Dirty Entanglements Corruption, Crime, and Terrorism

The entangled threat of crime, corruption, and terrorism now deserves high-level policy attention because of its growth trajectory. Using lively case studies, this book analyzes the transformation of crime and terrorism and the business logic of terrorism. Louise I. Shelley concludes that corruption, crime, and terrorism will remain important security challenges in the twenty-first century as a result of economic and demographic inequalities in the world, the rise of ethnic and sectarian violence, climate change, the growth of technology, and the failure of nineteenth- and twentieth-century institutions to respond to these challenges when they emerged.

Introduction; Part I. The Logic of Corruption, Crime, and Terrorism: 1. Crime and corruption behind the mass attacks; 2. Corruption: an incubator of organized crime and terrorism; 3. The evolution of organized crime and terrorism; 4. Environments, networks, and pipelines; Part II. The Diverse Businesses of Terrorism: 5. The business of terrorism and the criminal financing of terrorism; 6. The drug trade; 7. The less policed illicit trade: antiquities, counterfeits, and diverted products; 8. Ultimate fears – WMD and crime-terror connections; Conclusion.

Louise I. Shelley is University Professor at the School of Public Policy, George Mason University. She founded and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC). She is the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment of the Humanities, IREX, Kennan Institute, and Fulbright fellowships, and she has received MacArthur grants to establish the Russian Organized Crime Study Center and to study the role of illicit actors in nuclear smuggling. Her previous books include Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Policing Soviet Society (1996). She has written extensively on transnational crime, illicit trade, and money laundering and has testified before the House Committee on International Relations, the Helsinki Commission, the House Banking Committee, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on transnational crime, human trafficking, and the links among transnational crime, financial crime, and terrorism. She serves on the Global Agenda Council on Illicit Trade and Organized Crime for the World Economic Forum (WEF) and was the first cochair of its Council on Organized Crime. Professor Shelley presently cochairs a group on human trafficking within the Global Agenda Councils of the WEF. She is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.