One of President Trump’s first Executive Orders – which signals the importance of the issue right out of the gate – was to designate “cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations and specially designated global terrorists.” Frankly, it was about time that someone acknowledged the hard reality of global organized crime and drugs. Anyone who has worked the transnational criminal and narcotics problem-set for any appreciable time knows full well that sophisticated criminal organizations use shocking, brutal violence and the threat of that violence to influence the actions and policies of government and society. This is terror in its most elemental form.
In one of its professional military education documents, the U.S. Marine Corps defines terrorism as “the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological. A terrorist group is any element, regardless of size or espoused cause, which repeatedly commits acts of violence or threatens violence in pursuit of its political, religious, or ideological objectives.” Suppose a drug trafficking organization’s goal is to harm or intimidate political figures looking to eradicate the drug trade. In that case, this specific line – ‘Intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political’ – reinforces the notion that drug trafficking organizations engage in terrorism.
While the ultimate aims of a criminal organization (namely, the accumulation of ill-gotten profit) may differ from those of terrorist groups (who are mostly pursuing political, religious, or other ideological objectives), the fundamental point of using violence or its threat to intimidate or coerce society is the same regardless of which group is committing the violence. Moreover, to a victimized society, academic discussions about the specific sources of intimidation, oppression, thuggery, and violence become moot. It doesn’t matter if mutilated bodies are hung from highway overpasses by drug-traffickers or a van is driven into a crowd of innocent people on London Bridge by ISIS, the effect of having to live in fear as a result is the same.
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What is perhaps most refreshing about President Trump’s executive order is not just what new legal tools or options may now be employed to more effectively and concertedly tackle criminal cartels but that it simply and clearly calls a spade a spade. It officially recognizes what everyone else has been seeing and saying for decades. To the average person, if a Mexican transnational criminal organization rolls the decapitated heads of cartel victims on the dance floor of a busy nightclub to send a message to the public and government – that’s terrorism. If drug traffickers massacre politicians by the score during elections – that’s terrorism. If cartels film the perpetration of horrific acts, and then post those videos on social media – much akin to how ISIS used violent videos for its global intimidation goals – that’s terrorism. At some point, when a nation experiences literally a decade’s worth of seemingly endless and grotesquely awful violence, “what is and what isn’t?” are just semantic distinctions without any real difference. Moreover, they do little to materially advance our cause against the threat.
Of course, the linkages between global crime and terrorist groups are nothing new – which further argues for the need and purpose of this E.O. In fact, numerous groups around the globe officially designated as foreign terrorist organizations – from Hezbollah to the Colombian FARC to Sendero Luminoso – have historically profited from, or currently engage in drugs and other organized criminal enterprising to finance their operations. Whether it is a means to an end or the end itself – as it so often happens when terrorist groups eventually discover that the money from drugs is more important than their various causes – the destruction wrought by these groups and the crimes they perpetrate is all the same.
America’s long and tragic experience in Afghanistan proved that synergies between militant extremists and drugs were no longer a matter of speculation; narcotics and other contraband have been used for everything from procuring weapons to paying the families of suicide bombers. Additionally, the same systems and tools of evasion, concealment, detection avoidance, and root dishonesty are used by terrorists and global criminals alike, around the world, continuously. And finally, the most common denominator amongst these groups is that they all seek to evade the rule of law.
At the same time, when the targeted brutality of drug trafficking organizations is directed at public officials, vulnerable civilians, or media figures who work valiantly to expose the violent excesses of the drug trade, that targeted brutality is no less terrorizing than a fundamentalist murderer who kills in the name of a perverted ideology. Some audiences may take some issue with this executive order – but most Americans understand what they see when they see it. They are not interested in getting hung up on fruitless theoretical exploration, especially when it leads to bureaucratic infighting, competition over budgets, or sclerotic inaction against the threat. President Trump’s Executive Order designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations is timely, necessary, and correct for many reasons.
Connor Martin is a US Marine veteran and policy analyst in Washington, DC.
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