Transnational organized crime and military missions: tensions of the internal/external division in international relations

Abstract

The International Relations field constituted itself through the theoretical division between a pacified domestic sphere and an anarchic international system. [ States, as sovereign actors, are understood to have the legitimate monopoly of force within their borders, while struggle to survive in the international realm. However, certain dynamics and actors challenge this division. This paper aims to show how the political construction of transnational organized crime as a threat and the definition of the means of force employed to combat it, especially the armed forces, break with the sharp division between domestic and international. In discussing the case of combating drug trafficking in Brazil, it is understood that the definition of such activity as a threat results from a process of expansion and internationalization of the "war on drugs" policy, fostered by the United States government. The definition of crime was therefore not limited to the territoriality of the Brazilian state. At the same time, the deployment of the armed forces to combat internal crime, which is recurrent in Brazilian history, demonstrates that the theoretical division in question represents a normative principle and not a description of a historical pattern.