Moisés Naím
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illicit: reviews

Selected Reviews of ILLICIT

More Reviews of ILLICIT

  • Journal of Democracy (July 2006, Vol. 17, No. 3)

    Moisés Naím, the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, has written an important and disturbing book.  Many works have dealt with one illicit activity or another, but this book groups them all together as part of one global trend.
  • Blogcritics.org (March 13, 2006)

    You probably didn't think, that time you downloaded an MP3 online or bought a bootleg DVD of the latest Hollywood release, that you were tied into one of the most dangerous and potentially destablizing political and economic forces on the planet...
  • The Scotsman (January 8, 2006)

     In a newly published analysis of an issue generally regarded as poorly understood, editor and publisher Moisés Naím, who is also a fellow at the World Economic Forum, has produced the first detailed account of the murky world of "transnational crime" which has escalated to a level such that, in some cases, it matches or seriously challenges legal trade.
  • The Times [UK] (January 8, 2006)

    This is an alarming book, and meant to be so. The author, Moises Naim, is the editor of the highly respected American magazine Foreign Policy. He says that his job has involved tracking and understanding the unanticipated consequences of the new connections between world politics and economics. He writes that he soon found himself immersed in a world of illicit trade and global crime and now concludes that this is destabilising our civilisation and that it is as big a threat as terrorism — if not greater.
  • The New York Times Book Review (December 25, 2005)

     Naím, the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, contends that the Bush administration's focus on traditional nation-states as the sources of terrorism and other maladies is a costly illusion. Instead, he concentrates on the modern-day buccaneers who are fleecing and menacing governments in rich and poor countries, whether by pirating movies or by smuggling weapons of mass destruction. The one thing uniting this disparate group of desperadoes, terrorists and unscrupulous officials, Naím says, goes back to Adam Smith: All it takes to get involved is an interest in the profit motive.
  • The Library of Economics and Liberty (December 5, 2005)

    Perhaps one of the most illuminating approaches to the real nature of globalization that I have ever read so far is Mr. Moisés Naím's Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy. Mr. Naím affirms in one of the first chapters of his book that the dramatic expansion of world trade—6 percent on average from 1990 to 2000—also created ample room for illicit trade. But the main assertion of Mr. Naím's book is that "in the coming decades, the activities of the global trafficking networks and their associates will have a far greater impact than is commonly imagined on international relations, development strategies, democracy promotion, business and finance, migration, global security, and war and peace."
  • Global Business Network Book Club (November 2005)

     There is a dark and shadowy world out there that few of us know much about. It exists in the growing and overlapping intersection of crime and terrorism, which increasingly affects the business environment and civil society. The scale of these new realities, enabled by technological and economic evolution, is vast. Counterfeit consumer products alone cost business over $600 billion every year. Yet our ignorance and naiveté about the shadow worlds of the illicit and the politically violent leave us even more vulnerable to their depredations.
  • Salon.com (November 22, 2005)

     So maybe you think Web-based e-mail, Internet cafes and disposable cellphones are cool. Guess what? So do terrorists, cocaine dealers and sex-slave traders. Or maybe you're impressed with the dazzling abilities of modern corporations to outsource their operations and manage amazingly complex global supply-and-production chains. Well, you know, Russian mafia looking to offload Soviet-era weaponry and Chinese military officers brokering DVD-piracy rings are equally adept. We live in an era of ever more porous international borders, exploding world trade and advances in technology that have transformed the globe into a cozy neighborhood where cities as far apart as Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; and Bogotá, Colombia, are next-door nodes on the Internet. Lumped together under the term "globalization," these changes have altered everyone's lives.
  • The Week (November 18, 2005)

    It took 400 years to import 12 million African slaves into the New World. Yet in the last decade alone, about 30 million women and children have been trafficked in Southeast Asia. Thanks to the 21st century's international economy and our increasingly open borders, illegal trade has never been more lucrative. According to Foreign Policy editor Moisés Naím, the $10 billion human-trafficking racket is just the tip of the iceberg.
  • Global Guerillas (November 17, 2005)

    Moises Naim, the editor of Foreign Policy magazine, has an excellent new book called Illicit on the rise of global smuggling networks. It's a must read. Moises copiously documents how globalization and rampant interconnectivity has led to the rise of vast global smuggling networks. These networks live in the space between states. They are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He shows how these networks make money through an arbitrage of the differences between the legal systems (and a desire to prosecute) of our isolated islands of sovereignty. He also shows how their flagrant use of corruption can enable them to completely take over sections of otherwise functional states.
  • Financial Times (November 15, 2005)
    By Martin Wolf

    The world we live in offers vast economic opportunities. But these are not limited to production and trade in what we consider good. They include production and trade in “bads”: narcotics; counterfeits; stolen artefacts; arms; slaves and organs. And with these go their consequences: money laundering, corruption and political subversion. Governments are trying to separate the Siamese twins of licit and illicit trade, in order to kill off the latter. They are failing. This is the thesis of a remarkable new book by Moises Naim, the editor of Foreign Policy.
  • TIME (November 7, 2005)

     Consider these disparate and disturbing facts from Illicit , a new book by Moisés Naím. There are 300 tons of unsecured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, international terrorists itching to get their hands on it, and smugglers who may be able to help close the deal. Trafficking in women is facilitated by websites where merchants advertise and sell their wares with impunity. The global trade in stolen art has led to the disappearance of 43 Van Goghs, 174 Rembrandts and 551 Picassos. In Central Asia, children are believed to have been stolen from orphanages and killed for their organs. And money laundering accounts for up to 10% of the world's GDP, or as much $5 trillion. Shocking? Maybe not.
  • Washington Post Book World (October 30, 2005)
    by Anne-Marie Slaughter

    In Illicit, Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy and former minister of industry and trade for Venezuela, realizes what he's up against. He knows that collecting stories, as fascinating and frightening as they are, about such activities is not enough to convince his readers that they are reading about a new world of new problems that demand their attention. But he also knows that illicit trade is undermining whole economies, corrupting entire governments, and diverting the benefits of globalization itself. He offers three major arguments as to why illicit trade today is a far greater threat than ever before -- in degree and also in kind.
  • Bloomberg (October 25, 2005)

    The world according to Moises Naim pulsates with the good, the bad and the just plain nasty. It's a planet of Internet cafes, offshore banks and Asian girls sold into slavery. The Soviet Union splinters, loose nukes proliferate and rich Germans buy kidneys off poor Romanians. Free markets spread, along with sales of fake Viagra, stolen van Goghs and phony Honda motorcycles. All of these trends accelerated in the 1990s, Naim recalls in his harrowing book, "Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy." The political and technological upheaval that marked the end of the 20th century created a "smuggler's nirvana.'' "Call it the darkness within the light,'' Naim writes. "The advances we cherish and seek also produce nefarious opportunities for trade and profit.''
  • USA Today (October 24, 2005)

     "Governments are changed more often by bullets than votes," declares an arms dealer in the recently released film Lord of War. Hollywood is a land of exaggerations, but such hyperbole is often wrapped in truth. Moisés Naím, author of the new book Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy, would like to add that it's not solely bullets that are shaping the world.
  • The Washington Post (October 23, 2005)

    Moisés Naím, the editor who has brought fresh thinking, wide-ranging interests and writerly passion to Foreign Policy magazine, has done it again, this time in a book about the global trade in drugs, dirty money, arms, human kidneys, counterfeit software, bootlegged music, elephant tusks and sex slaves. In Illicit (Doubleday) Naím shows how globalization has made it easier, safer and more profitable to engage in this kind of trafficking. He has added a considerable amount of his own reporting to the subject, replete with examples of how it all works.
  • The New York Sun (October 18, 2005)

    In everyday life, the word “illicit” sends little thrills up the spine. The illicit cookies filched behind Mom's back, the illicit cigarettes defiantly smoked behind the high school gym, the illicit love affair conducted right under the boss's nose — these are some of life's sweetest memories. But in the global marketplace the word summons up sins of a different order entirely: Drugs, weapons, even human beings move across international borders every day, defying authority and destroying lives. Globalization has spurred the explosive growth of markets everywhere, and the black market is no exception. That hidden monster is the subject of “Illicit"...
  • United Press International (October 17, 2005)

    People had spoken before of “the dark side of globalization,” usually in reference to sweatshops and exploitation of Third World labor and natural resources. But Naím put the available evidence together in a different way and made new connections and thus new conclusions, ironically in rather the same way his different bits of shady business were making their own connections and establishing their own new conclusions in the global market place
  • Business Week (October 10, 2005)
    By Jeffrey E. Garten

    In a few weeks the most comprehensive and thoughtful work on this subject to date will be released: a book by Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, titled Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy . In an interview, Naím explained to me why illicit trade is out of control and the obstacles governments face in combating it. His major point is that globe-spanning criminal networks are organized in decentralized, cell-like structures that make them as hard to eliminate as al Qaeda. Moreover, they are using cutting-edge transportation technology, in addition to satellite global positioning systems, that give them the logistical flexibility of a FedEx or Wal-Mart Stores -- and make them increasingly difficult to track.
  • Publisher's Weekly (August 15, 2005)

    Starred Review. In this sweeping and informative work, Foreign Policy editor Naím demystifies the global trade in illegal goods and services and, in the process, presents an original portrait of globalization that skillfully eschews the utopian doggerel that often characterizes such accounts. Naím provides a detailed tour of the major globalized criminal activities—drug production and distribution, illegal arms dealing, human trafficking, counterfeiting, money laundering and so on—and introduces a host of criminal networks that profit from them.
  • Kirkus Review (August 1, 2005)

    Editor of Foreign Policy magazine, Naím offers a sweeping survey that's light on anecdote. He argues that "since the early 1990s, global illicit trade has embarked on a great mutation." He explores how political changes coupled with unrestricted technologies and free-market expansion had the unforeseen effect of making the international wade in contraband more profitable than ever. Naím discusses underground markets in weapons, drugs, human beings, counterfeit products and more. The author points to the seepage of criminality into society, represented by both well-heeled Westerners who love buying bootleg DVDs and fake purses, and by the structural transformation of criminal syndicates from cartels to networks.

 

 
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