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While the peacemakers at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 did not anticipate the extensive revanchist and state-sponsored terrorism that would bedevil the Great Powers during the interwar years, members of the British delegation persuaded their French and American counterparts that the unprecedented scale of production of weapons in wartime would lead to an upsurge in global arms trafficking in peacetime. They signed the Convention for the Control of the Trade in Arms and Ammunition, at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 10, 1919. National priorities and diverging security concerns in the years following the signing of treaty, however, took precedence over ratification and enforcement of the agreement. By the end of 1924, the League of Nations had emerged as the principal organization concerned with stopping international arms trafficking and keeping surplus munition stocks from being “distributed to persons and states who are not fitted to possess them.”

In May 1925, the League of Nations convened a Conference for the Supervision of the International Trade in Arms and Ammunition and in Implements of War in Geneva, Switzerland. Six weeks of negotiations resulted in a new Arms Traffic Convention (as well as the Geneva Protocol against the usage of chemical and biological weapons), which representatives from eighteen countries—including the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan—signed on June 17. The United States led the way to that moment yet did not follow through on it afterward. The treaty, which lacked robust enforcement mechanisms, languished in national legislatures and never entered into force. Even so, it had a constructive legacy: the compilation and publication of statistics on gun-running. Intelligence based on open and closed sources collected for, and resulting from, the Arms Traffic Conference, indicated systematic violations of the European peace settlements and revealed a world awash in guns.

This chapter charts the key events in the twentieth-century global arms trade; during the post-World War I and interwar years, the Cold War, and the early 1990s and beyond. During the post-World War I, these successive initiatives—St. Germain Convention (1919), Geneva Arms Traffic Convention (1925), and Disarmament Conference (1934)—in controlling the arms trade failed due to the impossibility of aligning the material interests and security priorities of major arms-producing states. These conflicts of interest were exacerbated by the East-West ideological orientation, of the United States and the Soviet Union, at the turn of the Cold War period. The Cold War's end, however, meant significant changes in supplier-recipient relationships, as well as the justification for and efforts to arms trade control. The 1990s saw the momentum that spurred the passage of the Arms Trade Treaty, a legally binding agreement between states for regulating international arms trade.

Chapter 6 provides a careful examination of the cultural influences behind some common Albanian criminal activities. Should one blame the Albanian customary Kanun laws for the increased involvement of Albanians in trafficking women for sexual exploitation? Basically, how do Albanian criminals select illicit markets? Do cultural and emotional factors play a role in the selection of criminal activities? This chapter elaborates on the nature of the criminal activities in which Albanian offenders are commonly engaged. It reflects on the neutralization techniques used by Albanian organized crime figures to justify their crimes. It also examines links between culture and gender, human trafficking and subordination of women, illicit trade in firearms and gun culture, and extortion and hospitality.

This chapter chronicles the activities of the Middle District of Florida’s crusading U.S. attorney Robert Merkle who charged many county and state public officials with malfeasance. Investigations and prosecutions in Duval, Hillsborough, and Orange counties are covered extensively. A narrative of his activities from 1982 to 1988, as well has his conflicts with Gov. Bob Martinez, Sen. Bob Graham, and the Reagan Justice Department are included. The embattled Merkle’s ill-fated run for the Senate is discussed as is the choice of his successor, as well as the condition of the U.S. attorney’s office when he left it. The chapter then turns to the increasing international nature of federal law enforcement, especially within the context of espionage and arms trafficking. Airports in Orlando and Tampa facilitated international travel, and this afforded opportunity to commit crimes of an international nature. The FBI, Customs, and other federal law enforcement bureaus continually apprehended persons charged with criminal activity and these persons were prosecuted in the Middle District of Florida. Many of those cases are chronicled in this chapter.