• Transnational crime challenges the integrity of national border systems and the ability of states to protect their citizenry from corruption, illegally armed organizations, and drug trafficking.


• Terrorism is now perceived as a threat distinct from past dangers in its transnational, non-state form.


• New types of terrorism endanger the international system, especially nuclear terrorism in its capacity to destroy human life and undermine states and international regimes.


• The residual effects of terrorism, as manifested in the reactions of states to terrorist attacks, may prove as dangerous as,or more dangerous than, the initial attack.

TERRORISM/CRIME: Although often considered as distinctive threats with incomparable effects, transnational terrorism and transnational crime are both illicit activities perpetrated largely by non-state actors across or beyond the political borders of a single state. Most transnational crime is economically motivated and involves some form of smuggling, piracy, or illegal finances, though crimes of the greatest international concern are usually politically motivated, such as terrorism and crimes against humanity or genocide. Both can intersect in practice, such as the smuggling of arms and the use of transnational criminal activities to fund terrorist operations.
Transnational crimes instigated by an economic logic involve a diverse range of activities that includes illegal cross-border flows of arms, banned psychoactive substances (such as heroin and cocaine), people (migrants, sex workers, babies, body parts), assorted other commodities, and toxic waste. These cross-border flows challenge the ability of states and international actors to assess and manage economic activities around the world. Trafficking in women and children undermines basic human rights and security. The black market arms trade can provide ‘rogue’ states and other actors, such as terrorists, with the weapons needed to launch lethal attacks against and military combatants and civilians alike.

The capacity of transnational organizations to generate spectacular fear and cause intensive damage to a nation state became fully evident on September 11 2001. The attacks committed by al Qaeda on the World Trade Center and Pentagon proved that terrorist groups have the capacity and willingness to cause mass destruction and death. Terrorism has now come to dominate international security discourse, as the United States, the global hegemon, reconceptualized its international security strategy, and sought to fully distinguish terrorism from crime by declaring it an act of war (albeit with a loose interpretation of the international conventions concerning conduct in war). Since the birth of the nation state, threats existed between state actors; the emergence of terrorism as a viable and significant danger to the international community indicates that states are no longer the sole actors capable of initiating conflict.
While the origins of terrorism are multiple and complex, globalization stands out as both the target and the means by which networked terrorism becomes super-empowered. Just as multinational corporations have evolved in response to globalization by distributing functions and resources, transnational terrorist groups have followed a similar path. Al Qaeda, for instance, has become one of the most infamous and powerful terrorist groups because it has generalized its strategy and architecture enough to enable individuals throughout the world to claim attacks in al Qaeda’s name and occasionally with the group’s assistance. This networked and distributed structure is one characteristic of transnational terrorism that has made these insurgency movements more difficult to isolate and remove. Other aspects of transnational terrorism that pose an imminent threat to the world include nuclear-terrorism and cyber-terrorism.

Nuclear weapons lie at the heart of what many fear to be the worst possible nexus of transnational crime and terrorism. As the 2002 national security strategy put it, “The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology. Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction, and evidence indicates that they are doing so with determination. The United States will not allow these efforts to succeed.” Terrorists groups like al Qaeda have in the past attempted to acquire materials needed to produce a nuclear weapon. As WMD technology becomes more advanced the likelihood of an attack by a transnational terrorist group, which employs these weapons, will increase.

Cyber-terrorism poses another risk to the international community as terrorist groups focus on the networked systems of countries and international institutions. Cyber-terrorism in the forms of computer viruses, frequency weapons and “denial of service” attacks threatens the security of power grids, global financial institutions, and even pharmaceutical manufacturing. A cyber-terrorists could, for example, alter formulas for prescription medicine and insert dangerous amounts of chemical ingredients into over-the-counter medication. The greatest threat posed by cyber-terror lies in the risk to banks, financial institutions, and stock markets. The small depression that followed 9/11 exposed the networked vulnerability in our financial, medical and government infrastructures. Finally, engaging in ID theft, intellectual property theft, and child porn, ‘cybersmuggling’ and ‘cybercriminals’ also pose a networked threat.

Attempts to manage these new types of terrorist threats have proved difficult. The United States has gone to great lengths to situate the terrorist threat within the traditional state-centric paradigm. The Iraq War typified the struggle to re-imbed the networked threat of terrorism back into the state. Concomitantly, the United States has pursued greater security and surveillance at home, weakening civil liberties and rights. Thus, we must understand the terrorist threat/attack as inseparable from the state response, an “auto-immune” response which may prove at least as destructive as the initial terrorist attack.