Sec Challenges of Illicit Econ

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

This course will explore the nexus that exists between illicit economies and security landscapes, examining how criminal networks impact and exploit local governance gaps, exacerbate conflict zones, shift regional geopolitics, and prolong instability. The course will examine different conflict zones, contested territories, and ungoverned spaces in which illicit economies affect local security, as well as the drivers and constraints that incentivize these illicit trades to emerge in the first place. The course will additionally examine the range of roles that state and non-state actors uphold in these trades and how they leverage illicit markets for credibility, political legitimacy, defense, and political stature. The course will assess a range of cases across geographic and thematic scopes, exploring the interplay between illicit networks, organized crime, state complicity or participation, illicit terrorist financing, and narco-paramilitarism in the Levant, Balkans, West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.