Fighting international crime

The world is entering a new golden age of transnational crime, and Australia is on its path. While the United States sharpens its focus on border control, fentanyl seizures and immigration crises, its long-standing global presence, built through intelligence partnerships, development aid and law enforcement networks, is shrinking. That retreat isn’t just felt in Washington’s diplomatic circles; it is creating a vacuum that transnational crime syndicates, often with state-sanctioned impunity, are rapidly filling.

This strategic withdrawal has profound implications for Australia. From the superlabs of the Mekong to crypto-fuelled laundering networks spanning Asia and Africa, the networks flourishing in the US’s absence are the same ones now targeting Australian borders, communities and institutions.

For decades, the US’s development aid and global law enforcement footprint have been force multipliers for national and allied security. Programs such as those under USAID were never just about humanitarian assistance; they served as vectors of soft power, influence and intelligence. They provided US agencies with the legitimacy, access and relationships necessary to monitor and counter illicit activity in key regions. Now, that platform is collapsing.

USAID’s budget has been frozen, foreign assistance has been gutted, and the scaffolding of soft intelligence has been dismantled across Southeast Asia. In parallel, the US Drug Enforcement Administration has drawn down its overseas presence, reducing the number of field offices from 93 to 69 and closing vital outposts in Myanmar, Indonesia and southern China, precisely when on-the-ground visibility into synthetic drug flows, triad-linked money laundering and illicit precursor trafficking is most needed.

These are not bureaucratic consolidations. They are blindfolds, representing strategic self-deprivation in the face of rapidly evolving threats.

The most visible impact is unfolding in Southeast Asia. The Mekong region, long a known drug corridor, has now become the epicentre of a synthetic drug explosion. Record levels of methamphetamine production are driving down prices and driving up purity. The criminal market is saturated and continues to expand.

Australia is already feeling the downstream effects. Record seizures of methamphetamine at our borders are not the result of successful disruption alone; they reflect the scale of the flood. As criminal syndicates adapt to pressure on Mexican and Colombian routes into the US, they are diversifying, rerouting supply chains westward through India, across Africa, and into the Indo-Pacific, where Australia is both a transit and target market.

This isn’t opportunism. It’s strategy.

In Washington’s absence, Beijing is stepping forward—not only through its development agency but also with shadow actors in tow. Chinese organised crime groups are embedding themselves in Belt and Road projects, exploiting infrastructure, logistics networks and corruptible officials to extend their reach. These groups don’t just coexist with Chinese state interests; they often act as informal instruments of asymmetric statecraft.

The April 2024 findings of the US Congressional Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party revealed what many in Australia’s national security circles already suspect: Chinese chemical producers and criminal actors are playing a pivotal role in fuelling the global synthetic drug trade. The CCP’s tacit tolerance, or active complicity, has allowed these networks to flourish so long as their activities don’t disrupt domestic Chinese stability. The targets are elsewhere, in liberal democracies such as Australia, New Zealand and the US.

The result is a criminal ecosystem that undermines regional stability corrodes public trust, and weakens the rule of law, all while advancing hostile strategic aims.

The US’s shift inward is not just a domestic concern. For Australia, it is a red flag. Canberra cannot rely solely on Washington’s surveillance, intelligence collection and presence to maintain regional stability. We must now plan for a world where the US no longer provides the first line of defence against emerging criminal threats.

Australia’s location, economic openness, and extensive supply chains make us a prime target for exploitation. Synthetic drug flows, human trafficking, cyber-enabled crime and illicit financial networks are converging—not at our borders, but upstream, in regions where our security partnerships are shallow or absent.

The response must be bold, coordinated and forward-leaning. This means rebuilding forward presence through expanded Australian Federal Police and intelligence postings in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, not as token observers but as embedded strategic actors.

It means hardening regional partnerships by investing in real-time intelligence sharing, joint criminal investigations and border security capabilities with Southeast Asian partners and Indian Ocean neighbours. It means recognising criminal networks as strategic actors and treating transnational organised crime not just as a law enforcement problem but as a vector of geopolitical competition.

If the US no longer sees global crime networks as a threat, Australia must. The world’s new transnational crime syndicates don’t just smuggle drugs—they destabilise regions, corrode institutions and erode sovereignty. And they are increasingly doing so in the service of states that seek to undermine the liberal order Australia depends upon.

This article was published by The Strategist.