278565
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
A groundbreaking investigation of how illicit commerce is changing the world by transforming economies, reshaping politics, and capturing governments.In this fascinating and comprehensive examination of the underside of globalization, Moises Naím illuminates the struggle between traffickers and the hamstrung bureaucracies trying to control them. From illegal migrants to drugs to weapons to laundered money to counterfeit goods, the black market produces enormous profits that are reinvested to create new businesses, enable terrorists, and even to take over governments. Naím reveals the inner workings of these amazingly efficient international organizations and shows why it is so hard — and so necessary to contain them. Riveting and deeply informed, Illicit will change how you see the world around you.

Treasury's War

Treasury's War PDF Author: Juan Zarate
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610391160
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
For more than a decade, America has been waging a new kind of war against the financial networks of rogue regimes, proliferators, terrorist groups, and criminal syndicates. Juan Zarate, a chief architect of modern financial warfare and a former senior Treasury and White House official, pulls back the curtain on this shadowy world. In this gripping story, he explains in unprecedented detail how a small, dedicated group of officials redefined the Treasury's role and used its unique powers, relationships, and reputation to apply financial pressure against America's enemies. This group unleashed a new brand of financial power -- one that leveraged the private sector and banks directly to isolate rogues from the international financial system. By harnessing the forces of globalization and the centrality of the American market and dollar, Treasury developed a new way of undermining America's foes. Treasury and its tools soon became, and remain, critical in the most vital geopolitical challenges facing the United States, including terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and the regimes in Iran, North Korea, and Syria. This book is the definitive account, by an unparalleled expert, of how financial warfare has taken pride of place in American foreign policy and how America's competitors and enemies are now learning to use this type of power themselves. This is the unique story of the United States' financial war campaigns and the contours and uses of financial power, and of the warfare to come.

Good Strategy Bad Strategy

Good Strategy Bad Strategy PDF Author: Richard Rumelt
Publisher: Currency
ISBN: 0307886239
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world. Developing and implementing a strategy is the central task of a leader. A good strategy is a specific and coherent response to—and approach for—overcoming the obstacles to progress. A good strategy works by harnessing and applying power where it will have the greatest effect. Yet, Rumelt shows that there has been a growing and unfortunate tendency to equate Mom-and-apple-pie values, fluffy packages of buzzwords, motivational slogans, and financial goals with “strategy.” In Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, he debunks these elements of “bad strategy” and awakens an understanding of the power of a “good strategy.” He introduces nine sources of power—ranging from using leverage to effectively focusing on growth—that are eye-opening yet pragmatic tools that can easily be put to work on Monday morning, and uses fascinating examples from business, nonprofit, and military affairs to bring its original and pragmatic ideas to life. The detailed examples range from Apple to General Motors, from the two Iraq wars to Afghanistan, from a small local market to Wal-Mart, from Nvidia to Silicon Graphics, from the Getty Trust to the Los Angeles Unified School District, from Cisco Systems to Paccar, and from Global Crossing to the 2007–08 financial crisis. Reflecting an astonishing grasp and integration of economics, finance, technology, history, and the brilliance and foibles of the human character, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy stems from Rumelt’s decades of digging beyond the superficial to address hard questions with honesty and integrity.