Tom Does Venezuela
November 12, 2007
Moisés Naím is one of the more successful Uncle Toms; he has actually risen to the rank of editor of an influential US establishment journal. It is, however, not journalistic integrity or analytical excellence that landed him this gig; instead, it is providing the harmonious accompaniment to His Master’s Voice that seems to have aided his ascent. So here he is now trying to convince us that Venezuela is the new hub of global crime, from drug and human trafficking to money laundering. This would be pretty alarming, if true, of course. But those familiar with Naím’s work would know that he is merely a reprising a fiction that he earlier published book-length in Illicit: How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats are Hijacking the Global Economy. As it happens, this subject is the focus of a very able scholar’s research, and here is what R. T. Naylor, the said scholar, had to say of Naím’s work.
Moisés Naím identifies a new connection between world economics and world politics: ‘Global criminal activities are transforming the international system.’ This transformation, he argues, requires a wholly new response: biometrics and other new technologies are needed to track perpetrators; fancier security devices will be needed to detect fakes and copies; and governments will have to make bureaucracies more flexible. These, you could say, are alarming developments, and Naím should be congratulated for bringing them so forcibly to public attention. The only problem is to find evidence that any of them is actually true.
