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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2217 thread views

Transnational Thursday for January 11, 2024

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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There are very few important political actors in Central America who doesn’t have some sort of ties to some drug crime. It’s typically more useful to think of the “cartels” (what a weird name when you think about it) as public-private partnerships between the drug entrepreneurs and different levels of the government. The real difficulty these states have fighting against cartels doesn’t have anything to do with regular policing problems. It’s the challenge of organising the state apparatus to fight parts of itself. Army against police departments, judiciary against army, central government against provincial governors etc is how it usually goes. There is a reason why these states get a new “totally not corrupt this time” police department every 5 years to investigate the other police departments. “Cartel”s are often just a part of the state organism

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