Illicit
How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
From Moses Naim, the author of The End of Power, which was Mark Zuckerberg's first ever Facebook book club selection.
Any newspaper anywhere in the world, any day, carries news about illegal migrants, drug busts, smuggled weapons, laundered money, or counterfeit goods The intense media coverage devoted to the war on terrorism has helped to obscure the other new wars of globalisation.Illicit international trade pits governments against agile, well-financed networks of highly dedicated individuals. Religious zeal or political goals drive terrorists, but profit is no less a motivator for murder, mayhem, and global insecurity than religious fanaticism.
Illicit is the first book to reveal the full scale of this dark underground. It uncovers the connections between illegal industries and shows how they join forces to breed new lines of business, feed off political instability, foster violence and enable terrorism. How do pirated movies or CD's find their way to illegal markets worldwide even before they are released? And how, in our free, modern world, have over 30 million women and children - in South East Asia alone - been trafficked in the past ten years?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this sweeping and informative work, Foreign Policy editor Na m demystifies the global trade in illegal goods and services and, in the process, presents an original portrait of globalization that skillfully eschews the utopian doggerel that often characterizes such accounts. Na m provides a detailed tour of the major globalized criminal activities drug production and distribution, illegal arms dealing, human trafficking, counterfeiting, money laundering and so on and introduces a host of criminal networks that profit from them. The book is regrettably devoid of the kind of firsthand reporting from the field that would have made the subject matter really jump off the page. Yet Na m creates a picture of illicit trade which demonstrates that, far from taking place in a shadowy underworld, such activity is inextricably linked to legitimate commerce and directly affects all of us. In Na m's view, globalization's "diffusion of power to individuals and groups" and away from sovereign states has created a "smuggler's nirvana," in which the lines between legitimate and illegitimate economic activity are blurred and criminal networks possess an unprecedented degree of political influence. Making matters worse, the widening gap between global haves and have-nots what Na m calls "geopolitical bright spots and black holes" has increased the incentive for individuals and groups on both sides of the divide to participate in illicit activities. The remedy? In addition to offering a bevy of specific policy ideas, Na m urges readers to move away from simplistic moral denunciations and to focus, instead, on reducing the demand for criminals' goods and services and on weakening the incentives for ordinary people to become involved in their enterprises. (On sale Oct. 18)
