Fighting Corruption with Public Diplomacy

The subject of corruption has been much in the news, not to mention in conversations in Washington lately. Everyone is condemning Afghan corruption with righteous indignation.

Here the inside-the-Beltway crowd apparently believe that if some important American such as President Obama or Secretary Clinton would just tell the Afghans to stop the corruption, that will do it. After all, it's just political will power, right? Obama could throw a tantrum with Karzai, Karzai would in turn throw a tantrum in Kabul, and the Afghans would change everything right away. Corruption would end.

No probably not.

But, there are things we can do. Most Foreign Service Officers know that anti-corruption is a long-term task. The pros know that you use public diplomacy programs to change outcomes more often than you use old fashioned political appeals, too. Fighting corruption requires education, not simply political arm twisting. It is a matter of changing perceptions and norms, not convincing a few individuals to decree a change in deep-seated behaviors.

Years ago when I was Ambassador in Latvia, anti-corruption was a major focus. The country was riven by cliques, and the main purpose of political parties seemed to be the enabling of more corruption. We knew that for Latvia to become a successful member of NATO and the European Union, the corrupt practices had to be gotten under control. Maybe not expunged completely, but certainly gotten down to the Italian or Greek level at least.

My predecessors in Riga (and most other East European democracies) had been working on the corruption issue since 1989 or 1991, long before I arrived. And, while each of us might think there was some progress from time to time, surely it was a slow business. Ending corruption in a nation essentially means changing people's expectations, changing their minds about right vs wrong, establishing new standards in a society.

So, how do you fight corruption, especially if you are a foreigner? There are, I believe, with three tools: definition, measurement and demonstration. That is, you need to (a) define what is corruption (in the host nation person's mind, not our American viewpoint), (b) identify and measure corruption (often by encouraging transparency) and (c) penalize the corrupt and reward the honest people in every way you can.

What is corruption? People in different cultures will have distinct ideas of what constitutes corruption. In a society where civil servants are obviously underpaid, it may be acceptable to the majority that they get a little "bakshish" for doing their jobs. Maybe it is okay to "tip" a low-level official for fast service, but it is not okay to win an auction for an entire forest or oil rights with bribes. You have to start with what the people in the country think is corrupt, not what we Americans might think is corrupt behavior.

You can aim to change that perception, but you had better not assume that your definition is their definition.

It may also be necessary to address some structural problems. In East Europe, we often argued for increasing the salaries of policemen, prosecutors and judges in order to remove much of the temptation to solicit under the table payments.

Having understood the definition of corruption, the majority of a successful American embassy's effort goes into finding ways to measure the corruption and identify it. At the most basic level, the Americans may try to establish and support public interest groups that will fight corruption. Perhaps there is a need to provide training in investigative journalism and related skills like forensic accounting to the media, to prosecutors and judges. We learned in Latvia that the judges, long used to taking political orders during communist times, had little experience in evaluating evidence, especially in complicated financial cases. We did a lot of judicial training and paid attention to the courts' ability to manage document-intensive cases. Maybe an academic journal will become a forum for discussions on the nature and impact of corruption.

Better than attempting to jawbone the leadership on the corruption issue in public fora, an embassy can signal its support for the ethical administrators at public events, can mention their accomplishments in media interviews, and can find opportunities to stand beside them (and behind them when necessary). On more than one occasion, as ambassador, I reminded key politicians that the American government admired certain officials and their accomplishments. Not too subtly, I also noted that Washington would judge the political leaders by the way they stood behind these key corruption fighters. Such mention did not go unnoticed.

And of course, there is the negative side. We made sure it was noticed that certain politicians were never invited to embassy events, never were guests of the ambassador, and never had a "grip and grin" with senior U.S. government visitors. In a couple of cases, we even let it be known that should certain individuals apply for a U.S. visa, they most likely would be turned down.

In the end, however, whatever path the embassy takes, much of the diplomat's role is going to be educational, with dollops of encouragement and reward. Twisting arms and public denunciations may feel satisfying, but they produce limited results. Moreover, too much criticism inevitably puts the Americans in a proconsul or "preachy" mode vis a vis host nation leaders. That is one that is rarely popular for long, and tends to undermine our objecive.

In a practical sense, what an embassy can do is limited. We can support those who want to do the right things, help to educate people (journalists need investigative reporting tools and training, judges need education and training, etc.), and continually honor and illuminate the success stories. The Riga AmCham and your statement of Good Corporate Citizenship are, in my view, success stories that merit the embassy's clear support.