... Today we hear from John P. Sullivan, the co-founder of the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group. He's a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, focusing on emerging threats. Sullivan co-edited Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorism Network.
While the public and media are occupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential conflict with Iran, the downward spiral in Pakistan, and a global economic meltdown, a new, rapidly-evolving danger - narco-cartels and gangs - has been developing in Mexico and Latin America. And it has the potential to trump global terrorism as a threat to the United States...
Much more at Danger Room.
Comments
I, too, think that the danger from at-home criminals (drug cartels, MS13, etc.) deserves more attention, including what we're doing (or more correctly, not doing) at the border. Also, as long as the SCOTUS Tennessee v. Garner decision holds for our actions at the border (and we jail border guards for shooting criminals and drug runners), we will always be defanged, as it were, and the border will continue to degrade. Just my opinion, you might disagree.
But I see no reason whatsoever to assume that this has anything to do with AQ, TTP, or the transnational [religiously based] insurgencies with whom we are now engaged. It is unrelated to me, and your connection of Rob's points to this is not compelling.
Poverty might be able to be folded in among other problems that might lead to an insurgency, but as for being a root cause, I don't believe it. And as I have pointed out before, if poverty caused insurgencies, then we would be having this problem with Bangladesh, which is not only Muslim, but one of the poorest nations on the planet.
But we're not having this problem with Bangladesh, because poverty doesn't cause insurgencies. That's a myth.
I find it interesting that within a matter of a week or so this item gets posted to the discussion boards http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=6283 and then the post by Danger Room gets posted by the SWJ editors.
While obviously some people may have issues with Robb's personal style or various other issues mentioned on the discussion thread,
I think the basic point (that he brings up in the post and that John P Sullivan discusses) is useful and deserves more discussion.
It seems increasingly clear that ideology has been replaced by either psychological/social or economic factors as the main underlying causes or force behind insurgencies and other non state actors actions. One key issue/problematic seems to be Robb's conflation of "insurgencies (a la Al Qaeda etc) and other non state actors (narco trafficers, etc. However, the basic point, that these non state actors are becoming increasingly more capable and mature in their abilities to function within and despite the will/power of states is clear. The real question then becomes how best to "fix" these problems. Here the solution seems to be to apply the principles now dicussed in the context of COIN (a focus on security, ecnomic and political development) then a simple "War on Drugs"...