How Illicit Networks Impact Sovereignty

The maras frequently mentioned in this context, including Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Eighteenth Street (M-18), both originally from Los Angeles, now operate throughout North and Central America. Some discount the complex, networked nature of these gangs, but sensitive investigations have shown intricate, networked command and control relationships operating along a line of communication known as the “Bloody Triangle,” which refers to Los Angeles, San Salvador, and Northern Virginia, where jailhouse coordinators in all three locations collaborate to authorize “green lights” for gang assassinations. [16] In addition to domination of criminal turf, maras can exhibit evolved political and/or mercenary aims. These dimensions are usually present within specific cliques (nodes or subelements) of the mara network rather than an enterprise-wide objective.

Cartels and Gangs: Criminal Insurgencies in Mexico and Central America

Mexico’s drug war has killed an estimated 40,000 persons since 2006 when President Felipe Calderón declared war on the cartels. [17] “Mexico is imploding in a series of interlocking ‘criminal insurgencies’ culminating in a virtual civil war.”[18] The wars are primarily the result of battles among drug cartels. The aim is to dominate criminal enterprise and control the “plazas” or drug corridors, as well as battles with the state—both police and military—in order to operate freely. As noted in one paper:

The cartels are joined by a variety of gangs in the quest to dominate the global criminal opportunity space. Third generation gangs—that is, gangs like Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) that have transcended operating on localized turf with a simple market focus to operate across borders and challenge political structures—are both partners and foot soldiers for the dominant cartels. Gangs and cartels seek profit and are not driven by ideology. But the ungoverned, lawless zones they leave in their wake provide fertile ground for extremists and terrorists to exploit. [19]

This is not to say that cartels and gangs aren’t potentially insurgent. They can and do have insurgent potential and are actively challenging the state in parts of Mexico and Latin America. The cartels, while not driven by explicit ideology, are actively seeking power and reconfiguring the state (CStR).

The current levels and scope of network interconnectivity among Mexico’s “criminal net-warriors” are complex and ever shifting. Los Zetas, initially an enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, now operates as an independent enterprise while cross-border gangs vie for a piece of the action and alliances morph and shift as the battle of “all against all” progresses.

The shifting alliances of Mexican drug cartels seem to be leading to the rise of competing alliances or “mega cartels.” The Mexican daily Excélsior reports that SEDENA (the Mexican national defense/intelligence organization) assesses that eight drug-trafficking organizations in Mexico are potentially uniting to form two competing blocs in order to gain control of the “narco-sphere.”[20] Currently, the largest players in the drug war in Mexico are the Sinaloa Cartel and Los Zetas. [21] Other cartels and gangs are present in the conflict and the tensions of all-against-all remain, but the spoils may be favoring these two major blocs.

An example of the networked cooperation among criminal gangs is found in the recent disclosure of a joint hit squad comprised of gangsters from Los Linces (a La Linea/Juárez Cartel enforcer cell) and Barrio Azteca (a Texas-based street/prison gang hybrid). Daniel Borunda of the El Paso Times writes about the joint cell:“A hit team described as the shock troops of the Juárez drug cartel and Azteca gangsters are suspected of being involved in the recent massacre of students in Juárez, according to information from the Chihuahua state attorney general.” [22] The emergence of a hit squad composed of formerly competing factions is indicative of the trend toward networked cooperation and an example of organizational adaptation.

Drug cartels threaten to turn Mexico into a “narco-state” with rising lawlessness that echoes 1990s-era Colombia. According to a recent feature in the Arizona Republic, Mexico’s drug war “has exposed criminal networks more ingrained than most Americans could imagine: Hidden economies that employ up to one-fifth of the people in some Mexican states. Business empires that include holdings as everyday as gyms and a day-care center.” [23] Essentially, the cartels have adapted, improved their armaments, and are perfecting simultaneous terrorist-style attacks resulting in pockets of ungovernability. Even President Calderón, who once angrily rebutted suggestions that Mexico was becoming a “failed state,” is now describing his crackdown as a fight for territory and “the very authority of the state.” [24]

In “Killing for kudos—the brutal face of Mexico’s 21st-century war,” Ed Vulliamy looked at barbarism in Mexico’s drug war in the aftermath of the January 2010 slaughter of 16 teenagers in Juárez.That “bloodfest”was the culmination of the bloodiest month to date in the battle of the border drug cartels. Vulliamy found that “this brutality defines a war very much of its time, the first 21st-century war, because it is, in the end, about nothing.” [25] In actuality, the war does have an aim; the quest for raw power with the objective of rolling back state authority. Vulliamy also emphasized the power of new media:“Mexico’s war is fought throughYouTube and mobile phones as well as back-room torture chambers. Cartels and killers use YouTube to threaten rivals and public officials, and boast of their killings, or set up rogue websites to broadcast their savagery.”[26]

The reach of new media, combined with the power of illicit economic circuits, allows Mexico’s cartels to operate throughout North America, Central America, and South America, with their tentacles reaching into Africa and Europe.

The interaction among TCOs, enforcer groups, gangs, and potentially conventional terrorists deserves scrutiny. As noted in one article:

Terrorists, gangs, and organized crime can exist as independent threats, but increasingly, they interact in a number of ways. Terrorists or insurgents may exploit organized crime; criminal gangs may act as middlemen in small arms, explosives or human trafficking; drugs may finance operations; and actors on both sides of the house may facilitate or conduct attacks for each other. [27]

Mexico is currently embroiled in a protracted drug war. Mexican drug cartels and allied gangs are currently challenging states and substate polities (in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and beyond) to capitalize on lucrative illicit global economic markets. As a consequence of the exploitation of these global economic flows, the cartels are waging war on each other and state institutions to gain control of the illicit economy. Essentially, they are waging a “criminal insurgency” against the states and their institutions. In doing so, they are becoming political as well as economic actors. Criminal insurgency is a battle for power; essentially it results in a struggle for who governs.[28]

Criminal insurgencies can exist at several levels:

• Local insurgencies in a single neighborhood or “failed community” where gangs dominate local turf and political, economic, and social life. The criminal enterprise collects taxes and exercises a near-monopoly on violence. TCOs and gangs foster a perception that they are community protectors (i.e.,“social bandits”). The criminal gang is seeking to develop a criminal enclave or criminal “free-state.” Since the nominal state is never fully supplanted, development of a parallel state or “dual sovereignty” is the goal.
• A battle for the parallel state where cartels and gangs battle over their own operational space, but violence spills over to affect the public at large and the police and military forces that seek to contain the violence and curb the erosion of governmental authority in the criminal enclave or criminal enterprise.
• Combating the state where criminal enterprises directly confront the state to secure or sustain an independent range of action. The cartels are active belligerents against the state.
• State implosion when high-intensity criminal violence spirals out of control. This potential would be the cumulative effect of sustained, unchecked criminal violence and criminal subversion of state legitimacy through endemic corruption and co-option.[29]

Criminal insurgency is directed toward retaining freedom of action for the criminal enterprise. TCOs and gangs may directly attack the state to co-opt or corrupt its political processes. The tools or methods of criminal insurgency include:

• symbolic and instrumental violence including attacks on journalists, police, the military, and elected and judicial officials (targeted assassinations and mass attacks)
• exerting control over turf through violence and social cleansing, resulting in refugees and internally displaced persons
• information operations including corpse-messaging, narcocorridos, narcomantas/ narcopintas (banners and graffiti), narcomensajes (communiqués), manefesacions (demonstrations), narcobloqueos (blockades), and leventons (express kidnappings)
• utilitarian provision of social goods
• resource extraction
• usurping state fiscal roles (street taxation, extortion)
• co-opting and corrupting government actors
• use of marked vehicles, uniforms, and insignia to confer legitimacy
• usurping the protective security (enforcement and punishment) role of the state
• promulgation of alternative identity narratives (including narcocultura) to secure legitimacy and community support (or tolerance) including adopting the mantle of social bandit.[30]

In El Salvador, both cartels and maras are adopting the mantle of social bandit. For example, National Public Radio (NPR) News reports,“In El Salvador, there’s fear that the Mexican cartels are aligning themselves with the country’s ubiquitous street gangs.” The two main gangs, MS-13 and M-18, are so powerful and volatile that their members get sent to separate prisons. Impoverished neighborhoods in the capital, San Salvador, are clearly divided turf, belonging to one gang or the other. The maras violently and effectively rule their turf,“controlling street-level drug sales, charging residents for security and battling to exclude their rivals.”[31]

According to the NPR report:

The maras could offer—and according to some security analysts, already are offer-ing—the Mexican cartels access to a vast criminal network. The maras have stashes of weapons, established communications networks and ruthless foot soldiers who have no qualms about smuggling drugs or assassinating rivals—for a price. . . .

Blue [an MS gangster] talks of the MS as a social organization that protects the “civilians” in the neighborhood. They help get water lines connected. They’re refurbishing the community hall. To him, it’s normal that residents have to pay rent to the gang for these services.

Essentially, in El Salvador gang leaders are stating that they are social workers and that their gangs are providing social goods. While reporting for his three-part series on drug trafficking in Central America, NPR’s Jason Beaubien spoke at length with “Blue,” the second in command of the Mara Salvatrucha gang in El Salvador. Beaubien reported that

gang members “really believe that they are doing good in the community. They believe that their gang structure . . . replaces what the state isn’t giving”—security, water, a community hall. If Mexican cartels move in to work with the gangs in El Salvador . . . the power and money from the Mexicans combined with the organizational structure of the gangs would create “a terrible, terrible combination.” [32]

Diane Davis provides insight into the dynamics of the situation. According to Davis, “Mexico’s cartels constitute ‘irregular armed forces’—well-organized, flexible urban gangs that make money smuggling drugs and other goods—buttressed by Mexico’s socioeconomic problems.” [33] The cartels, Davis contends, are different from rebel groups. They do not seek to remove the whole government, but instead to usurp some of its functions. In doing so, they use violence to protect their “clandestine networks of capital accumulation.” [34] This leads some analysts (including Davis) to perceive that Mexico’s drug wars involve physically dispersed, evolving organizations that could be viewed more as self-sustaining networks than antistate insurgents. [35] That conception is challenged here. The cartels are not antistate insurgents in the conventional sense. They are criminal insurgents who challenge the state in a quest for economic and raw political power. They are not seeking to replace the state, but rather to remove the state’s authority over their operations. As a consequence, they are engaged in state reconfiguration (CStR) and become “accidental insurgents” with the potential to become new state-making entities.

Narcocultura, Social Bandits, and State-making

Davis also observed:“[The] random and targeted violence increasingly perpetrated by ‘irregular’ armed forces poses a direct challenge to state legitimacy and national sovereignty.”[36] According to her analysis, cartels and gangs are “transnational non-state armed actors who use violence to accumulate capital and secure economic dominion, and whose activities reveal alternative networks of commitment, power, authority, and even self-governance.”[37]

This situation has clear neofeudal dimensions. Consider Los Zetas in light of feudalism. Alfredo Corchado, a journalist covering Mexico’s drug wars, points out indicators of cartel (especially Zeta) erosion of state institutions. These include territorial control and neofeudalism. Corchado explained, “Beset by violence and corruption, Guatemala teeters on the edge of being a failed state. In recent years, Guatemala has proved to be especially vulnerable to the Zetas, who rule over communities across the country like tiny fiefdoms.”[38] Concrete examples of neofeudal characteristics include maintaining private armies, collecting taxes, extracting resources, and dominating local political and community organizations, as well as paying tribute to other criminal enterprises and government actors to retain freedom of movement within their sphere of influence.

Corchado observes that by leveraging the proceeds from billions of dollars in drug profits from U.S. sales, Mexican organized crime groups have taken control in parts of Guatemala, forming alliances with local criminal groups and undermining that state’s fragile democracy. In Mexico, the Zetas now control chunks of territory in the Yucatan peninsula, northwestern Durango state, and the northern states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, and Coahuila (all bordering Texas).[39]

The result is “other governed spaces,” “neo-feudal zones,” and “criminal enclaves.” In a report entitled “Drug cartels taking over government roles in parts of Mexico,” Corchado explored cartel intrusion into sovereignty. He found:

The “police” for the Zetas paramilitary cartel are so numerous here—upward of 3,000, according to one estimate—that they far outnumber the official force, and their appearance further sets them apart. The omnipresent cartel spotters are one aspect of what experts describe as the emergence of virtual parallel governments in places like Nuevo Laredo and Ciudad Juarez—criminal groups that levy taxes, gather intelligence, muzzle the media, run businesses and impose a version of order that serves their criminal goals.[40]

As a consequence, “entire regions of Mexico are effectively controlled by nonstate actors, i.e., multipurpose criminal organizations,” according to Howard Campbell, an anthropologist and expert on drug cartels at the University of Texas at El Paso. “These criminal groups have morphed from being strictly drug cartels into a kind of alternative society and economy. . . . They are the dominant forces of coercion, tax the population, steal from or control utilities such as gasoline, sell their own products and are the ultimate decision-makers in the territories they control.” [41]

Narcocultura

Narcocultura is a form of social-environmental modification. Specifically, alternative belief systems are exploited by gangs and cartels to alter primary loyalties and erode the authority and legitimacy of the state. Narcocultura is instrumental in reshaping sovereignty. By creating alternative identity narratives, illicit networks project their power and offer themselves as an alternative to traditional state structures. Myths, folk songs (narcocorridos), imagery, and identity symbols (including patrons, heroes, and saints) are used to bolster the legitimacy and influence of the TCOs and gangs.

Guillermoprieta defines narcocultura as:

The production of symbols, rituals and artifacts—slang, religious cults, music, consumer goods—that allow people involved in the drug trade to recognize themselves as part of a community, to establish a hierarchy in which the acts they are required to perform acquire positive value and to absorb the terror inherent in their line of work.[42]

According to Bunker and Bunker, social environmental modification is an element of nonstate warfare. “This warfare—manifesting itself in ‘criminal insurgencies’ derived from groups of gang, cartel, and mercenary networks—promotes new forms of state organization drawn from criminally based social and political norms and behaviors.”[43] Key elements of social/environmental modification by the aforementioned authors include alternative worship or veneration of “narco-saints,” symbolic violence (including beheadings and corpse messaging—attaching a message to a corpse), and the use of narcocorridos (epic folk songs) and social media to spread messages and confer legitimacy on a cartel.

The mantle of “social bandit” confers legitimacy on the gangs’ or cartels’ actions within the community they by necessity dominate. [44] La Familia, Los Cabelleros Templarios, the Sinaloa Cartel, and even Los Zetas have embraced this role through skillful use of information operations and utilitarian provision of social goods to delegitimize their adversaries (rival gangs and the state alike). This is a potent example of the assertion authority and the use of alternative identity narratives as a means of stealing the mantle of sovereignty from the state.

The control of territorial space—ranging from “failed communities” to “failed regions”— is a critical element of the erosion of state capacity. This includes the exploitation of weak governance and areas (known as “lawless zones,” “ungoverned spaces,” “other governed spaces,” or “zones of impunity”) where state challengers have created parallel or dual sovereignty, or “criminal enclaves,” in a neofeudal political arrangement. The use of instrumental violence, corruption, information operations (including attacks on journalists, alternative identity narratives including narcocultura, and assuming the mantle of social bandit), street taxation, and provision of social goods in a utilitarian fashion are among the tools employed by criminal actors to secure their freedom of movement and erode the authority of the state.

Impact on the State

Specific variables/indicators that are germane to understanding the impact of TCOs and networked criminal enclaves on the state include: violence both among cartels and directed at the state, corruption, degree of transparency, cartel/gang reach, effectiveness of governance/ policing, community stability, effectiveness of economic regulation, and the degree of territorial control (loss or gain by the state vs. cartels).

The impact of transnational criminal enterprises on state capacity, control of territory, and legitimacy is critical. All of these activities occur across time. Some changes are slow-moving, while some are rapid in their expression. Key factors in the pace of change include:

• social/environmental modification (such as the use of social networking media— Facebook and Twitter—propaganda/information operations, e.g., narcomantas and narcocorridos) to further a criminal gang’s perceived social legitimacy
• connections (or network connectivity) between and among criminal enterprises (i.e., nodal analysis and social network analysis)
• impact of illicit economic circuits (including connections among criminal actors) on the legitimacy of borders in global cities and border zones, as well as criminal penetration and reach
• usurpation of state fiscal roles (taxes, tariffs) by criminal enterprises through street taxation, protection rackets, and other diversion of public goods or funds
• force including the use of instrumental and symbolic criminal violence (armed attacks, terrorist campaigns, “corpse messaging,” kidnapping, attacks on police, attacks on journalists and public officials, and the development and employment of private armies) challenging the state’s monopoly on legitimate force.

These factors are evident in three crucial spatial settings: networked diasporas, border zones, and criminal enclaves (themselves often the result of the first two).

Networked Diasporas

Terrorists, organized criminal enterprises, and transnational gangs increasingly operate across borders as global nonstate actors. This transnational dimension of crime and extremism makes coordination of foreign and domestic intelligence and law enforcement operations essential. Frequently, transnational criminal and terrorist actors find sanctuary in overseas diaspora communities. While this is not new (the Mafia or Costa Nostra in the United States is a classic case of Sicilian immigrants banding together and forming the nucleus of criminal gangs and enterprises), Russian mafiya gangs, Chinese triads, and now Mexican cartels and others operate globally. The information age allows these groups to coordinate and synchronize operations and make alliances in new ways. This includes the use of new media to transmit messages; announce alliances, attacks, and operations (including beheadings and corpse messaging or the use of symbolic brutality); broadcast threats and challenges; solicit recruits and alternative identity narratives (i.e., narcocultura); and transmit operational directives across multiple areas of operations in real or chosen time.

Networked diasporas are one consequence of the information age and require attention. Diaspora communities can provide extremists with a permissive environment favoring the emergence of extremist cells. Radical enclaves may arise within diaspora communities and serve as catalysts for broader radicalization. When linked to lawless zones and other radical enclaves through social networks and Internet media, a powerful “networked diaspora” results.[45]

Border Zones

Border zones are frequently areas where dark side actors and criminal netwarriors can gain a foothold. As such, they serve as incubators of conflict. Criminal gangs, insurgents, and terrorists exploit weak state presence to forge a parallel state and pursue their criminal enterprises. Their efforts are frequently sustained by fear, violence, and brutality.[46] For example, in Mexico, the northern frontier with the United States and southern border with Guatemala are contested zones. These zones have become the center of gravity for Mexico’s drug cartels. These drug-smuggling corridors and plazas translink the borders. The bloody competition over these plazas and the spread of criminal reach and power throughout the state and across frontiers are significant security concerns.

Border zones in Latin America, for example, are at risk of territorial capture by armed groups and narcotrafficking networks. As Ivan Briscoe observed, government authority in these zones has been “hollowed out” and replaced by evolving global-local networks of criminal authority. [47] As noted by Sullivan and Elkus:

Border zones, such as Guatemala’s Petén province, and sparsely policed areas like the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua are incubators of instability and ideal venues for refueling, repackaging product, and warehousing drug stockpiles. While this was first realized in Guatemala and Honduras, El Salvador, Panama and Costa Rica, indeed all Central America, are currently at risk of being caught in the “cross-border” spillover of Mexico’s drug wars. Controlling these border zones is key to transnational gangs and cartels. Los Zetas, for example, not only train in sparsely populated border areas, they seek to sustain military control of the frontier and adjoining terrain on both sides of Mexico’s southern border between Chiapas and Guatemala. [48]

The informal economies that have emerged in Latin American border zones demonstrate the transition of states that is emerging from the twin engines of globalization and the information age. The shift of government authority from the state (or in cases where the state has always been weak, the rise of criminal governance) to dark side criminal actors/criminal netwarriors is a consequence of globalization impacting loose frontier economies that serve as in-between zones for illicit goods within a common regional network. This exploitation of regional economic circuits, albeit illicit, illustrates the transition into a reconfiguration of power within the state, where traditional informal networks link with globalized forms of illicit commerce to create a new base of power.

Criminal Enclaves

In Mexico and parts of Central America, cartels and gangs have gained control over specific plazas ranging from a few city blocks to entire states or subnational regions. Exploiting weak state capacity in urban slums or rural border zones[49] either from the aftermath of civil war (Central America) or during the transition from one party rule (Mexico), criminal mafias of various stripes have exploited the vacuum of power. In Mexico, for example, the drug-trafficking organizations were traditionally moderated by the ruling party, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). The end of the PRI monopoly on power allowed the cartels to seek new business and political arrangements. Cartels, now free from the influence of the PRI, could strike independent arrangements with local political actors. This freedom converged with the increasing globalization of crime. As a result, organized crime could then establish boundaries for the authorities, not the other way around. [50]

Drug cartels and criminal gangs are challenging the legitimacy and solvency of the state at the local, state, and national levels in Mexico and Central America. As Max Manwaring stipulated, these state challengers are applying the “Sullivan-Bunker Cocktail,” where nonstate actors challenge the de facto sovereignty of nations.[51] In Manwaring’s interpretation, gangs and irregular networked attackers can challenge nation-states by using complicity, intimidation, and corruption to subtly co-opt and control individual bureaucrats and gain effective control over a given enclave.

Essentially, the cartels and their networked 3 GEN gang affiliates exploit weak zones of governance, expanding their criminal turf into effective areas of control. They start by corrupting weak officials, co-opting the institutions of government and civil society through violence and bribes. They attack police, military forces, judges, mayors, and journalists to leverage their sway, communicate their primacy through information operations, and cultivate alternative social memes adapting environmental and social conditions toward their goals. Then they conduct social cleansing, killing those who get in their way and forcing others out of their area of operations; they are then able to effectively collect taxes, extract wealth and resources such as the diversion of oil and gas from Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX, Mexico’s state-owned petroleum company), and basically control the territory.

This situation allowed a range of networked, local, and transnational criminal enterprises—gangs and cartels—to seize new criminal, economic, social, and political opportunities. Parallel or “dual sovereignty” over large swaths of the state was the result.[52] Provision of social goods (often wearing the mantle of social bandits) is one manifestation of increasing cartel power. Often this provision of social goods is purely utilitarian. The cartels seek to appease the populace to gain their complicity in fending off the state’s enforcement imperative. [53] As a consequence, the cartels are exerting real territorial control:

Mexico’s periphery has become a lawless wasteland controlled largely by the drug cartels, but the disorder is rapidly spreading into the interior. In a cruel parody of the “inkblot” strategy employed by counterinsurgents in Iraq, ungoverned spaces controlled by insurgents multiply as the territorial fabric of the Mexican state continues to dissolve.[54]

This territorial control varies in scope from a few blocks or colonias to entire regions. The cartels and gangs need to provide social goods to sustain their impunity, consolidate their power, and ultimately expand their reach through displacement of the state or political accommodation—whichever comes first. Accordingly, they apply a “reverse inkblot” strategy to alter states.

Leveraging the power gained by dominating the plazas and criminal enclaves, these criminal networks have the opportunity to expand their domains by exerting dual sovereignty or actual political control over their corrupt vassals to forge narco-states. In either case, their expanding reach challenges nations and polities at all levels, potentially ushering in new forms of stratified (or dual/parallel) sovereignty. These may very well become network-states.

The “Network-State”

These new power configurations may result in new forms of sovereignty or new state forms— that is, new ways of organizing state power. Philip Bobbitt argues that this will be the “market state,”[55] Ronfeldt envisions a “nexus-state” ruled by “cyberocracy,” [56] and others, such as Sullivan and Elkus, make the case for the network-state, arguing,“States are not so much declining, failing and yielding as transforming their very nature. The network is the right metaphor to grasping the new state’s complexity.” [57] Network-states would share greater portions of power with transnational organizations, civil society actors, other states, and substate organs. Power would not be concentrated only in single geographic states, but certain state functions would transcend the boundaries of single states and state confederations. This is already occurring, as in the case of the suprastate European Union and multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization.

The capture, control, or disruption of strategic nodes in the global system and the intersections between them can have cascading effects. For instance, Saskia Sassen expands on the notion of border zones to posit a growing “frontier zone,” a zone of difference where identities, allegiances, and organizational forms exist in a state of constant flux. This state of flux is the consequence of far-reaching economic trends resulting in a structural “hollowing” of many state functions while bolstering the state’s executive branch and its emphasis on internal security. [58] This hollowing out of state function is accompanied by an extranational stratification of state function. According to Sassen, a “much overlooked feature of the current period is the multiplication of a broad range of partial, often highly specialized, global assemblages of bits of territory, authority, and rights.”[59] These fractal bits are increasingly contested, with states and (in the case discussed here) criminal enterprises seeking their own “market”shares.

The potential for a state centralizing power is an insight found in Ronfeldt’s exploration of the “nexus-state.” Centralized information controls can become a systematic apparatus of control to dominate or manipulate the populace. Essentially, the state becomes the decentralized arbiter of network protocols that define the nodal interactions among a complicated set of networks, actors, and relationships. The state continues to exist, but control over key functions is transferred to cities, corporations, and issue-specific transnational organizations. Here is the crux of the battle between states and nonstate criminal netwarriors, between the light side and dark side networks. Which set of organizational entities will dominate the shift to new state forms?

Conclusion

State change and shifts in sovereignty are a potential consequence of the erosion of state authority, legitimacy, and capacity. Outcomes of such shifts could include failed states, the capture of state authority by transnational criminals, and the emergence of new state forms. Insurgencies, high-intensity crime, and criminal insurgencies that challenge state legitimacy and inhibit governance are a key national and global security issue.

“State failure” is one potential outcome of insolvent governance (the inability of weak states and corrupt state officials to sustain legitimacy and effectively govern) and extreme instability. This issue has been a concern to the global security and intelligence communities for several years (specifically since the implosion of the Somali state). According to King and Zeng, the term “refers to the complete or partial collapse of state authority. . . . Failed states have governments with little political authority or ability to impose the rule of law. They are usually associated with widespread crime, violent conflict, or severe humanitarian crises, and they may threaten the stability of neighboring countries.” [60] While the absolute failure of an entire state is the extreme outcome, erosion of state capacity, the establishment of criminal enclaves, and ultimately the overall reconfiguration of power within the state (or “substate failure”) are likely outcomes.

Nonstate actors such as TCOs, gangs, warlords, private armies, terrorists, and insurgent networks on the dark side, and private military or security corporations, global corporations, civil society, nongovernmental organizations, and evolving state, substate, and suprastate institutions on the light side, demand the development of new security and intelligence structures to ensure global stability and human security. [61] These structures and mechanisms are needed to address the direct assaults on state functions. More analysis is needed to define the appropriate structures to negotiate this transition.

This is a battle for information and real power among global networks, social media groups, and nongovernmental organizations to secure political power. Illicit networks are controlling turf and capturing state functions, including the legitimate protective security roles of the state, assuming the power to enforce their will and punish those who do not comply. This is a battle that favors the agile and those with the will to use brute strength and force (cyber or otherwise). The criminal netwarriors increasingly employ barbarization and high-order violence combined with information operations to seize the initiative and embrace the mantle of social bandit to confer legitimacy on themselves and their enterprises. States must adapt and react to these changes and challenges to sovereignty in order to maintain collective security and retain effective control of their territory, borders, and populace.

Notes

[1] This chapter draws from my ongoing research into the impact of transnational organized crime on sovereignty. Specifically, it recaps three prior papers: John P. Sullivan, “Social Networks and Counternetwar Response,” presented to the Panel on Security, Resilience, and Global Networks at the 51st Annual International Studies Association Convention in New Orleans, February 20, 2010; “Intelligence, Sovereignty, Criminal Insurgency, and Drug Cartels,” presented to the Panel on Intelligence Indicators for State Change and Shifting Sovereignty at the 52nd Annual International Studies Association Convention, Montreal, March 18, 2011; and “From Drug Wars to Criminal Insurgency: Mexican Cartels, Criminal Enclaves, and Criminal Insurgency in Mexico and Central America: Implications for Global Security,” presented to the Seminar on Netwars and Peacenets, Institute of Global Studies, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris, June 27–28, 2011.

[2] See Nils Gilman, Jesse Goldhammer, and Steven Weber, eds., Deviant Globalization: Black Market Economy in the 21st Century (New York: Continuum, 2011). My contribution, chapter 16, “Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence,” complements the analysis found in this chapter.

[3] See Luis Jorge Garay-Salamanca, Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, and Isaac De León-Beltrán, Illicit Networks Reconfiguring States: Social Network Analysis of Colombian and Mexican Cases (Bogota: METODO, 2010).

[4] Luis Jorge Garay and Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán, “State Capture and Co-opted State Reconfiguration,” in “Drug Trafficking, Corruption and State,” prepublication draft, 2011, 29–31.

[5] Ibid., 31.

[6] Ibid.

[7] See David Ronfeldt, Visions from Two Theories, available at , for a comprehensive view of his network social theory.

[8] John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, eds., Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2001).

[9] See Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture: The Rise of the Network Society, Vol. I (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010); The Power of Identity, Vol. II (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004); and The End of Millennium, Vol. III (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008).

[10] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “The Globalization of Crime: A Transnational Organized Crime Threat Assessment,” June 2010.

[11] Juan Carlos Garzón, Mafia & Co.: The Criminal Networks in Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Latin American Program, 2008).

[12] See John P. Sullivan, “Public-Private Intelligence Models for Responding to the Privatization of Violence,” paper presented to Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association (ISA), 2007 ISA Annual Convention, Chicago, February 28–March 3, 2007, as a complement to this chapter. Also see Robert J. Bunker, ed., Non-State Threats and Future Wars (London: Frank Cass, 2003), and Robert J. Bunker, ed., Networks, Terrorism and Global Insurgency (London: Routledge, 2005), for a detailed discussion of the global threat environment.

[13] See John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Global cities–global gangs,” openDemocracy.net, December 2, 2009, available at .

[14] See John P. Sullivan, “Transnational Gangs: The Impact of Third Generation Gangs in Central America,” Air and Space Power Journal, Spanish Edition, July 2008, available at .

[15] John P. Sullivan, “Third Generation Street Gangs: Turf, Cartels, and Net Warriors,” Transnational Organized Crime 3, no. 3 (Autumn 1997). See also John P. Sullivan, “Future Conflict: Criminal Insurgencies, Gangs and Intelligence,” Small Wars Journal, May 31, 2009, available at .

[16] Personal interview with gang intelligence investigators, identities withheld for operational security. See also Samuel Logan, This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha (New York: Hyperion Books, 2009), and the This Is for the Mara Salvatrucha Web site, available at .

[17] The Mexican press speculates that between 38,000 and over 40,000 persons have been killed in the conflict since 2006. In January 2011, the Mexican government pegged the toll at 34,600. No official updates have been provided since. See “Mexico Debates Drug War Death Toll Figure amid Government Silence,” Latin America News Dispatch, June 3, 2011, available at .

[18] John P. Sullivan, “Criminal Netwarriors in Mexico’s Drug Wars,” GroupIntel, December 22, 2008, available at .

[19] Ibid.

[20] John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Cartel v. Cartel: Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Small Wars Journal, February 1, 2010, available at .

[21] “2 powerful cartels dominate Mexico drug war,” CBS News, October 1, 2011, available at .

[22] Daniel Borunda, “‘Lynxes,’ Azteca formed hit squad: birthday party attack directed by cartel, gang,” El Paso Times, February 11, 2010, available at .

[23] Chris Hawley, “Drug cartels tighten grip; Mexico becoming ‘narco-state,’” Arizona Republic, February 7, 2010, available at .

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ed Vulliamy, “Killing for kudos—the brutal face of Mexico’s 21st-century war,” The Guardian/Observer, February 7, 2010, available at .

[26] Ibid.

[27] Sullivan, “Criminal Netwarriors in Mexico’s Drug Wars.”

[28] See John P. Sullivan and Robert J. Bunker, “Rethinking insurgency: criminality, spirituality, and societal warfare in the Americas,” Small Wars & Insurgencies 22, no. 5 (December 2011), 742–763.

[29] John P. Sullivan, “Post-Modern Social Banditry: Criminal Violence or Criminal Insurgency?” paper presented at conference, Drug Trafficking, Violence, and Instability in Mexico, Colombia, and the Caribbean: Implications for U.S. National Security, co-hosted by University of Pittsburgh’s Matthew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies and Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, in Pittsburgh, PA, October 29, 2009.

[30] Sullivan, “Intelligence, Sovereignty, Criminal Insurgency, and Drug Cartels.”

[31] Jason Beaubien, “El Salvador Fears Ties Between Cartels, Street Gangs,” NPR News, June 1, 2011.

[32] Mark Memmott, “In El Salvador: Gang Leaders Who Say They’re Social Workers,” The two-way (NPR News Blog), available at .

[33] Diane Davis is quoted in Peter Dizikes, “An altered state,” PHYSORG.com, available at .

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Diane E. Davis, “Irregular Armed Forces, Shifting Patterns of Commitment, and Fragmented Sovereignty in the Developing World,” Theory and Society, MIT Open Access Article, April 19, 2010.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Alfredo Corchado, “Traffic in illegal drugs spawns violence and corruption on path north,” Bellingham Herald, April 28, 2011.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Alfredo Corchado, “Drug cartels taking over government roles in parts of Mexico,” Vancouver Sun, May 4, 2011.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Alma Guillermoprieto, “The Narcovirus,” Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Spring 2009, 3–9, available at . Also see Alma Guillermoprieto, “Days of the Dead: The New Narcocultura,” The New Yorker, November 10, 2008, available at .

[43] Pamela L. Bunker and Robert J. Bunker, “The Spiritual Significance of ¿Plata O Plomo?” Small Wars Journal, May 27, 2010, available at .

[44] See Eric Hobsbawn, Bandits (New York: The New Press, 2000).

[45] See John P. Sullivan, “Policing Networked Diasporas,” Small Wars Journal, July 9, 2007, available at .

[46] See John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Border zones and insecurity in the Americas,” openDemocracy. net, November 24, 2009, available at .

[47] See Ivan Briscoe, “Trouble on the Borders: Latin America’s New Conflict Zones,” Madrid: FRIDE, July 2008, available at .

[48] Sullivan and Elkus, “Border zones and insecurity in the Americas.”

[49] Border zones are potential incubators of conflict. Criminal gangs exploit weak state presence to forge a parallel state and prosecute their criminal enterprises sustained by fear, violence, and brutality. See Sullivan and Elkus, “Border zones and insecurity in the Americas.”

[50] The Institutional Revolutionary Party (known as the PRI in Spanish) traditionally set all power boundaries in Mexican political and economic life, both legal and illicit. That changed with the implementation of a true multiparty state. The criminal mafias exploited that new power-generating opportunity. See Nik Steinberg, “The Monster and Monterrey: The Politics and Cartels of Mexico’s Drug War,” The Nation, May 25, 2011, available at .

[51] See Max G. Manwaring, “Sovereignty Under Siege: Gangs and other Criminal Organizations in Central America and Mexico,” Air & Space Power Journal—Spanish Edition, July 1, 2008, available at .

[52] Michoacán was an early example of emerging cartel political action. In that state, La Familia forged a parallel government generating employment, keeping order, providing social and civic goods, collecting (street) taxes, and co-opting legitimate governmental administrative and security functions. See George W. Grayson, La Familia Drug Cartel: Implications for U.S.-Mexican Security (Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, Strategic Studies Institute, December 2010). Los Zetas started providing similar social goods in 2010–2011, leading the author to observe that they were acting as “accidental insurgents.”

[53] See Shawn Teresa Flanigan, “Violent Providers: Comparing Public Service Provision by Middle Eastern Insurgent Organizations and Mexican Drug Cartels,” 52nd Annual ISA Convention.

[54] John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency,” Defense and the National Interest and Small Wars Journal, November 9, 2008, available at .

[55] Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (New York: Knopf, 2002); and Philip Bobbitt, Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Knopf, 2008).

[56] David Ronfeldt and Danielle Varda, “The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited),” Social Science Research Network, December 1, 2008, available at .

[57] See John P. Sullivan and Adam Elkus, “Security in the network-state,” openDemocracy.net, October 6, 2009, available at .

[58] See Saskia Sassen, “The new executive politics: a democratic challenge,” openDemocracy.net, June 28, 2009, available at ; and Sullivan and Elkus, “Security in the network-state.”

[59] Saskia Sassen, “Neither global nor national: novel assemblages of territory, authority and rights,” Ethics & Global Politics 1, no. 1–2 (2008), 61.

[60] Gary King and Langche Zeng, “Improving Forecasts of State failure,” World Politics 53 (July 2001), 623–658.

[61] John P. Sullivan, “Fusing Terrorism Security and Response,” in Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter-terrorism Network, ed. Peter Katona, Michael D. Intriligator, and John P. Sullivan, 272–288 (London: Routledge, 2006).