Are Mexican drug trafficking organizations terrorists? In late 2019 and early 2020, members of the Trump administration and a few members of Congress very publicly asked this provocative question and briefly considered designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Several high-profile instances during the Trump administration blurred the lines between terrorism and other national security concerns. These, however, do not necessarily focus federal efforts as clearly as terrorist designations. efforts to catalog and prioritize key players among drug traffickers and organized criminals exist. 5 Other violent transnational enemies bent on earning illicit profits and as a result endangering the lives of Americans have resided somewhere in the background, and several U.S. The superpower formally designates its foreign terrorist enemies-violent, ideologically driven foes-via well-established processes that focus whole-of-government efforts on a core set of dangerous actors. government’s framing of violent substate threats largely has been based on their motives. The category, for example, excludes pure cyber actors, such as hackers, who are not violent and not linked to foreign governments. Of course, VNSAs do not fill the entire non-GPC terrain. VNSAs kill, maim, or threaten harm in their attempts to control or influence competitors, including other VNSAs as well as states themselves. Insurgencies vie with states for power and woo citizens to their causes. Terrorists strive to change political and social structures. Transnational criminal organizations control illicit markets and govern turf. VNSAs, of course, test sovereignty in other ways as well. 4 Its adoption would invigorate moribund strategic thinking around key national security concerns.Īs a class, VNSAs challenge the monopolies of force that states try to maintain. The violent non-state actor (VNSA) concept, one that has circulated among academics and think-tanks for years but never truly taken hold in the policy realm, could be a useful tool for understanding some of the most dangerous threats the United States faces outside of the GPC construct.
A new conceptual framework could bound the seemingly divergent security concerns in this landscape and help rationalize policy making. The large landscape beyond the GPC fence line that features violent actors beckons for a reorganization that breaks down the somewhat artificial but long-established boundaries separating policy responses to terrorists, transnational criminals, cross border gangs, insurgents, paramilitary forces, militias, warlords, and drug traffickers. Twenty years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it may be time for policymakers to re-conceptualize how they handle terrorism and other violent substate (non-GPC) concerns by grouping together terrorism and like threats. 3 The widely acknowledged importance of Russia and China-as well as other state actors-in the national security mix has not been accompanied by a reimagining of sub-state violent threats long dominated by terrorism. Threats from Russia and China deeply shaped both the 2017 National Security Strategy 1 a and the 2018 National Defense Strategy, 2 and GPC continues to influence major U.S. national security establishment have shifted away from terrorism toward addressing great power competition (GPC). In the last several years, the priorities of the U.S. The framework might help order the non-GPC threat landscape for decision makers, facilitate comparative understanding of violent threats to the United States, and drive better-informed prioritization within national security. national security establishment has taken up great power competition (GPC) as its primary concern recently, and terrorism has slipped from the top position, it is time for the security policy community to place terrorism within a new conceptual framework, one that combines terrorists, violent criminals, drug traffickers, insurgents, and others under the heading of violent non-state actors (VNSA).
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