The study examines the introduction of transnational organized crime in the security agenda of the United States and its evaluation as a major contemporary threat to international order after the Cold War. The results indicate the importance of the two terms of Clinton government (1993-2001) in this process, whose highest expression was the Presidential Decision Directive 42, to even facilitate the reorganization of the police, military and Intelligence structures of the country to combat this threat. We conclude that the 1990s is the defining moment of the identification of this criminality as a unique, foreign and large-scale threat.
transnational organized crime; United States; international security