Illicit

Anne-Marie Slaughter

… Illicit is important reading for anyone struggling with the inadequacies of the "war on terror." If or when the networks that allowed Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan to sell designs and parts for nuclear weapons around the world intersect the networks of terrorists themselves, America's greatest nightmare could result.
— The New York Times

Stephen Amidon

In the end, Ordinary Heroes , like all of Turow's fiction, derives its considerable power from its depiction of a lawyer's disillusionment, his understanding of the dark ironies that await anyone with an absolute belief in the rule of justice.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

In this sweeping and informative work, Foreign Policy editor Naim demystifies the global trade in illegal goods and services and, in the process, presents an original portrait of globalization that skillfully eschews the utopian doggerel that often characterizes such accounts. Naim provides a detailed tour of the major globalized criminal activities drug production and distribution, illegal arms dealing, human trafficking, counterfeiting, money laundering and so on and introduces a host of criminal networks that profit from them. The book is regrettably devoid of the kind of firsthand reporting from the field that would have made the subject matter really jump off the page. Yet Naim creates a picture of illicit trade which demonstrates that, far from taking place in a shadowy underworld, such activity is inextricably linked to legitimate commerce and directly affects all of us. In Naim's view, globalization's "diffusion of power to individuals and groups" and away from sovereign states has created a "smuggler's nirvana," in which the lines between legitimate and illegitimate economic activity are blurred and criminal networks possess an unprecedented degree of political influence. Making matters worse, the widening gap between global haves and have-nots what Naim calls "geopolitical bright spots and black holes" has increased the incentive for individuals and groups on both sides of the divide to participate in illicit activities. The remedy? In addition to offering a bevy of specific policy ideas, Naim urges readers to move away from simplistic moral denunciations and to focus, instead, on reducing the demand for criminals' goods and services and on weakening the incentives for ordinary people to become involved in their enterprises. (On sale Oct. 18) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

Traveling in Russia, China, eastern Europe, and Latin America, Naím, the editor of Foreign Policy, realized that "there was much going on in those regions ... that we could never understand unless we paid more attention to the role of criminal activities in shaping decisions, institutions and outcomes." He might have well added to his list of regions some of the Middle East, much of central and eastern Asia, and almost all of Africa. Terrorism, gunrunning, smuggling, corruption, and organized crime have been with us since time immemorial, but today's threat is different in both scale and scope, thanks to globalization, advances in communications technologies, and weapons proliferation. Nonstate actors now wield a level of power and influence that once was largely reserved for states, and Illicit is a good primer on the various challenges they present to U.S. policymakers.

Naím appropriately castigates the Bush administration for focusing on states rather than nonstate actors, but he could have explored further the extent of the long-term damage to U.S. national security likely to result from this ideologically driven position. He also draws the wrong conclusion from the Clinton administration's weaknesses. Unlike his successor, Clinton clearly understood the significance of malign nonstate actors, and yet he was only moderately successful in taking action against them. Naím seems to believe that this was the case because the game is fundamentally unwinnable, and he thus favors legalizing certain of the crimes in question (although he is purposely vague about which). He also believes that bureaucratic turf disputes will inevitably get in the way of effective and coordinated policies — a challenge that especially plagued the Clinton administration. But rather than throwing up his hands in despair, a more optimistic person might take heart from the long and difficult but ultimately successful efforts to force the country's military branches to cooperate under appropriate civilian control. The same could eventually happen with the law enforcement community — and as Naím's book compellingly shows, it needs to as quickly as possible.<

Kirkus Reviews

Troubling and comprehensive examination of the post-Cold War explosion in illegal commerce. Editor of Foreign Policy magazine, Na'm offers a sweeping survey that's light on anecdote. He argues that "since the early 1990s, global illicit trade has embarked on a great mutation." He explores how political changes coupled with unrestricted technologies and free-market expansion had the unforeseen effect of making the international trade in contraband more profitable than ever. Na'm discusses underground markets in weapons, drugs, human beings, counterfeit products and more. The author points to the seepage of criminality into society, represented both by well-heeled Westerners who love buying bootleg DVDs and fake purses, and by the structural transformation of criminal syndicates from cartels to networks. There is also talk of al-Qaeda: Na'm argues that illicit trade both nurtures stateless terrorists and ties them to transnational money-laundering, illegal drug producers (as in Afghanistan) and corrupted elements within states like Pakistan and China, where members of the military are known to underwrite slave-labor counterfeiting operations. Na'm terms this the "criminalization of the national interest." He depicts the response of law enforcement as provincial, outmoded and bureaucratized, and he urges greater cooperation among competing intelligence services. A strong overview for those interested in globalization's darker side, but less vivid and dramatic than other books on the underground economy, such as Charles Bowden's overlooked Down by the River (2002).