Sometimes important shifts in U.S. policy come quietly. They
don't make the evening news. They don't reverberate in the blogosphere. They
just creep in and gradually take effect. But their consequences can be
far-reaching.
Today, speaking at Brookings, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an
address discussing U.S. priorities for the UN General Assembly meeting next week. She focused on non-proliferation and,
naturally, by extension, Iran. But then, in answer to a question, she gave an
answer that one top State Department official characterized as "historic"
because it "for the first time characterized corruption as a national security
rather than just as a 'good governance' issue."
The comment resonates on several levels. On the one, perhaps
closest to today's headlines, it ties in directly to the McChrystal Report
which identifies abuse of government power in Afghanistan as an equal threat to
the insurgency. As such it sends a very powerful message to the Karzai
government that unless they seriously clean up their act they could go from
being a central beneficiary of allied efforts in their country to being a
target of our efforts to promote change.
Next, there are broader implications. Corruption is the
life's blood of many of the most substantial national security threats the
United States faces. Whether the concern is illegal arms sales or proliferation
of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism or insurgencies, government stability
or functioning free markets, public health or public safety, drugs or human
trafficking, if you don't identify and battle corruption true progress is
impossible.
As such, to shrug it off as a "civil society" issue -- thus
guaranteeing it never once gets the attention of senior officials or the
resources required to address it -- or worse, to simply suggest it is endemic
the world over and simply a way business gets done among elites, especially in
the emerging world, is simply reckless.
Further, to fight it ... particularly when it is a central
element of top national security threats ... requires far more than mere police
efforts or the worthy but limited capabilities of NGOs like Transparency
International. It is a job that on the
one hand requires intelligence community resources to identify and track
targets and on the other demands the involvement of top policymakers because
many of those who are the offenders, like Karzai, are senior officials, top
businesspeople, heads of terrorist or criminal syndicates. These are the not-so-super members of what I
called in my last book The Superclass. They are also the planners, enablers
and beneficiaries of some of the most dangerous types of corruption worldwide.
Simply by underscoring the message to Karzai and Company,
Clinton's remarks are important. But if
she and the administration plan to systematically go after the corruption that
is linked to many if not most of our greatest international concerns, if her
casual remark is indicative of a new resolve to confront this threat (best
described for the world in FP editor-in-chief Moisés Naím's definitive work on
the subject Illicit) then it is one of the few examples I can think of "smart
power" that real deserves that description.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
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