Sarah Chayes, former NPR reporter and special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on her new book, "Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security."
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ABOUT THE LECTURE
In "Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security" Sarah Chayes propounds an unexpected thesis: behind many of today's security crises -- from the East-West stand-off in Ukraine to the tenacity of such extremist groups as ISIS or Boko Haram, to the Arab Spring revolutions -- lies a rule of law deficit: acute government corruption. She will discuss her reasoning and how kleptocratic regimes bend the legal mechanisms designed to provide redress to their purposes -- or, as a Tunisian activist put it: how they "make villainous laws that circumvent law by law." She will engage with participants on potential rule of law tools available to help curb abusive corruption and its effects.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
After a decade on the ground in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, Afghanistan, service to two commanders of the international troops in-country and then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sarah Chayes is now a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
A former reporter, she covered the fall of the Taliban for National Public Radio. But, convinced of the importance of the historic juncture, she opted to leave journalism and remain in Afghanistan to contribute to the reconstruction of the country, founding a manufacturing cooperative that produces natural skin-care products for export (www.arghand.org).
Her research over the past several years makes plain that the linkages she found in Afghanistan between acute corruption and the rise of extremism have much broader relevance. Chayes is also author of The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban and a contributing writer for the Los Angeles Times. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, and Foreign Policy, among other publications.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in northern Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption.
Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes—ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth and examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity.
The pattern, moreover, pervades history. Through deep archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as the great medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a thrilling argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. And it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption, for it is a cause—not a result—of global instability.
You can watch Sarah Chayes' appearances on the Daily Show with John Stewart by clicking here and here.