Drug Trafficking and International Security

Kan surveys the threats that drug trafficking poses to international security. Individual chapters show how drug trafficking creates narco-states, undermines fragile states, abets intrastate conflict, facilitates the spread of transnational criminal organizations, and harms global health. Chiding the international relations discipline for sidelining the study of ‘deviant globalization’ and ignoring the non-state actors that participate in drug trafficking, Kan adopts an interdisciplinary perspective focusing on flows across borders and limits to state sovereignty. The book summarizes a range of insights from the literature on the drug trade, such as the unintended consequences of prohibition, differences between narco-states, and impediments to interstate cooperation. In the concluding chapter, Kan lists a number of questions for future scholarly research and advises policy makers to focus on managing and mitigating drug trafficking and related security problems rather than trying to eliminate them…. This accessible book will appeal to those seeking a broad overview of the global implications of drug trafficking. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. * CHOICE *
An intellectual tour de force related to drug trafficking as a prominent feature of deviant globalization and durable disorder and its analysis of the international implications of the new ‘drug-security’ nexus that has emerged. The work exposes the inadequacy of traditionalist perceptions related to the state-centric security environment in an age when the number of narco and fragile states is ever growing and violent non-state actors and organized crime groups are ascendant. -- Robert J. Bunker, Claremont Graduate University
Focusing on the convoluted but powerful intersection between drug trafficking and international security, Paul Kan emphasizes the changed nature of security and elucidates the role of drug trafficking in creating insecurity and disorder. Informative, perceptive, and far-reaching, this volume is not for the faint-hearted: it will greatly appeal to some and irritate and provoke others. Is drug trafficking no more than a hyped up threat or is it a genuine and enduring security challenge? Read this book and decide for yourself. -- Phil Williams, Wesley W. Posvar Professor of International Security in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, and Director of the University’s Ridgway Center for International Security Studies