Vanda Felbab-Brown
Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence
Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is also the director of the Brookings project, “Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives Beyond UNGASS 2016,” and co-director of another Brookings project, “Reconstituting Local Orders.” Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, and eastern Africa.
Felbab-Brown is the author of “The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It” (Hurst, 2018); “Narco Noir: Mexico’s Cartels, Cops, and Corruption” (The Brookings Institution Press, 2019, forthcoming); “Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder” (The Brookings Institution Press, Fall 2017; co-authored with Shadi Hamid and Harold Trinkunas); “Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan” (Brookings Institution Press, 2013); and “Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs” (Brookings Institution Press, 2010). She is also the author of numerous policy reports, academic articles, and opinion pieces. A frequent commentator in U.S. and international media, Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on these issues. She has also been the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of her scholarly and policy contributions.
Among her recent publications are: “Can Colombia eradicate coca by drones? The illusion of a technological fix,” The Brookings Institution, July 24, 2018; “Death by bad implementation? The Duque administration and Colombia’s peace deal(s),” The Brookings Institution, July 24 2018; “Andrés Manuel López Obrador and a new era of politics in Mexico,” The Brookings Institution, July 3 2018; “The hard, hot, dusty road to accountability, reconciliation, and peace in Somalia,” United Nations University, June 2018; “In Nigeria, we don’t want them back,” United Nations University, June 2018; “How synthetic opioids can radically change global illegal drug markets and foreign policy,” The Brookings Institution, April 30, 2018; “Opioids of the Masses: Stopping an American Epidemic From Going Global,” Foreign Affairs, April 2018; “When Terrorists and Criminals Govern Better Than Governments,” The Atlantic, April 4, 2018; “Nigeria's Troubling Counterinsurgency Strategy Against Boko Haram: How the Military and Militias Are Fueling Insecurity,” Foreign Affairs, March 30, 2018; “After the ivory bans, diligent enforcement is needed,” The Brookings Institution, March 2, 2018; and “Bone of contention: Pragmatism versus ideology in countering poaching and wildlife trafficking,” The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, March 1, 2018.
Felbab-Brown received her doctorate in political science from MIT and her bachelor’s in government from Harvard University.
Affiliations:
Council on Foreign Relations, member
Crime Law Enforcement, member, advisory board
Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, network member
New York University Center for International Cooperation, U.S.-China Dialogue on Afghanistan and Pakistan, member
Taliban Resources Project, member, advisory board
Vanda Felbab-Brown is a senior fellow in the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She is also the director of the Brookings project, “Improving Global Drug Policy: Comparative Perspectives Beyond UNGASS 2016,” and co-director of another Brookings project, “Reconstituting Local Orders.” Felbab-Brown is an expert on international and internal conflicts and nontraditional security threats, including insurgency, organized crime, urban violence, and illicit economies. Her fieldwork and research have covered, among others, Afghanistan, South Asia, Burma, Indonesia, the Andean region, Mexico, Morocco, Somalia, and eastern Africa.
Felbab-Brown is the author of “The Extinction Market: Wildlife Trafficking and How to Counter It” (Hurst, 2018); “Narco Noir: Mexico’s Cartels, Cops, and Corruption” (The Brookings Institution Press, 2019, forthcoming); “Militants, Criminals, and Warlords: The Challenge of Local Governance in an Age of Disorder” (The Brookings Institution Press, Fall 2017; co-authored with Shadi Hamid and Harold Trinkunas); “Aspiration and Ambivalence: Strategies and Realities of Counterinsurgency and State-Building in Afghanistan” (Brookings Institution Press, 2013); and “Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs” (Brookings Institution Press, 2010). She is also the author of numerous policy reports, academic articles, and opinion pieces. A frequent commentator in U.S. and international media, Felbab-Brown regularly provides congressional testimony on these issues. She has also been the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of her scholarly and policy contributions.
Among her recent publications are: “Can Colombia eradicate coca by drones? The illusion of a technological fix,” The Brookings Institution, July 24, 2018; “Death by bad implementation? The Duque administration and Colombia’s peace deal(s),” The Brookings Institution, July 24 2018; “Andrés Manuel López Obrador and a new era of politics in Mexico,” The Brookings Institution, July 3 2018; “The hard, hot, dusty road to accountability, reconciliation, and peace in Somalia,” United Nations University, June 2018; “In Nigeria, we don’t want them back,” United Nations University, June 2018; “How synthetic opioids can radically change global illegal drug markets and foreign policy,” The Brookings Institution, April 30, 2018; “Opioids of the Masses: Stopping an American Epidemic From Going Global,” Foreign Affairs, April 2018; “When Terrorists and Criminals Govern Better Than Governments,” The Atlantic, April 4, 2018; “Nigeria’s Troubling Counterinsurgency Strategy Against Boko Haram: How the Military and Militias Are Fueling Insecurity,” Foreign Affairs, March 30, 2018; “After the ivory bans, diligent enforcement is needed,” The Brookings Institution, March 2, 2018; and “Bone of contention: Pragmatism versus ideology in countering poaching and wildlife trafficking,” The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, March 1, 2018.
Felbab-Brown received her doctorate in political science from MIT and her bachelor’s in government from Harvard University.
Affiliations:
Council on Foreign Relations, member
Crime Law Enforcement, member, advisory board
Global Initiative Against Organized Crime, network member
New York University Center for International Cooperation, U.S.-China Dialogue on Afghanistan and Pakistan, member
Taliban Resources Project, member, advisory board
The future of U.S. policy in Afghanistan
Trade and borders: A reset for U.S.-Mexico relations in the Trump era?
The limits of punishment: Transitional justice and violent extremism
President-elect Bolsonaro has embraced tough-on-crime measures that egregiously violate basic human rights and eviscerate the rule of law. Responding to Brazil’s 63,880 homicides in 2017, Bolsonaro calls for increasing protection for police officers who kill alleged criminals and arming citizens. He calls for further militarizing urban policing, reducing the age of criminal liability from 18 to 16, reinstating the death penalty, authorizing torture in interrogations and imprisoning more people... Brazil’s police are already notorious for being one of the world’s deadliest in the use of force. In many favelas, Brazil’s retired and current police officers operate illegal militias that extort and control local communities, murdering those who oppose them and engaging in warfare with Brazil’s highly-violent gangs and in social cleansing. Bolsonaro is simply threatening to turn the rest of the police into state-sanctioned thugs.
The Duque government’s drug policy in Colombia is taking on a progressively ominous and counterproductive direction. It threatens to undermine the incomplete and struggling peace process, misdirect law enforcement resources, augment the alienation of coca farmers from the state and undermine human rights and drug users’ access to health services in Colombia. With their emphasis on criminalization of even drug possession for personal use and forced eradication, the announced policies clearly cater to the Trump administration’s doctrinaire and discredited drug policy preferences that harken back to the 1980s. But without sustainable livelihoods already in place, forced eradication will not sustainably reduce coca cultivation and cocaine production. The dominance of zero-coca thinking in Colombia whereby a community has to eradicate all coca first before it starts receiving even meager assistance from the state never produced positive results in Colombia.
