Dark Logic: Transnational Criminal Tactics and Global Security

Most Americans are aware of two of the "Big Five" transnational criminal organizations (the Colombian cartels and the Italian Mafia, but not the Chinese triads, Japanese Yakuza, or Russian Mob). However, Mandel (Global Threat: Target-Centered Assessment and Management) stresses in this academic effort, all should concern us, since their activities, consuming up to 20% of the world's GDP each year, are arguably more destabilizing than terrorism to legitimate economic, social, and political order. As in Mexico and Somalia, criminal organizations increasingly challenge national and international authority, threatening, in the worst case scenario, "complete global descent into chaotic anarchy." Readers hoping for colorful anecdotes about criminal exploits will be disappointed. Professor Mandel prefers charts (depicting, say, Changes in Time Over Transnational Organized Crime) to commotion. The result is dry and shortsighted, as a few juicy anecdotes would rouse more readers to action than chapters devoted to "Policy Implications." Nevertheless, Mandel's head is in the right place; he wants to improve the means of combating organized crime, a task, he suggests, that is more suited to the World Bank than Elliott Ness. (Jan.)