The phenomenon of organized crime: a threat to national security

Abstract

The globalization of the economy, the public security policy that has been adopted in the states and the Brazilian legal framework have all contributed to the growing role of criminal groups. The signing of free trade treaties, the opening of borders, and the worldwide computer network facilitated the movement of people and goods and increased the flow of information while enabling the growth of trafficking in drugs, weapons and other lucrative products. Current public security policy is ineffective because it fights the consequence rather than the cause of transnational crime. Finally, the clearly outdated Brazilian legal framework imposes an enormous bureaucracy for the elaboration of judicial processes to the invested force of the police power.
We are currently living in a time of localized and limited international or internal conflict involving state and non-state forces motivated by ethnic, tribal, religious or just criminal issues. A large number of internal structural factors such as poverty, hunger, lack of social justice, inequality in income distribution, and feelings of exclusion have all contributed to increasing social disorder. The multiplication of non-state forces and the collapse of state services contributed to the emergence of a new threat.
After the end of the Cold War and the dismantling of the bipolar system, new actors appeared on the international scene. These are organizations that occupied the power vacuum that the state could not cover. Local mafias, separatist movements, terrorist organizations and organized crime sought to develop their influence outside the state. Worldwide, military personnel are fighting non-state opponents such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, the FARC and why not, the Criminal Organizations and the Militias.
These more or less organized and coordinated groups are trying to dissolve and blend into the local civilian population. In this new operating environment, one of the main difficulties facing the troops lies in identifying the enemy. It typically operates in low-infrastructure areas and has the ability to cluster and launch attacks in a short time, dispersing again, with no defined hierarchical structure or forces developed at ground level.
In this asymmetric conflict the central objective is the operational immobilization of the troop, causing the legal force to be exhausted not only physically but psychologically, rendering it unable to impose its political will. The operational immobilization of the troops employed in a situation of institutional normality is often obtained through the gaps in criminal law or through the individual guarantees provided for in our charter that ultimately benefit the bandit.
This new scenario of global insecurity poses a new challenge for the Armed Forces involving national security. The fight against criminal actions, under the responsibility of the public security agencies of the states, became multidimensional and transcended to a matter of national security. Faced with this new world order, the Armed Forces will increasingly be required to participate in the processes of community pacification and the fight against organized crime.