not-very-bright gangsters looking for arnquick buck who are more often at eachrnother’s throats than those of law-abidingrnAmericans or even congressmen andrnsenators. Yet it is convenient to presentrninternational organized crime as arn”monolithic threat” because only if it isrnsuch could an equally monolithic globalrnbureaucracy be created to handle it. It isrnjust such a transnational monolith thatrnpeople like Senator Kerry want to creaternas part of the governing apparatus of thernNew World Order.rnIt makes sense for the embryonicrnglobal government to have its own policernforce, and already the legal foundationsrnof global law enforcement have been establishedrnthrough the U.N. GenocidernConvention and the creation of otherrn”international crimes.” The United Nationsrnhas already set up tribunals for therntrial of war crimes in the Balkans andrnRwanda. Of course, what the architectsrnof the global police are seeking is neitherrnreal justice nor real security, but a precedent,rna clear case in which the horrors ofrnthe crimes inflame public imaginationrnto the point that extralegal interventionrnby the “international community” seemsrnjustified and can then serve as a modelrnfor future regularization of such interventionrnas a routine. In both the Rwandanrnand Haitian interventions last year,rnthe Clinton administration came closernto establishing a basis for just such actionrnin the future in far less notorious cases.rnThe globalization of law enforcement,rnhowever, is merely an extension of thernnationalization of law enforcement thatrnthe managerial left has pursued since atrnleast the 1930’s in this country. One ofrnthe long-standing liberal complaintsrnagainst J. Edgar Hoover has always beenrnthat he “ignored” or “denied the existence”rnof organized crime in the UnitedrnStates, and probably today most Americans,rneven conservatives, share this criticismrnof the man who built the FBI uprnfrom a seedy, incompetent, highly politicized,rnand outright crooked reservoir ofrnRepublican veterans of Teapot Dome inrnthe 1920’s into the world’s foremost lawrnenforcement agency at the time of hisrndeath. Hoover may well have been toornquick to deny the existence of organizedrncrime, but behind this denial there wasrna principled opposition to the centralizingrntrend of the national state. As his biographerrnRichard Gid Powers writes:rn”When the FBI killed a Dillinger, it wasrnbecause local authorities had been unablernto deal with the criminal before hernfinally did something that came underrnfederal jurisdiction, and not because thernoverall situation was a federal responsibility.rnThe national crime problem, accordingrnto Hoover’s formulation, was arnlocal one; the FBI could help by givingrnthe local police technical assistance andrnby furnishing them with a model of professionalism.”rnIt was in fact Hoover’s lifelong battlernto prevent the total usurpation of lawrnenforcement by the national government,rnand as early as 1933 he wrote in arnmemorandum to Franklin Roosevelt’srnfirst Attorney General, Homer Cummings,rna zealous pusher of nationalization,rnthat “it is perhaps not overlooked,rnbut it is certainly under-emphasized,rnthat the [crime] problem is a State one.”rnIndeed, the foremost crusadersrnagainst organized crime since the 1930’srnhave consistently been on the politicalrnleft—Estes Kefauver and RobertrnKennedy—and their crusade has generallyrnexploited the sensationalism of organizedrncrime to enhance federal policernpowers. In Hoover’s early days, most organizedrncrime, aside from ProhibitionrnEra bootlegging, which fell under thernjurisdiction of a separate federal agency,rnwas by its very nature local, in the formrnof the vice traffic—gambling, prostitution,rnand narcotics—and extortion. Neitherrnthe FBI nor most of the rest of thernfederal government had any more jurisdictionrnor business intervening in therncities and states to enforce the laws ofrnthose localities than the United Statesrnhas in intervening in Russia and Rwandarnto enforce theirs. The demand for thernbureau to “get involved” in the “fightrnagainst organized crime” thus reduced torna simple demand that local and staternauthority be pushed aside as corrupt andrninefficient and that the power of thernfederal megastate replace it with the integrityrnand competence characteristic ofrnswollen bureaucracy. As it turns out,rnthis was precisely the argument mountedrnby Judge Freeh himself in Senate testimonyrnlast spring, when he remarked, inrnthe breathless tones characteristic ofrnhim, that “More must be done, becausernwe cannot allow the same kinds of mistakesrnto be made today . . . that werernmade in responding to the threat ofrngangsterism that swept through thernUnited States in the twenties and thirties.”rnThere is, then, a precise parallelrnbetween the efforts to nationalize lawrnenforcement in the earlier period, effortsrnsuccessfully thwarted by Hoover,rnand the efforts today to globalize thernsame functions of government.rnThus, neither the “war” againstrnorganized crime waged by the federalrngovernment since the I920’s nor thernincipient “war” against internationalrncrime today is really concerned withrncrime. What they both represent isrnmerely the continuing quest for centralizedrnpower—first on the national levelrnagainst states and localities, second on arnglobal, transnational level against thernnation-state itself—by bureaucraticrnelites that have now acquired the skillsrnand technologies that enable them torndisengage from their own nations andrncultures and to grasp for autonomousrnpower on a worldwide scale. The incessantrnrefrain of both phases of centralizationrnis the lie that the smaller, local, andrnnational governments of the Old AmericanrnRepublic are not competent to fightrnthe really tough, smart, big, well-heeled,rnand vicious criminals that plague usrntoday and that only the really tough,rnsmart, big, well-heeled, and viciousrnmegastate can go toe-to-toe with thernglobal Napoleons of Crime that hauntrnthe imaginations of Hollywood screenwritersrnand the ghostwritten testimonyrnof congressional hearings.rnYet there is virtually no evidence thatrngreater centralization of law enforcementrnis any more efficient at stoppingrncrime than the United Nations has beenrnin preventing and punishing genocide.rnAfter 60 years of increasing federal intrusionrninto law enforcement, we haverncities through which it is not safe to walkrnin broad daylight, and all the congressionalrncrime bills and federal gun controlrnlaws have done and will do nothing tornmake them safer. Now we are told thatrneven the nation-state itself is as obsoleternas local and state autonomy and thatrnonly by setting up a supernational power,rnover which neither local and staternnor even American authorities will exerciserncontrol, can the new “enemy,” thernubiquitous and immortal “monolithicrnthreat,” of global crime be expelled fromrnour gates. We have heard it all before,rnand those of us who remember what IndependencernDay is supposed to representrnwill be no more eager to sign up inrnthe global war on crime than in any ofrnthe other and no less fraudulent warsrnthe megastate has declared against thernenemies it invents for its own purposes.rnJANUARY 1995/9rnrnrn