The Foreign Service Journal, November 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | NOVEMBER 2021 19 Fighting Corruption Following Glasgow, President Biden will convene fellow democracies to address the scourge of international corruption. The president’s “Summit for Democracy,” set for Dec. 9-10, will focus on corruption’s ties to authoritarianism and related threats to human rights. The United States and our partners will forge new anti-kleptocracy principles and commitments, then meet again in a year to gauge progress toward those goals. Biden is wise to focus on interna- tional corruption. America is now in a clash of civilizations between rule-of-law democracies and nations corrupted by autocrats, kleptocrats and international criminals. These foes of democracy nur- ture a dark realm of international theft, brutality and criminality that the rule of law would thwart. The summit’s first objective should be to understand our adversaries’ mixed motivations. Kleptocrats and criminals want to degrade our rule of law, and dim the beacon of hope we offer the people they rob and oppress. But their greed drives them to seek rule-of-law protec- tion in countries where their pelf is safe from the next crook or strongman who might come after them. The result has been an explosion of illicit investments hiding in rule-of-law jurisdictions. To our shame, the United States has become one of the principal shelters for corrupt assets. Secrecy is key in this dark economy, and our system allows billion- aire oligarchs or corrupt state-sponsored enterprises to hide illicit wealth behind webs of American shell corporations, complex real estate transactions and other schemes. According to one study of 60 coun- tries, found in the 2014 book Global Shell Games , only Kenya makes it easier than the United States to set up anonymous shell companies. The United States is one of the best places to find profession- als—lawyers, accountants, realtors and others—who will help hide dirty money. While we have begun to address some of this mischief—such as the shell corpora- tion transparency requirements I helped to pass last year—we still aid and abet dangerous adversaries by helping them hide their loot. This shouldn’t be the case. American laws, such as the Foreign Corrupt Prac- tices Act, are model safeguards against corruption. And our law enforcement agencies, from the Treasury Depart- ment’s Financial Center to the FBI, are among the most effective cops on the global anti-corruption beat. But for too long we have tolerated those who service kleptocrats and criminals in our country, and for too long we have failed to join in common cause against the dark econo- my’s servants in other countries. It is in our national security interest to help rid the world of the dark economy. We can, and must, do better. Where Climate and Corruption Meet The fights against climate change and corruption intertwine. Fossil fuel money has been a persistent source of corrup- tion around the world. The doctrine of the “resource curse” arises from this phenomenon. As Senator Graham and I recently wrote, the world will be a safer place without fossil fuels, if only for reducing the ability of Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia to work murderous fossil- fueled mischief. Our corrupt adversaries in the clash of civilizations will threaten faithful implementation of ambitious cli- mate policy. The sooner and more force- fully we act on these twin problems, the better our chances of success on both. A particularly dangerous crucible of conflict is Kashmir, which faces water security challenges driven by climate change. Even at the 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming scientists say could be safe, research suggests temperatures across most of the Himalayas will rise an average of 2.1 degrees Celsius. This will cut the Himalayan glacier mass by more than a third by 2100, reducing annual ice melt correspondingly. Reduced river flow will take its own toll; the U.S. Institute of Peace warns of the prospect of rampant sickness, hunger and economic calamity, which could, “in turn, open the door to conflict.” We must act swiftly or risk runaway sea level rise, searing heat waves, cataclysmic storms and other calamities, with grave consequences to national security and world order.