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As for nuclear terrorism, ever since al Qaeda operatives used box cutters so effectively to hijack commercial airplanes, alarmists have warned that radical Islamist terrorists would soon apply equal talents in science and engineering to make and deliver nuclear weapons so as to destroy various so-called infidels. In practice, however, terrorist groups have exhibited only a limited desire to go nuclear and even less progress in doing so. Why? Probably because developing one’s own bomb from scratch requires a series of risky actions, all of which have to go right for the scheme to work. This includes trusting foreign collaborators and other criminals; acquiring and transporting highly guarded fissile material; establishing a sophisticated, professional machine shop; and moving a cumbersome, untested weapon into position for detonation. And all of this has to be done while hiding from a vast global surveillance net looking for and trying to disrupt such activities. Terrorists are unlikely to get a bomb from a generous, like-minded nuclear patron, because no country wants to run the risk of being blamed (and punished) for a terrorist’s nuclear crimes. Nor are they likely to be able to steal one. Notes Stephen Younger, the former head of nuclear weapons research and development at Los Alamos National Laboratory: “All nuclear nations take the security of their weapons very seriously.” The grand mistake of the Cold War was to infer desperate intent from apparent capacity. For the war on terrorism, it has been to infer desperate capacity from apparent intent.

Analysts predict that a substantial share of the world’s future non-Chinese supply of lithium and lithium chemicals will come from North America. The region accounts for nearly a quarter of the money being invested in exploration for new sources of lithium globally, and “some forecasts point to its share of global mine production increasing from less than 1% today to potentially north of 10% within 6 years,” says Sean Keenan, global natural resources research lead for Accenture. Production will also increase significantly in South America and Australia, he says.

Ken Hoffman, cohead of EV battery material research for the consulting firm McKinsey, takes a similar position. Lithium tends to occur at relatively high concentrations in dead seas­—former bodies of water that have evaporated, leaving high concentrations of minerals—and the US has plenty of them, he says.

The political roadblock is not the only hurdle Mexico will have to jump in order to properly exploit its lithium reserves.

Located in the northern state of Sonora, Mexico’s deposits are unique from those in the United States, Canada and many other parts of the world, where lithium is extracted from rocky ground or brine. Mexico’s lithium is in an area of clay limestone soil, for which the technology to extract it does not yet exist commercially, according to Jesús Carrillo, director of sustainable economy at the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness.

MEXICO CITY, Feb 18 (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Saturday signed a decree handing over responsibility for lithium reserves to the energy ministry, after nationalizing lithium deposits last April.

During an event in Sonora, Lopez Obrador signed the decree that orders the energy ministry "to take the actions necessary to carry out" the nationalization process.

The exorbitant privilege the US enjoys from the dollar being unambiguously the world’s reserve currency is under attack again. The emerging market BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are trying to attract hangers-on by whipping up talk of a rival to dethrone King Dollar. It’s going to fail for all the usual reasons. As the King himself, Elvis Presley, sang: A little less conversation, a little more action, please.

Last week, BRICS foreign ministers gathered in Cape Town, South Africa along with representatives from other countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan. It was the warm-up act for the main event, with heads of state scheduled to meet in late August in Johannesburg, though the location may be switched to allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend without risking arrest under a warrant from the International Criminal Court. There’s not much moral high ground in sight, which defines the nature of the gatherings — an ill-disguised attempt to overthrow the post-World War II rules-based world order.

A number of analysts have in recent months contended that the NPT process is at risk of “crumbling” or is damaged “beyond repair”. But the fear-mongering is unfounded. In fact, the impending doom of the NPT has been prophesized again and again since the 1960s. However, not only is the NPT “collapse thesis” wrong, it is detrimental to the goals of non-proliferation and disarmament. The narrative that the NPT is endlessly on the verge of disintegration fuels the thinking that nuclear restraint is a painful sacrifice and implicitly calls on the NPT community to protect the status quo rather than to push for the advancement of the Treaty’s goals. The triumph of non-proliferation In the 1960s, several governments viewed the NPT with intense hostility. The German Cabinet Minister Franz-Josef Strauß branded the NPT a “Versailles of cosmic dimensions”. As late as 1978, the Chinese government described the Treaty as “a conspiracy concocted by the USSR and the U.S. to maintain their nuclear monopoly.” But over time, as the superpowers twisted their allies’ arms and the non-proliferation norm took hold, opposition to the Treaty waned. NPT sceptics such as Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and Thailand all eventually joined. As of today, only five UN member states are not party to the NPT. Only a single state, North Korea, has withdrawn. Four of the NPT’s non-nuclear-weapon states parties have renounced nuclear weapons (South Africa, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan), and many more have reversed nuclear-weapon programmes. The poverty of the NPT collapse thesis It is striking, however, that the remarkable period of non-proliferation norm consolidation from the mid-1960s till today has produced a ceaseless flood of expert assertions that the NPT is about to collapse. Proponents of the collapse thesis commonly argue that a continued reluctance by the nuclear-weapon states to move more decisively towards disarmament will push non-nuclear weapon states to “go nuclear” or defect from the NPT. In other cases, collapse theorists argue that proliferation by one state (India, North Korea, Iran…) will lead to a chain reaction whereby numerous other states will defect from the NPT and construct their own nuclear armouries. The collapse thesis is often invoked in support of abolition. If the alternative to disarmament is NPT collapse and ensuing global pandemonium, so goes the argument, the nuclear-armed states might prefer to reduce and eliminate their nuclear arsenals. But the use of the collapse thesis as an argument for disarmament is in fact deeply counterproductive, let alone inaccurate. Based on the assumption that a large group of non-nuclear states are perpetually looking for reasons to arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction – implicitly representing nuclear restraint as a surrender of something positive – the collapse thesis upholds the trope that denuclearization is a struggle against nature. It supports the argument that meaningful disarmament measures can only be pursued once “those without nuclear weapons […] feel no need to acquire them”. One version of the collapse thesis states that the NPT will, or could be, seriously damaged by a failure by its parties to reach a negotiated final document at two review conferences in a row. But the NPT has not only survived such “failures”, it has thrived and increased its membership. In fact, the sixth NPT Review Conference, in 2000, was the first such conference to reach consensus on a fully negotiated final document. The CTBT, START, and New START were negotiated on the back of the “failed” conferences in 1990 and 2005.

Since the 1940s, nuclear weapons have greatly affected defense budgets, political and military posturing, and academic theory. Beyond that, however, their practical significance has been vastly exaggerated by both critics and supporters. Nuclear weapons were not necessary to deter a third world war. They have proved useless militarily; in fact, their primary use has been to stoke the national ego or to posture against real or imagined threats. Few states have or want them, and they seem to be out of reach for terrorists. Their impact on international affairs has been minor compared with the sums and words expended on them. The costs resulting from the nuclear weapons obsession have been huge. To hold its own in a snarling contest with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the United States spent $5–$10 trillion maintaining a vast nuclear arsenal—resources that could have been used more productively on almost anything else. To head off the imagined dangers that would result from nuclear proliferation, Washington and its allies have imposed devastating economic sanctions on countries such as Iraq and North Korea, and even launched a war of aggression—sorry, “preemption”—that killed more people than did the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The time has long since come to acknowledge that the thinkers of the early nuclear age were mistaken in believing that the world had been made anew. In retrospect, they overestimated the importance of the nuclear revolution and the delicacy of the balance of terror. This spurred generations of officials to worry more about nuclear matters than they should have and to distort foreign and security policies in unfortunate ways. Today’s policymakers don’t have to repeat the same mistakes, and everybody would be better off if they didn’t. Over the decades, the atomic obsession has taken various forms, focusing on an endless array of worst-case scenarios: bolts from the blue, accidental wars, lost arms races, proliferation spirals, nuclear terrorism. The common feature among all these disasters is that none of them has ever materialized. Either we are the luckiest people in history or the risks have been overstated.

To be sure, the dollar’s role as the world’s “reserve currency” is a cornerstone of the global economy and global finance, as well as geopolitics, and threats to its dominance should be taken seriously. However, the dollar’s hegemony is a remarkable story of resilience, and to see whether that will continue we need to understand the sources of resilience, whether they are alive today, and whether the dollar’s competitors could emulate and surpass them.

Chronicle of a death constantly foretold 

China’s technological prowess is frequently invoked by U.S. policymakers hoping to get votes, attention, or enough bipartisan support to pass a bill. Competition with China was a central motivating factor in federal legislation like the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, not to mention the work of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. “Beating China”—specifically in science and technology development—is a key driver of U.S. governance and, ahead of the 2024 presidential race, elections.

George Washington University Assistant Professor of Political Science Jeffrey Ding published a recent article that explains why measuring a state’s scientific and technological power should include not only how many innovations a country can check off, but also the degree to which new technologies are integrated into the economy and society. Ding spoke with Johanna Costigan about his new paper. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation. —Johanna Costigan

After narrowly lagging behind China in 2022, Mexico officially became the US’s largest trading partner at the start of 2023, according to new US Census Bureau figures.

US-Mexico bilateral trade totaling $124.6 billion in the first two months of the year, the bureau reports, with Mexican imports to the US amounting to $72.7 billion and US exports to Mexico totaled $51.9 billion. That represents a 10% year-over-year rise in traded volumes, propelling Mexico’s share of total US foreign trade to a lofty 15.4%. The milestone comes on the back of a substantial rise in traded energy and semiconductor products as the US seeks alternatives to Russia and Taiwan amid a shifting geopolitical landscape.

However, seven months earlier in March 2022 during the annual “Two Sessions,” namely the simultaneous convening of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Taiwan was mentioned only briefly, in reference to the “one China” policy. Both in the government work report presented by the outgoing Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to the NPC on March 5 and in the CPPCC work report presented by its chairman Wang Yang the previous day, the Taiwan issue, including unification, was downplayed in a surprisingly uncharacteristic manner. This deemphasizing was particularly significant when viewed in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which had started just a week before the convening of the Two Sessions. Remember, within days of the Russian military invasion of Ukraine, the media and many observers globally started arguing that Taiwan could be the next Ukraine, with China playing the role of Russia. Interestingly, the cross-strait affairs analysts in Taiwan did not agree. Most Taiwanese analysts were down-to-earth and realistic in interpreting the rhetoric coming from the 2002 Two Sessions. The Two Sessions were absolutely forthcoming in that China did not consider Taiwan and Ukraine comparable. On March 7, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi further dismissed the comparison between the Taiwan question and the Ukraine issue as “baseless speculation.” Second, and perhaps related, compared to previous years, the Two Sessions in March 2022 were remarkable for downplaying the discussion on Taiwan. Internationally respected IR professor Hamada Koichi , who once served as special advisor to former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo of Japan, also observed that Xi is well aware that the forceful subjugation of Taiwan could well end up backfiring. “At a time when China is under severe economic pressure and growth is slowing sharply, this is the last thing it [the Chinese Communist Party] needs,” Hamada opined. It’s undeniable that the unification of Taiwan with mainland China has been an integral component of Xi’s signature “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” goal. Yet some scholars maintain Beijing has no intention of forcing unification now or anytime soon. One recent commentary with a focus on the escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait put it plainly: “We have simply forgotten the number of times when the Xi Jinping administration has threatened to reunify China and Taiwan, even by use of force, if necessary. But one thing is clear – China won’t invade Taiwan.” According to Professor Deng Yuwen, a council member of China’s Reform and Development Institute, rather than launching an invasion, “China will choose to put pressure on Taiwan using a combination of methods to promote unification… It may launch more preferential policies and try to initiate discussion on a ‘one country, two systems’ framework with Taiwan’s ruling and opposition parties.” Here are 10 practical constraints making it highly unlikely that China will resort to using force. First, a war between even a small country and a big power today is not only expensive but also not an easy walkover for the bigger side, as Russian President Vladimir Putin is finding out. With the war in Ukraine soon to complete one year of fighting, what is notable is that Ukraine has been able to sustain itself despite having a much smaller GDP and a weaker military than Russia. Second, with China’s export markets drying up in Europe and the United States, the Chinese real estate crisis deepening further, the World Bank and the IMF predicting a gloomy economic growth outlook of 1.7 percent and 2.7 percent respectively, the immediate key priority for the Chinese leadership is not to use force in the Taiwan Strait but to strengthen the economy. China’s economy is struggling in the midst of a pressure campaign waged against it by the United States. At the same time, the Chinese economy is also slowing down sharply under the mounting pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially following the CCP regime’s reversal of the zero COVID policy. Under such circumstances, it would be foolhardy on the part of Xi, or the CCP, to burden the national economy by taking on the enormous expense of a war. Third, regardless of the fact that Xi has locked down a third five-year term, his goal to consolidate a power base within the party is far from accomplished. It is often the case that more control only breeds more paranoia among authoritarian leaders. The fear of being unable to keep forced unification a short-term exercise might be acting as a potent deterrent for Xi – especially as Putin has already paid a heavy political price for the war in Ukraine. Fourth, though Xi will be in favor of waging a quick war on the cheap, that may not be within his control. There is always a risk that conflict will escalate into “total war” – a phrase that became popular to describe the situation in World War II, as each side used every possible resource to destroy their opponent. Fifth, Taiwan and Ukraine cannot be compared in military strength – Taiwan is armed to the teeth. Unlike Ukraine’s steppe-like fertile plains and plateaus, Taiwan consists of over 100 islands. Taiwan’s outer islands are dotted with missiles, rockets, and artillery guns. In addition, Taiwan’s granite hills are home to tunnels and bunker systems. Sixth is the possibility of U.S. involvement in. While officially Washington maintains “strategic ambiguity” on the question whether it would defend Taiwan militarily if needed, none other than President Joe Biden himself has repeatedly answered directly in the affirmative. Amid the China-U.S. competition it seems more and more likely that Washington cannot afford to allow Beijing a free hand in any military campaign against Taiwan. Seventh is the Japan dimension. The current Japanese government under Kishida has followed up on signals from the late Prime Minister Abe that Tokyo would help to defend Taiwan. Abe once said, “A Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan.” The Kishida government’s push for a more muscular defense role in the region is believed to be in part motivated by the potential for a Taiwan contingency. Eighth, according to a Hong Kong-based expert on Chinese politics, Xi will be well aware of the West’s solidarity during the Ukraine crisis The European Union is China’s major trading partner. Running afoul of it, as well as the United States and Japan, would be dangerous for a leader who knows he must raise living standards at home. Ninth, Taiwan may not have been included in a series of recent U.S. multilateral security and trade initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region but the island is perceived as integral to defense mechanisms such as the Quad, AUKUS, etc. For example, the Quad insists on maintaining the status quo in the Indo-Pacific region. Hence, not only Japan but India and Australia might come to the rescue of Taiwan. In such a scenario, China might not want to risk facing three big military powers together. Last but not least is the ASEAN factor. ASEAN has emerged as China’s largest trading partner and their bilateral trade is set to achieve the target of $1 trillion in a couple of years. Yet Southeast Asian governments are growing wary of China too. In a recent speech, the former Singapore foreign minister George Yeo said: “No country in ASEAN is going to turn down opportunities that come their way in China, but every country worries that too great a dependence on China will constrain our autonomy of action.” It is highly unlikely Beijing would resort to an action that will force countries in Southeast Asia to see China as an enemy. Claims that “Xi wants to complete the task within his term of office” may be true. But there is no doubt that all of Xi’s predecessors – from Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping to Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao – also wanted to complete unification. All of them ultimately decided the internal and external conditions were not right. Xi, so far, has come to the same conclusion.

The so-called mirror statistics evidence such measurement uncertainties. Trade flows are in principle recorded twice, once as exports by the sending economy and once as imports by the receiving one. The IMF's Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) database,1 the most widely used resource for bilateral trade statistics in IR research, provides both figures. If they were very similar, “mirror statistics” would not raise significant questions. Yet, discrepancies in mirror statistics are large and persistent, even between countries with highly developed statistical systems. In our global sample, on average discrepancies are almost as large as trade volume estimates themselves.2 Dyads with modest trade are important drivers of these huge differences. But also for dyads that trade a lot, the differences remain substantial: among the dyads in the top decile in trade volume (more than USD 92.5 million in trade per year according to importing-country records), the median discrepancy, relative to the average of two mirror flows, is still 23.1 percent (with a mean of 40.2 percent). This “mirror problem,” as we shall call it, reveals the substantial uncertainty in trade statistics, challenging analyses of the character, origins, or implications of trade (cf. Morgenstern 1963; International Monetary Fund 1987; Schultz 2015; Linsi and Mügge 2019). Trade statisticians and economists have long recognized mirror discrepancies (Ely 1961; Morgenstern 1963; Bhagwati 1964, 1967; Yeats 1978, 1990; Gaulier and Zignago 2010). Some have proposed statistical remedies, such as estimating mirror averages weighted by inferred reporter reliability in the BACI3 or OECD Balanced International Merchandise Trade Statistics (BIMTS)4 datasets. While we recognize and build on these efforts, their coverage remains too limited for many IR analyses—most of which ignore trade data defects altogether.5 Using the most widely available trade statistics, often based on import values alone, most IR scholars implicitly trust those measures to be the “right” ones, discarding potentially valuable information from parallel export records. Yet, as we argue below, the assumption that estimates based on import records are more reliable frequently does not hold. Leveraging information from both sides of the mirror—rather than mechanically relying on only one side—can improve trade volume estimates and inferences drawn from them.

In the world according to President Trump, trade deficits are among the clearest indication that Americans have become habitual chumps in the global marketplace. The United States sells fewer goods and services than it buys from the rest of the planet, and this is supposedly evidence that Americans are getting rolled. This is the central assumption behind Mr. Trump’s repeated vow to take a meat cleaver to the North American Free Trade Agreement, redrawing the terms of commerce with Mexico. This is the spirit in which he has promised to confront China over its systematic job-killing machine, beginning later this week as he greets the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. But Mr. Trump’s portrayal of trade deficits entails crucial departures from economic reality. In his accounting, international trade is a zero-sum affair, as if every country were jockeying for a share of forever limited amounts of business. An auto part made in Mexico and later included in a finished vehicle destined for a suburban driveway in California represents jobs hijacked from the Midwestern factory that should have employed American hands to build everything. Trade is not zero-sum. Expanded trade has historically tended to support economic growth, which generates more spoils to be divvied up for all. American factories have increased production over the years, in part by drawing on a global supply chain to get what they need. A construction machinery plant in Illinois may buy ball bearings from China, glass displays from South Korea, computer chips from Malaysia and other parts from Mexico, some of them forged with American-made steel.

There is a lot of daily drama surrounding Mexico’s drug war. In fact, I often refer to the frequent changes of command, violent territory grabs, and back-room deals between former rivals as something akin to As the Narco-World Turns. As a result of that, I believe that some reporting on cartel happenings on both sides of our southwest border tends to turn sensational, either to grab headlines, generate buzz, or spark controversy in an attempt to increase readership. In some cases, an overblown and alarmist article can simply be the result of a misinformed writer. On February 20, 2014, an associate of mine brought to my attention an article from World Politics Review titled, “Strategic Horizons: All Options Bad If Mexico’s Drug Violence Expands to U.S.” I read this article with interest because I assumed it would address border violence spillover and cartel activities within the US. It did, but unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I was shaking my head with disappointment. Here was another article from a writer with a strong professional background that would inevitably lead readers to some very wrong conclusions. The “shock factor” treatment began in the first paragraph when I read, “Americans must face the possibility that the [Mexican] conflict may also expand northward, with inter-gang warfare, assassinations of government officials and outright terrorism in the United States.” This statement is sure to suck readers in, particularly with the notion that Mexican drug cartels could possibly engage in terrorist activity in the US. The writer, Steven Metz, expands on this thought by saying, “The Zetas already have a substantial connection to Hezbollah, based on collaborative narco-trafficking and arms smuggling…Since Hezbollah is a close ally or proxy of Iran, it might some day attempt to strike the United States in retribution for American action against Tehran. If so, it would likely attempt to exploit its connection with the Zetas, pulling the narco-traffickers into a transnational proxy war.” Unfortunately for Metz and his readers, this information is flat-out wrong. I devoted an entire chapter in my forthcoming book, Border Insecurity, to laying out the facts and fiction surrounding the potential (or lack thereof) for cartels and terrorist groups to work together. It seems that not enough people understand the corporate and profit-maximizing interests of cartels, and how any government or law enforcement attention brought upon them by such associations would crush their business operations. Drug cartels have almost less of an interest in working with Hezbollah than our government does in seeing them do so. This isn’t to say that terrorist groups and drug trafficking organizations don’t have several things in common, like selling drugs to raise money and using a variety of avenues to launder their ill-gotten proceeds. It’s well known that groups like the PKK in Turkey, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in South Asia all benefit tremendously from their involvement in the drug trade. However, Hezbollah and a cartel like Los Zetas have two very different goals. Hezbollah has a fundamentalist and Islamist mentality that involves a deep hatred of the West and a desire to spread radical Islam throughout the world. Los Zetas and their rivals just want to make money, and need a stable government apparatus that they can simply manipulate, not control or take over.

Organized crime forms a great threat to societies across the globe. International criminal drugs organizations try to infiltrate legal businesses and governments, infecting economic branches with corruption and violence. Moreover upcoming threats like cybercrime, child porn, maritime piracy, match fixing and identity theft cause substantial harm and ask for proactive interventions to control the criminal organizations behind them1,2. Government and law enforcement agencies worldwide seek ways to disrupt these criminal organizations effectively, preferably at an early stage. Over the past decade a growing number of studies emerged that provide empirical evidence of the use of social network analyses to get a better understanding of organized crime. These studies show that criminal organizations need to be considered as social networks that form collectives rather than organizations with unique features, such as flexible and non-hierarchical internal relations2,3,4,5,6,7,8. This approach has serious implications for the way we think about law enforcement control of organized crime. It has long been assumed that targeting the ‘kingpin’ leader at the top of the pyramid structured mafia organization, would result in the collapse of the entire criminal organization4,9,10. However, new insights from social network analyses emphasize that the fluidity and flexibility of the social structure of criminal networks makes them highly resilient against these traditional law enforcement strategies7,10. For instance, it was found that even though a drug trafficking network was structurally targeted over a substantial period of time, the trafficking activities continued and its network structure adapted11. Research concerning the resilience of criminal networks involved in the production of ecstasy in the Netherlands lead to the same conclusions10. How can this be explained? The complexity of criminal networks An answer to this question can be found within the specific features of the associated ‘dark’ network structures and, more importantly, the conditions under which these exist9,12. Criminal network structures are known to be very complex systems. As Morselli describes it “Criminal networks are not simply social networks operating in criminal contexts. The covert settings that surround them call for specific interactions and relational features within and beyond the network”7. Criminal networks therefore differ from legal networks in that they face a constant trade-off between security and efficiency which directly affects its network structure13. On the one hand illegal activities need to stay concealed from the government or criminal competition. This means that direct communication between co-conspirators concerning illegal activities needs to be restricted to a minimum. On the other hand risks have to be taken in times of action, often demanding highly efficient communication and trust among the participants12,14. Criminal networks therefore continuously balance between efficiency and security according to the given circumstances of the illegal activities. This trade-off has a direct effect on its network structure as revealed by a study from Baker and Faulkner15. They found that within a covert network, involved in a price-fixing scheme, the most important actors deliberately operated from the peripheries of the network, thus protecting these essential players from immediate detection after government intervention. In addition, Morselli et al. found that the balance between efficiency and security within covert networks was influenced by its network objective. They compared the structure of a criminal network with terrorist networks and showed that criminal networks need more efficiency in their direct lines of communication as compared to terrorist networks. Consequently this made them less secure and more vulnerable to disruption14. This can be explained by the fact that economically driven criminal networks need shorter time frames between action (time-to-task) as opposed to ideologically driven terrorist networks. Terrorist networks might achieve their goals by just one successful terrorist attack. Criminal networks are often action oriented, resulting in higher levels of risk of becoming detected. In response, criminal networks try to remain flexible and agile. This flexibility gives them the ability to adapt quickly to external shocks9,16. Although these studies help us to understand that remaining flexible is the key to criminal network resilience against disruption, little is known about how these flexible network structures actually recover from an attack and continue their illegal activities. In other words: What actually makes these flexible criminal network structures so difficult to disrupt? In search for an answer, we first need to understand that like every social network, criminal networks are not static, but dynamic in nature3,7. Criminal networks can change for several reasons: as a result of new business opportunities, as a consequence of competition that requires a defensive orientation or as a direct result of law enforcement controls that may lead to the downfall, stagnation or adaptation of the network7. The changing effects of network disruption can therefore only be understood within its dynamics, these networks are truly complex adaptive systems17. Many researchers of criminal networks agree that “studying … the dynamics in criminal networks is probably the most challenging obstacle facing anyone approaching this area.”3,7 Although we recognize the complexity and difficulty that is associated with studying change within social networks, we attempt to capture these dynamics within a computational framework.

Two successive presidential administrations before López Obrador have tried but failed to contain the cartels. After coming to power in 2006, then-President Felipe Calderón began confronting organized crime in his home state of Michoacán, on Mexico’s western coast, where the cartels had supplanted the government, collecting taxes, offering “protection,” and taking over other services. The confrontation eventually expanded, mostly to northern Mexico and the country’s Pacific coast. Calderón’s strategy was simple: capture or kill as many drug lords as possible and criminal structures would either crumble entirely or, once pulverized, become less of a threat. He succeeded in the former but failed in the latter: Many of the country’s most famous drug dealers were either caught or taken out in dramatic gunfights, but violence did not abate. Enrique Peña Nieto, who became president in 2012, has fared worse. Even though he initially promised a “paradigm shift,” he dutifully followed his predecessor’s blueprint. Peña Nieto did manage to strike at the very top of a few of the country’s main drug cartels, even capturing legendary drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. But even that victory proved bittersweet, and not only because El Chapo escaped before being recaptured and sent to the U.S. for trial. New criminal organizations, more sophisticated and vicious than previous ones, have sprouted across the country. The homicide rate has also increased. When his term ends in December, more people will have been killed during Peña Nieto’s presidency than Calderón’s. What incentives can the next Mexican administration offer the cartels? And who exactly can the government sit across from? Public frustration with Mexico’s unrelenting violence—along with deep-seated anger with the country’s chronic corruption problem—played a crucial role in the recent election of López Obrador, who ran as a left-wing opponent of the political establishment. On security matters, Mexico’s president-elect, who will be inaugurated on Dec. 1, ran on a controversial proposal to grant amnesty for certain, nonviolent drug crimes in an attempt to put Mexico on the path toward transitional justice, a system often used to help countries emerge from interior conflict and widespread human rights violations. On the surface, the idea makes sense: Mexican jails are filled with young people imprisoned for minor drug offenses. Many others have been recruited by the cartels under duress. Mexican farmers harvest illicit crops as the only way to escape abject poverty. Still, the next president’s plan has met resistance. The first problem has to do with the concept of transitional justice itself. Critics, like Alejandro Hope, Mexico’s foremost security expert, point to the fact that Mexico’s struggle has little to do with, say, the long struggle between the government and FARC guerillas and Colombia, where transitional justice is currently being applied. “Transitional justice” in Colombia, Hope recently wrote, “has been limited to certain crimes, committed by specific offenders in a well-defined period of time [and has been directed to] groups that had some sort of political objective, even if they later veered toward overt criminality.” The Colombian process, he adds, began once a certain “stability” has already been achieved. Hope adds that “none of this is true” in Mexico, where violence is not only still raging but reaching new, terrifying heights, and where cartels have no other objective but financial gain through ruthless means and surely do not harbor any overt political ambition. Finally, Hope raises a series of crucial questions: What incentives can the next Mexican administration offer the cartels, these hyperviolent, ascendant organizations, whose sole purpose is control of an expanding and lucrative business, to convince them to come to the table? And whom exactly can the government sit across from, when there might be at least 20 major criminal organizations in the country? The country’s next president doesn’t seem to have clear answers. Another one of López Obrador’s troubles is the evident unwillingness of many victims’ families to transition toward amnesty or forgiveness without first seeking, well, justice. In the past few weeks (even though he’s still more than three months away from power) López Obrador has hastily organized a series of highly publicized meetings with victims’ families, alongside local officials and members of his own team. The president-elect himself opened the discussion in the first gathering, held in Ciudad Juárez, which has experienced some of the country’s most heinous violence. In his remarks, López Obrador called those present to consider clemency. “We won’t forgive nor forget! There can’t be forgiveness without justice!” someone in the audience interjected. Others echoed the concern. “Most people rejected amnesty, or at least what they understood by it,” writes journalist Marcela Turati, who was present in Juárez.

We consider here the consequences of a decline in the demand for Mexican drug exports from the perspective of economic and organizational principles. There is nothing about the analysis that is specific to marijuana or to its legalization. This analysis simply assesses the effects of a loss of revenue from one of the existing streams of the DTOs resulting from some event over which they have no control, be it a change in law or in U.S. customer tastes. Our principal focus is on violence.8¶ The DTOs can be defined as consisting of the following: (1) a set of hierarchical relationships that allow higher-level members to command their subordinates to commit violent and risky actions, (2) a reputation for providing above-market earning opportunities to low-skilled workers willing to take particular kinds of risks, (3) a network of relationships with corrupt law enforcement officials, (4) a network of suppliers and customers for various drugs, and (5) ready access to capital for illegal ventures.¶ Presumably, the DTO demand for labor will decline, at least at the aggregate level. Given the lack of specialization, one would think almost all the individual DTOs will suffer some decline. One question is whether those “reductions in force” can be achieved through “natural attrition” or whether they will require “layoffs,” to use familiar industrial jargon.¶ Large-scale dismissals might carry a peculiar risk, both for the organization and for society in general. Those who are fired may try to create their own organizations, so DTO managers may have to think strategically about whom to dismiss. Also, those leaving have probably become accustomed to earning levels they cannot attain in legal trade. Since the whole industry would be affected by the downturn, other DTOs will not be hiring. Thus, the fired agents might attempt to compete with their former employers.¶ Hence, in the short run, there could be additional violence resulting from at least three sources:¶ • conflict between the current leaders and the dismissed labor¶ • within DTOs. Even after the firing of excess labor, the earnings of the leadership most likely will decline. One way the individual manager might compensate for this is to eliminate his or her superior, generating systemic internal violence from senior managers who become more suspicious in the face of the overall decline in earnings.¶ • between DTOs. The leadership of an individual DTO may try to maintain their earnings by eliminating close competitors.

Stratfor has tracked Mexico's drug cartels for over a decade. For most of that time, our annual forecasts focused on the fortunes and prospects of each trafficking organization. But as Mexican organized crime groups have gradually fractured and fallen apart — a process we refer to as balkanization — we have had to refine the way we think about them. The cartels are no longer a handful of large groups carving out territory across Mexico, but a collection of many different smaller, regionally based networks. So, rather than exploring the outlook of every individual faction, we now take them as loose gatherings centered on certain core areas of operation: Tamaulipas, Tierra Caliente and Sinaloa.

It has become commonplace to claim that the gravest dangers to U.S. and world secu­rity are no longer military threats from rival great powers but rather cross-border threats emanating from the world’s most poorly governed, economically stagnant, and conflict-ridden countries. Public officials and the media—as well as many scholars—depict weak and failing states as generating or enabling a vast array of dangers, from transnational terrorism to weapons proliferation, organized crime, humanitarian catas­trophes, regional conflict, mass migration, pandemic disease, environmental degrada­tion, and energy insecurity. Leading thinkers like Francis Fukuyama argue, “Since the end of the Cold War, weak and failing states have arguably become the single-most important problem for international order.” Official Washington agrees. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has spoken of the “chaos that flows from failed states,” which serve as “breeding grounds, not only for the worst abuses of human beings, from mass murders to rapes to indifference toward disease and other terrible calamities, but they 1are [also] invitations to terrorists to find refuge amidst the chaos.” Likewise, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates predicts, “Over the next 20 years, the most persistent and potentially dangerous threats will come less from emerging ambitious states, than from failing ones that cannot meet the basic needs—much less the basic aspirations—of their people.” This new focus on weak and failing states represents a noteworthy shift in U.S. threat perceptions. During the 1990s, a handful of U.S. strategists began to call attention to the possible spillover consequences of weak governance in the developing world. Most U.S. policymakers, however, regarded states with sovereignty deficits almost exclusively through a humanitarian lens: such countries piqued the moral conscience but appeared to have little strategic significance. This calculus shifted following September 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda attacked the United States from Afghanistan, one of the poorest and most wretched countries in the world. The assault quickly produced a consensus in U.S. policy circles that state fragility was both an incubator and vector of multiple transnational threats. President George W. Bush captured this new view in his National Security Strategy of 2002, declaring: “America is now threatened less by conquering states than we are by failing ones.” In the words of Richard Haass, the State Department’s director of policy planning, “The attacks of September 11, 2001, reminded us that weak states can threaten our security as much as strong ones, by providing breeding grounds for extremism and havens for criminals, drug traffickers, and terror­ists. Such lawlessness abroad can bring devastation here at home. One of our most pressing tasks is to prevent today’s troubled countries from becoming tomorrow’s failed states.” This new threat perception quickly became conventional wisdom among government officials, journalists, and independent analysts at home and abroad. Since 9/11, this preoccupation with spillovers from weak or failed states has driven a slew of U.S. policy pronouncements and institutional innovations spanning the realms of intelligence, diplomacy, development, defense, and even trade. In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) identifi ed some fifty lawless zones around the world that might be conducive to illicit activity, and began to devote new intelligence collection assets to long-neglected parts of the world. The following year, Secretary of State Colin Powell established an Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization in the State Department, which worked with the National Intelligence Council to identify states at risk of collapse where the United States could launch conflict prevention and mitiga­tion efforts. In 2006 the National Security Strategy cited “weak and impoverished states and ungoverned areas” as a critical threat to the United States, and Condoleezza Rice, Powell’s successor, announced a new “transformational diplomacy” initiative intended to help build and sustain democratic, well-governed states that respond to the needs of their people and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. To advance this goal, Rice announced a sweeping plan to ensure that U.S. foreign assistance was more closely aligned with U.S. foreign policy priorities. USAID devised its own Fragile States Strategy, designed to bolster countries that otherwise might breed terror, crime, instability, or disease. The Bush administration even cast its campaign for regional trade liberalization as a means to prevent state failure and its negative externalities. These trends have continued into the Obama administration, informing the Presidential Policy Directive on Development issued in September 2010 and the first-ever Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), released three months later. Hillary Clinton, Obama’s Secretary of State, has repeat­edly depicted fragile and dysfunctional states as growing threats to global security, prosperity, and justice—and endorsed increased investments in U.S. “civilian power” resources to address these challenges. Such initiatives have been mirrored across the Potomac. The Defense Department’s guiding strategy documents now emphasize military cooperation to strengthen the sovereign capacities of friendly governments in the developing world against the internal threats posed by insurgents, terrorists, and criminals. “State weakness and failure may be an increasing driver of conflict and situations that require a U.S. military response,” the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy declared in spring 2009. As the National Defense Strategy of June 2008 explains, “Ungoverned, under-governed, mis­governed, and contested areas offer fertile ground for such groups to exploit the gaps in governance capacity of local regimes to undermine local stability and regional secu­rity.” The Defense Department and its Combatant Commands—including a new Africa Command—are responding to this new mission by deploying assets to the world’s rugged remote regions, uncontrolled borders, and un-policed coastlines. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has emphasized that, “Where possible, U.S. strategy is to employ indirect approaches—primarily through building the capacity of partner governments and their security forces—to prevent festering problems from turning into crises that require costly and controversial direct military intervention.” The new conventional wisdom is not restricted to the United States. Other rich world governments have adopted analogous policy statements and have begun to adapt their defense, diplomatic, and development policies and instruments to help prevent state failure and respond to its aftermath—and to quarantine themselves from the presumed “spillover” effects of state weakness. The European Security Strategy iden­tifies the “alarming phenomenon” of state failure as one of the main threats to the European Union. In Great Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government pioneered a government-wide effort to help prevent failed states from generating pathologies like crime, terrorism, disease, uncontrolled migration, and energy insecurity. Blair’s suc­cessor, David Cameron, has since launched a new UK National Security Strategy that prioritizes attention and resources to “fragile, failing, and failed states” around the world. Canada, Australia, and others have issued similar policy statements. Likewise at the multilateral level, international organizations depict state failure as the Achilles’ heel of collective security. A unifying theme of UN reform proposals over the past decade has been the need for effective, sovereign states to contend with today’s global threats. As UN Secretary General Kofi Annan declared in a December 2004 speech, “Whether the threat is terror or AIDS, a threat to one is a threat to all. . . . Our defenses are only as strong as their weakest link.” In 2006, UN member states endorsed the creation of a Peacebuilding Commission to ensure that states emerging from confl ict do not collapse once again into failure. In parallel with these steps, the major donors of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have pursued a “Fragile States” initiative, in partnership with the World Bank’s Low Income Countries Under Stress (now Fragile and Conflict Affected States) program. The underlying motivation for all of these efforts, as former Congressman Lee Hamilton has noted, is that “our collective security depends on the security of the world’s most vulnerable places.” What is striking, in view of this flurry of official activity, is how little empirical analysis has been undertaken to document and explore the connection between state failure and transnational security threats.

The message is clear: Failed states are the weak link in the world’s collective security. In truth, while failed states may be worthy of America’s attention on humanitarian and development grounds, most of them are irrelevant to U.S. national security. The risks they pose are mainly to their own inhabitants. Sweeping claims to the contrary are not only inaccurate but distracting and unhelpful, providing little guidance to policymakers seeking to prioritize scarce attention and resources. In 2008, I collaborated with Brookings Institution senior fellow Susan E. Rice, now President Obama’s permanent representative to the United Nations, on an index of state weakness in developing countries.The study ranked all 141 developing nations on 20 indicators of state strength, such as the government’s ability to provide basic services. More recently, I’ve examined whether these rankings reveal anything about each nation’s role in major global threats: transnational terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international crime and infectious disease. The findings are startlingly clear. Only a handful of the world’s failed states pose security concerns to the United States. Far greater dangers emerge from stronger developing countries that may suffer from corruption and lack of government accountability but come nowhere near qualifying as failed states. The link between failed states and transnational terrorism, for instance, is tenuous. Al-Qaeda franchises are concentrated in South Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia but are markedly absent in most failed states, including in sub-Saharan Africa. Why? From a terrorist’s perspective, the notion of finding haven in a failed state is an oxymoron. Al-Qaeda discovered this in the 1990s when seeking a foothold in anarchic Somalia. In intercepted cables, operatives bemoaned the insuperable difficulties of working under chaos, given their need for security and for access to the global financial and communications infrastructure. Al-Qaeda has generally found it easier to maneuver in corrupt but functional states, such as Kenya, where sovereignty provides some protection from outside interdiction. Pakistan and Yemen became sanctuaries for terrorism not only because they are weak but because their governments lack the will to launch sustained counterterrorism operations against militants whom they value for other purposes. Terrorists also need support from local power brokers and populations. Along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, al-Qaeda finds succor in the Pashtun code of pashtunwali, which requires hospitality to strangers, and in the severe brand of Sunni Islam practiced locally. Likewise in Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has found sympathetic tribal hosts who have long welcomed mujaheddin back from jihadist struggles. Al-Qaeda has met less success in northern Africa’s Sahel region, where a moderate, Sufi version of Islam dominates. But as the organization evolves from a centrally directed network to a diffuse movement with autonomous cells in dozens of countries, it is as likely to find haven in the banlieues of Paris or high-rises of Minneapolis as in remote Pakistani valleys. What about failed states and weapons of mass destruction? Many U.S. analysts worry that poorly governed countries will pursue nuclear, biological, chemical or radiological weapons; be unable to control existing weapons; or decide to share WMD materials. These fears are misplaced. With two notable exceptions — North Korea and Pakistan — the world’s weakest states pose minimal proliferation risks, since they have limited stocks of fissile or other WMD material and are unlikely to pursue them. Far more threatening are capable countries (say, Iran and Syria) intent on pursuing WMD, corrupt nations (such as Russia) that possess loosely secured nuclear arsenals and poorly policed nations (try Georgia) through which proliferators can smuggle illicit materials or weapons. When it comes to crime, the story is more complex. Failed states do dominate production of some narcotics: Afghanistan cultivates the lion’s share of global opium, and war-tornColombia rules coca production. The tiny African failed state of Guinea-Bissau has become a transshipment point for cocaine bound for Europe. (At one point, the contraband transiting through the country each month was equal to the nation’s gross domestic product.) And Somalia, of course, has seen an explosion ofmaritime piracy. Yet failed states have little or no connection with other categories of transnational crime, from human trafficking to money laundering, intellectual property theft, cyber-crime or counterfeiting of manufactured goods. Criminal networks typically prefer operating in functional countries that provide baseline political order as well as opportunities to corrupt authorities. They also accept higher risks to work in nations straddling major commercial routes. Thusnarco-trafficking has exploded in Mexico, which has far stronger institutions than many developing nations but borders the United States. South Africa presents its own advantages. It is a country where “the first and the developing worlds exist side by side,” author Misha Glenny writes. “The first world provides good roads, 728 airports . . . the largest cargo port in Africa, and an efficient banking system. . . . The developing world accounts for the low tax revenue, overstretched social services, high levels of corruption throughout the administration, and 7,600 kilometers of land and sea borders that have more holes than a second-hand dartboard.” Weak and failing African states, such as Niger, simply cannot compete.