Covert Netherworld: An Invisible Interstice in the Modern World System

• Published in: Comparative studies in society and history 2016-10, Vol.58 (4), p.847-879
• Main Author: McCoy, Alfred W.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 20th century; Auditoriums; Autonomy; Bongo, Omar; Cold War; Comparative analysis; Comparative studies; Conflict; Corruption; Counterinsurgency; Covert operations; Criminal investigations; Decolonization; Drug trafficking; Elections; Elites; Financial services; France; Geopolitics; Government agencies; Insurgency; International relations; Interstices, Margins, Borderlands; Islam; Narcotic drugs; National security; Philippines; Political systems; Politics; Power; Presidents; Security services; Services; Traffic; Transnationalism; United States
• ISSN: 0010-4175; 1475-2999; 1471-633X
• DOI: 10.1017/S0010417516000451

This essay explores a domain of geopolitical conflict called “covert netherworld” that has been a seminal in world politics for the past half century and likely to become more central in the century to come. During the Cold War and its aftermath, covert netherworlds formed worldwide through confluence of four essential elements: reliance of modern states on covert methods for power projection at home and abroad; the consequent emergence of a clandestine social milieu populated by secret services and criminal syndicates; a complementary illicit economic nexus that sustains non-state actors and sometimes state security; and finally, spatial dimensions that range from a narrow criminal or covert milieu to entire countries or continents. When these elements align, this netherworld can attain the sheer geopolitical power to shape the course of national and international events. To lend substance to these generic elements, the essay explores three arenas of widening geographical scope. At the local level in the southern Philippines, a regional netherworld fostered Islamic insurgency and state counterinsurgency, while national elections were sustained by an illegal lottery, shaping the character of an emerging polity. At the transnational level, France's postcolonial hold on the West African region dubbed Françafrique constrained corruption within state-mediated circuits and entrenched elites at both ends of this bilateral exchange. By contrast, U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan and Central America had divergent outcomes influenced by their degree of congruence with the narcotics traffic, demonstrating that the covert netherworld can exercise sufficient autonomy to be treated as a significant factor in world politics.