Biden’s anti-corruption agenda must be a priority
With so many immediate challenges at home and in the hemisphere, Biden needs to commit early to anti-corruption as a core national security interest.
Last month, I highlighted Biden’s likely anti-corruption push in Central America and anti-corruption mandates and sanctions in the recent appropriations bills passed by the US Congress.
Recent events have highlighted just how hard the anti-corruption agenda will be.
Mexico - Former Defense Minister Cienfuegos was exonerated and the Lopez Obrador administration mocked and dismissed the evidence gathered by the US that proved Cienfuegos was on the pay of a criminal organization. AMLO’s treatment of this case and the evidence will hamper intelligence sharing and prosecutions moving forward. US officials should be concerned about who among active military commanders pressed for the release of Cienfuegos and what their agenda is. While some high profile commentators in Mexico say the case highlights the corruption within AMLO’s government, as I’ve written before, AMLO is largely winning the public opinion battle on anti-corruption issues and there is no sign that will change with the Cienfuegos case.
This is just one of a large number of issues on the US-Mexico agenda that includes migration, trade and climate change.
Honduras - It’s public knowledge that Juan Orlando Hernandez’s party stole government money and then the president rigged his reelection in 2017. As Univision and others reported in recent weeks, documents filed by US government prosecutors make increasingly clear Hernandez also engaged in drug trafficking and used his office to have competitors threatened and killed. Biden has prioritized helping the Northern Triangle with security and economic assistance (plus Honduras must recover from last year’s hurricanes and hold an election), and all of that will be harder when actively working to counter corruption at the very top.
Venezuela - Hundreds of billions have been stolen from the Venezuelan people over the past decade and corruption has played a key role in sanctions evasion and helping the Maduro regime consolidate and remain in power. Even as the Biden administration considers a new approach to Venezuela in the coming months, at some point Alex Saab will likely be extradited to the United States and he may have a wealth of information that could help expose corruption and shut down money laundering networks. That could be helpful in both negotiations and pressure against Maduro, but could also limit the options for new policies.
Whatever comes next - The above points are just a few of the corruption scandals around the hemisphere that will also impact relations if the Biden administration cracks down on corrupt actors. Those are all known. Another challenge comes from the corruption scandals that aren’t public and will be revealed this year or next. New corruption scandals may disrupt allies and force the administration to face tough choices about who they partner with.
In the short term, it’s anti-corruption vs everything else. In the long term, the success of every policy depends on transparent government.
Focusing more globally, Casey Michel writes in The New Republic that the Biden administration has an opportunity to “Make Kleptocrats Fear America Again.” It’s a partisan, anti-Trump article and I agree with almost all of it. The key points for readers are near the end where he outlines the Biden agenda on anti-corruption. Some of Michel’s comments are aspirational, but many are based around Biden’s campaign promises that outline what the next president is planning to do.
From the perspective of hemispheric relations, the two best things the Biden administration can do to start are:
Fulfill the campaign promise to issue “a presidential policy directive that establishes combating corruption as a core national security interest.” That is an incredibly important step because without making anti-corruption a core national security interest, it will quickly fall by the wayside amid the many other competing priorities in the hemisphere.
Combat corruption inside the US including cracking down on shell companies and money laundering fronts used by many corrupt actors in Latin America. Latin America has little reason to take anti-corruption actions within their own borders when kleptocrats can hide their money in bank accounts and condos in Miami, New York and San Antonio.
There are big challenges for the next administration to address in this hemisphere: coronavirus response and vaccine distribution, economic recovery, climate change adaptation and mitigation, citizen security, multiple migration and refugee crises, and the need to reverse a decline in democracy in too many countries including our own.
Cracking down on corruption will anger a lot of important political and economic actors across the hemisphere, will limit the shortcuts the US can take, and makes every single one of the other tasks harder in the short term. It’s possible a well-meaning administration may overlook corruption concerns as it attempts to prioritize the challenges and achieve its goals. But transparent government is necessary for sustainable success in the long term on all of those agenda items.
Thanks for reading
The topic from last week’s newsletter on technology companies deplatforming leaders was adapted and rewritten into an op-ed published in the Financial Times this week.
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