The report, called “The Globalization of Crime,” says the trafficking of humans for sexual exploitation in Europe generates $3 billion annually, while the smuggling of migrant workers to the United States and Europe yields nearly $7 billion each year. Europe’s heroin market accounts for $20 billion, the UNODC said, while counterfeit goods detected on Europe’s borders have an annual value over $10 billion

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The report says that “national responses are inadequate (as) they displace the problem from one country.”

“The threat is not just economic,” Costa said. “It is strategic, as criminals today can influence elections, politicians and the military. In one word, they can gain power.”

crime has internationalized faster than law enforcement and world governance

the US could become an exceptional breeding ground for some of the world’s most aggressive global guerrillas.

Cybergangs rise and fall in varying degrees of anonymity and alliances with Russian, Chinese and other governments that are more ad hoc than understood. Norms of behavior among individuals and governments are a moving target. Crimes are not solved as much as controlled, through informal alliances of small agencies within and outside the state, or when there is publicity of the crimes that embarrasses higher ups in government.

…

In this world, criminals help the Russian military invade Georgia by blowing out many of that country’s computers, and spam from Nigeria has coded instructions for an attempted coup in the Ivory Coast. Over dozens of scams, only a handful of people are nailed. Far more are protected.

..jump ahead to 2040. The United States has long since withdrawn its troops from Okinawa — “If the Japanese don’t want us, we can no longer justify staying” said Democratic President Mary Martinez in 2032 — and Japan has predictably gone nuclear in the absence of a U.S. security guarantee.

Now tensions between nuclear-armed China and nuclear-armed Japan have flared in an Asia where the United States no longer serves as the offsetting power. A naval clash over disputed, gas-rich islands in the East China Sea has revived century-old World War II grievances.

..Beijing is busy. U.S. troops have also long since withdrawn from South Korea — “the 38th parallel will just have to take care of itself,” a departing U.S. general was heard to mutter in 2034 — and China finds itself having to deploy its own troops to restrain the increasingly wayward North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, from his threats to reduce Seoul “to an ashtray.” A drunk-driving incident involving a Chinese general in Pyongyang and the death of three schoolchildren has prompted Kim to accuse China of acting “with imperial disdain.”

“Beijing seeks the wellbeing of all people on the Korean peninsula, regrets the Pyongyang incident, and calls for dialogue,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman says. The U.S. State Department has no comment but officials privately confess to a certain “schadenfreude” at Chinese difficulties.

These difficulties are not confined to Asia. A shadowy terrorist group called ARFAP (African Resources for African People) has just claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 12 Chinese executives attending a Lusaka conference on copper extraction. Video has gone global showing the execution of two executives and threatening the murder of two more if China does not withdraw “from all predatory exploitation on the African continent.”

The fragmentation of societies from within is clear: From Bogotá to Bangalore, gated communities with private security are on the rise.

“This diffuse, fractured world will be run more by cities and city-states than countries. ((((Waiting for the first free-trade city that abolishes national passports and declares itself to be “global.” They’re probably gonna need their own nuclear arsenal, but hey, given that, the sky’s the limit.)))

“Once, Venice and Bruges formed an axis that spurred commercial expansion across Eurasia. Today, just 40 city-regions account for two thirds of the world economy and 90 percent of its innovation. The mighty Hanseatic League, a constellation of well-armed North and Baltic Sea trading hubs in the late Middle Ages, will be reborn as cities such as Hamburg and Dubai form commercial alliances and operate “free zones” across Africa like the ones Dubai Ports World is building. (((Straight out of a John Shirley cyberpunk novel from the early 1980s.)))

“Add in sovereign wealth funds and private military contractors, and you have the agile geopolitical units of a neomedieval world. (((Oh brother.)))

“Even during this global financial crisis, multinational corporations heavily populate the list of the world’s largest economic entities; the commercial diplomacy of emerging-market firms such as China’s Haier and Mexico’s Cemex has already turned North-South relations inside out faster than the nonaligned movement ever did. (((I’ve got to respect an analyst who can even remember the Non-Aligned Movement. I spend a lot of my time in a rambunctious city-state that exists in its wreckage.)))

..when the Iranian elections came up, and then the disputes, we found out they were using Facebook as a tool to organize themselves and expose their qualms and discontent with the government. So publicly we translated the entire site into Farsi within 36 hours. It was our second right-to-left language, which was actually really difficult for us. Literally the entire site is flipped in a mirror. The fact that we did it in thirty-six hours — they hired twenty some-odd translators, and engineers worked around the clock to get it rolled out — was pretty fucking phenomenal. We had at least three times as many user registrations per day the first day it was out, and it has been growing.