From Thom Shanker, New York Times:  As he rose through the ranks of command over a 37-year career in uniform, Admiral [James] Stavridis also came to be recognized as one of the military’s most prolific authors on strategy, operations and tactics. Today, though, ask what worries him most, and he answers in a single word: convergence.

That is the new term of choice in national security circles for the coming together of previously unrelated adversaries, who not only might combine in operations, but also share resources, know-how, weapons and technology and personnel.

“This is really the dark end of the spectrum of globalization as you assess rising national security risks,” Admiral Stavridis said in an interview. “It is something I worry about enormously.”

What might convergence look like?

Drug cartels along America’s southern border, whose smuggling operations move contraband and people into the United States, might come to make common cause with terrorist or militant organizations to bring in weapons or bomber makers.

“I think that’s a very possible and very dangerous business model, and you have to prevent narco-businessmen crossing those streams with the terrorists,” Admiral Stavridis said.

“What the narco-confederacies offer are routes, the trafficking capabilities — moving matériel and people,” he added. “If you can move 10 tons of cocaine into the U.S. in a small, semi-submersible vessel, how hard do you think it would be to move a weapon of mass destruction?”

Although it had long been assumed that drug traffickers would not want to adopt political or militant activities for fear of bringing down even harsher American might to suppress their for-profit operations, Admiral Stavridis said that “for the right level of inducement — for the right amount of money — it could happen.”

He said there were signs already of operatives “with a foot in both camps, including Hezbollah.”

For example, American law enforcement officials have said they thwarted an Iranian-backed plot in 2011 to co-opt members of a Mexican drug gang to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington. And the Taliban underwrite their operations in Afghanistan via the poppy trade.  (photo: Shaun Curry/AFP/Getty)  (via Halifax International Security Forum)

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