Author: Jennifer L Hesterman
ISBN No: 9781466557611
Review date: 17/12/2025
No of pages: 329
Publisher: CRC Press
Publisher URL:
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557611
Year of publication: 25/07/2013
Brief:
The Terrorist-Criminal Nexus: An Alliance of International Drug Cartels, Organized Crime, and Terror Groups
price
£44.99
The Terrorist-Criminal Nexus: An Alliance of International Drug Cartels, Organized Crime, and Terror Groups is the intriguing title of a new book published by CRC Press from an American author.
To condense the argument of the writer, a former US Air Force colonel; criminals and terrorists use the same technology as the authorities, the good guys – ‘sometimes more effectively’. They too pay engineers, doctors and lawyers. Criminal and terrorist groups learn from their mistakes; we, nations, suffer from ‘security fatigue’. Terrorism is about creating fear as much as killing people, so we ought to think before we exhaust ourselves financially (or mentally) in the name of homeland or other security. The very connectedness of our world aids the criminal and terrorist as much as us; they can gather funds and change tactics. “In the haste to get products to market, technology is fielded without thought given to the one per cent of the population who will exploit it for their nefarious purposes.” As she puts it, the genie is out of the bottle whether for social networking websites or smartphones; they are as handy for the criminal as for you and me. She ends by wondering if a culture shift is called for, of ‘living with terrorism’, which she terms a resiliency approach. As an American, she recalls Britain’s resiliency against the Irish republican terror: “I was once riding the Tube in London in the mid-1990s when coded threats were still being called in by the IRA. An announcement was made to immediately evacuate the station and people listened; they calmly yet quickly exited the station.” The author wonders if people in Washington DC would react as well; but I wonder, would Londoners of 2013 react as well, either?
Jennifer Hesterman’s book like most American works are aimed at North America, but much applies to the UK; a lack of education about threats (though authorities seldom want to share information, whether for political reasons or to avoid the very fear that terrorists want to provoke); and lack of preparing for an emergency – such basics as stocks of water or a flashlight in case of a man-made or natural disaster. She calls for a ‘pragmatic approach of baking resilience into our culture’. As she admits, you cannot alter human nature or the progress of technology and globalisation. What we can do is know what we are up against; this nexus, this sharing of logistics and know-how between terrorists and criminals. As a US book, those links studied are mainly US domestic terrorism (anti-government sovereign citizens and paramilitary militias besides eco-terrorists or Islamic extremists) and drug cartels in Mexico. But as she goes on to show, threats range from money laundering and mortgage and document fraud to improvised explosive devices (IEDs). As seems almost compulsory in US books, the preface begins with what the author recalls of 9-11. She writes of a US air force base that had to react to Defcon 3 – the highest defence readiness condition since the Cuban missile crisis that almost led to World War Three – and prepared (literally and mentally) to have to shoot down civilian airliners. As mobile phone networks crashed, the air force base locked down. And this was, as Hesterman puts it, a ‘high performing, well-oiled machine’ responding to 9-11. What new threats might we face? Arguably the most troubling point of all – how terrorists and criminals recruit. What switch is flicked inside someone’s head to turn them from ‘off’ to ‘on’, from law-abiding to being radicalised, corrupt or fanatical to do the terrorist’s bidding? And once we catch the radicalised person, and put them in prison, how or when can we tell that they are switched ‘off’? We have had to learn to – again in Hesterman’s words – ‘operate within a new realm, that of ambiguity and the ‘inescapable unknowables”. As she hints, it’s not enough to be physically secure; to guard against another 9-11 or Pearl Harbor, we have to keep using our imaginations. In sum, while this book is largely for a North American audience, it has much to say to a British risk and security reader.
