Be it in the tri-border area of Latin America, across the Balkans and former Soviet satellites, the ‘golden triangle’ of Fareast Asia, or right in the heart of Western Europe and North America, the impact of criminal enterprise on core national security is real. Illicit arms trafficking, human smuggling, elaborate fencing and money laundering schemes, and a wide range of other critical transnational criminal enterprises thrive in a globalizing environment. It is not an issue of ‘human security’ alone. Rather, for many developing states, transnational criminal networks can prove to be an existential threat by destabilizing civil society and fuelling nascent conflict. Elsewhere, in the developed world, transnational crime may serve as a catalyst for other core security considerations, from cybersecurity to terrorism, placing it in an altogether more virulent class than typical street crime. Although, particularly since the 1980’s, governments have increasingly recognized the power of criminal enterprise, few states have instituted comprehensive strategic plans to address them, relying instead on the tyranny of the always reactive case file. Research within this domain will therefore focus on the construction of comprehensive programs to identify threats, and modernize international policing cooperation through information sharing, mutual assistance, and extradition. Only by harmonizing policing instruments of bureaus and states on an interdepartmental and eventually global basis will transnational criminals be unable to move and operate with the fluid impunity that presently permits them to thrive.