From September 13 through 21, 2025, the author traveled to Lima, Peru for an event bring them together faculty from the US Army War College and it’s alumni from Peru and across the region. There, he spoke to a wide range of Peruvian security experts about the country’s challenges and the response of its government and security forces.  This work relays the insights from those conversations.

Peru is currently beset by a troubling array of mutually reinforcing and deepening problems involving insecurity, criminality, and corruption, threatening the long-term prosperity, stability and democratic governance of the country. Peru is plagued by destructive interactions between expanding illicit economies involving drugs, mining, illegal logging, other contraband, as well as extortion and kidnapping. 

These dynamics involve a fragmented array of criminal family clans, responding to external demands, and sometimes facilitated by external criminal groups from Mexico, Brazil, Europe, China, and elsewhere.  These activities leverage the weakness of Peruvian institutions, high rates of corruption and informality, and in the process contribute to that dysfunctionality.  That informality and institutional weakness also make combating the money flows of criminal groups almost impossible.