The Foreign Service Journal - December 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2017 11 to enforce the Foreign Cor- rupt Prac- tices Act, encourage other major trading and investing nations to enforce their similar com- mitments under the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop- ment Anti-Bribery Convention, and urge countries like China and India to become signatories of that agreement. Toward that end, the United States needs to organize its foreign assistance programs so that bribery and corrup- tion do not despoil the very economic development they try to promote. We also need to curb the bribery and cor- ruption that can undermine our military and political efforts to defeat terrorism in places like Afghanistan. The challenge for our country and our foreign policy is even more fun- damental, however. Corruption is essentially about the abuse of entrusted power. Americans entrust power to gov- ernment officials, and we expect these officials to use that power to promote the public interest, consistent with the promises they have made and the oaths they have undertaken. Unfortunately, for some time now the majority of Americans across the political spectrum have believed that their government officials are untrustworthy. The United States is the most power- ful country in the world. Through our alliances and the international institu- tions we established, the United States has pledged to exercise our power in a manner consistent with the promises we have made. People count on us. When