To fight against narcotics trafficking and organized crime is a global obligation

By: Carlos Sánchez Berzaín - 08/02/2025

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Wielders of power, using populist discourses and progressive narratives shirk their international obligation to fight against narcotics trafficking and organized crime and have established narco-States and transnational organized crime regimes, compelling affected States to take self-protection measures. The expansion of dictatorships in the Americas, as part of 21st Century Socialism, and their control over para-dictatorial governments, have promoted crime and impunity, and have furthered their dereliction of duties by ignoring and not participating in their global obligation to fight against narcotics trafficking and crime.

The United Nations (UN) 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances make up the international system to control drugs. The 2000 UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime is an international treaty with three protocols: 1. To prevent, repress, and sanction Human Trafficking, especially women and children. 2. To fight the contraband of migrants by land, sea, and air. 3. To curb and fight against the illicit manufacturing and traffic of firearms. All currently applicable and ratified by the States of the Americas.

The first Summit of the Americas of 1994 established that “democracy is the only political system that guarantees the respect for human rights and the rule of law …” It also determined that “recognizing the harmful effects that organized crime and the illicit trafficking of drugs cause on our economies, ethical values, public health, and social structure, we will join in the fight against, the production, consumption, trafficking, and distribution of chemical precursor substances …”

The “self-protection” of a State is an international right, it is “a means of defense that States can utilize to protect their vital interests, based on sovereignty, and is considered legitimate when an attack occurs …”

The paradigms in the world and the Americas, at the start of the 21st century, were; freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, the fight against organized crime and the illicit trafficking of drugs… but in the first quarter of this century Cuba’s dictatorship expanded its model to Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador with Correa, and to para-dictatorial governments and got to lead Latin America by controlling the Organization of American States (OAS) until 2015, and by reestablishing diplomatic relations with the United States. Transnational organized crime, wielding power through State-terrorism, replaced politics and through narcotics trafficking, forcible migrations, crime, terrorism, and more, implemented “hybrid warfare” practices against democracies.

Hybrid warfare is a type of conflict that “uses a combination of all sorts of conventional and irregular tactics (insurgency, terrorism, migration, common crime, narcotics trafficking), cyberwarfare,” and other methods to achieve political goals. It is a new type of warfare that surpasses the asymmetric warfare (a regular army against an insurgent force) and has “the advantage for the aggressor to avoid being held responsible for the attack.” Fidel Castro’s proclamation “to use narcotics trafficking as an anti-imperialist weapon,” the manipulation of the “Mariel” migration, and more, are re-created massive and multilaterally in this 21st century.

With narratives of poverty and inequality, dictatorial and para-dictatorial governments of 21st Century Socialism, and even democratic governments, have established the fallacy that to fight against drug trafficking and crime is politically incorrect. They have mystified the causes for forcible migrations to use them as an element of attacks, they have twisted the fact these migrations are a consequence of their use of State-terrorism and fear. By establishing narco-States and leading organized crime, they have -time and again- shown they can wield power indefinitely and with impunity, protecting themselves by invoking the sovereignty of the peoples they oppress.

Twenty-First Century Socialism has turned traffickers into entrepreneurs, criminals into victims, victims into culprits, culprits into politicians, and the “capos” and heads of cartels into heads of State in the countries they control. This is what it is all about, the supplanting of paradigms, the counterfeiting of principles and values.

The challenge for the rulers this time, is to recognize and apply the paradigms of freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, renew the fight against narcotics’ trafficking and organized crime. The application of defense measures by the most important democracy of the region and the world is an indicator that no one can be attacked with impunity. This is also a fundamental reminder that the war on drugs and crime is an obligation that has gone extensively unfulfilled and that has harmed the worldwide democratic order.

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

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