Organised crime as irregular warfare: strategic lessons for assessment and response
May 2022
Research Paper 04
Dr David Ucko, National Defense University
Dr Thomas Marks, National Defense University
SOC ACE Project: Organized crime as irregular warfare: a framework for assessment and strategic response
PUBLICATION SUMMARY
The project uses decades of lessons and experience gained in irregular warfare (IW) – and in counterinsurgency in particular – to assist assessment and response to organised crime. Whereas recent experience with counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan presents mostly cautionary tales, tremendous insight can be gained from the scholarship and precedents that emanate from the broader field. Specifically, IW theory helpfully situates divergent or illicit behaviour within a political context, treating the ‘threat actor’ not as an isolated problem but as a symptom of a socioeconomic-political system that must also be understood and addressed. Treating legitimacy as the strategic centre of gravity, IW focuses attention on the political drivers of illicit behaviour, the contested narratives among the actors involved, and the need – therefore – for a far broader response than is typically employed.
The project applies this contribution of IW theory to the problem of organised crime, emphasising thereby the role of its indispensable context: how societies work, how governance and economic practice become corrupted, and how states can react, both to suppress the problem of crime but also to address its root causes. Six lessons from IW are identified, touching upon i) the social embeddedness of the problem, ii) the tendency to militarise our response, iii) the mirror-imaging of state assistance programmes, iv) the role of community mobilisation, v) the lack of strategy, and vi) the problem of political will. On this basis, a follow-on study seeks to adapt a framework for assessment and action previously elaborated for irregular challenges to the specific problem of organised crime, thereby to assist in analysis and response.