Drug Politics: Dirty Money and Democracies.

• Author: Sood, Nadia

Drug Politics: Dirty Money and Democracies

David C. Jordan (Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999) 304 pp.

During the last ten years, academics have begun to devote themselves to the study of what once was a topic of interest only to law enforcement officials--the phenomenon of organized crime. With the end of the Cold War, the rules of the game within the international system were fundamentally altered. The demise of the bi-polar world and the rise of a neo-liberal order led to an increase in international flows of capital, people and commodities, as well as to greater influence of transnational actors. These factors, coupled with technological advancements in the areas of communications and computers, have paved the way for the transnationalization of organized crime and the internationalization of the narcotics trade.

David C. Jordan's book, Drug Politics: Dirty Money and Democracies, examines an important aspect of this topic, the effects of the narcotics trade on democracy. A former US Ambassador to Peru, Jordan examines how narcotics trafficking and corruption have penetrated the international system in the post-cold war order. He also attempts to show why the rise of this phenomenon necessitates a re-thinking of the democratic peace theory and the traditional definition of war.

Jordan's analysis of the pernicious influence of the narcotics trade on the rise of corruption, the destabilization of political systems and the deterioration of the state's influence is thorough. Using examples drawn from the Russian and Sicilian Mafias, Asian syndicates and Colombian and Mexican Cartels, Jordan aptly defines how organized crime groups have corrupted states, appropriated states' financial mechanisms, colluded with government officials and exploited weaknesses in the international system so as to increase their global influence.

Jordan also provides an interesting analysis of how organized crime has been used by governments and elites throughout history to consolidate their power. Using examples such as the British-Chinese Opium Wars and the US Government's alleged involvement in drug trafficking in Afghanistan, Jordan posits that governments have supported drug trafficking and consumption in other countries for four main reasons: 1) the profits earned by the drug trade maintain the financial systems of countries where liquidity has become a problem and also expand the economic influences of those nations; 2) the drug trade...