Deadly Transfers and the Global Playground: Transnational Security Threats in a Disorderly World.

• Author: Khatchadourian, Raffi

Deadly Transfers and the Global Playground: Transnational Security Threats in a Disorderly World

Robert Mandel (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999) 160 pp.

"Invincibility is a matter of self-defense; vulnerability is simply a matter of having gaps, wrote Wang Xi, with the matter-of-factness and cryptic Confucian concision of a true 11th century Chinese scholar. But Wang's observation is no less a fact in the post-Cold War international (dis)order, than it was roughly a millennium ago. In the shadow of globalization, a growing and elusive class of transnational troublemakers--terrorists, rogue states, individual deviants and international criminal syndicates--are transferring arms, illicit drugs, toxic waste and other deadly material between states with increasing ease and frequency The gaps between borders never seemed so gaping and national security never seemed more vulnerable.

These dangers have gripped the attention of Robert Mandel in his newest book, Deadly Transfers and the Global Playground: Transnational Security Threats in a Disorderly World. It is an investigation into the security challenges posed by the expanding and unchecked flow of this ominous material. Mandel aims to "stimulate both curiosity and dread" about the hazards caused by transfers between underground economies. As he forebodes in his last line, unless his prescriptions are followed, "we can only look forward to seeing the global playground become so rowdy and unprincipled that it ultimately destroys itself."

This "global playground" is Mandelspeak for the international community For, as Mandel sees it, the world of nations has more in common with the chaos of grammar school recess than any organized system of relations. It's a funny metaphor, but Mandel isn't joking. "Unfortunately; the reality of playgrounds in both school and park settings today has changed dramatically," he writes. "Violence and physical fighting abound, often with knives and guns readily available, so much so that stabbings and shootings that occur there in major cities no longer make headlines .... Taunting, bullying, and mean-spirited transmission of false rumors is commonplace." Moreover, he adds, playgrounds are places where diseases spread like wildfire and garbage is often illegally dumped.

This is the view from Mandel's window onto the world of geopolitics. From here he can see the true dilemma of securing global peace and stability in the 21st Century It is a problem that stems from a...