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    Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security
    Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security
    Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security
    Audiobook8 hours

    Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security

    Written by Sarah Chayes

    Narrated by Sarah Chayes

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff explains how government's oldest problem is its greatest destabilizing force. Thieves of State argues that corruption is not just a nuisance; it is a major source of geopolitical turmoil. Since the late 1990s, corruption has grown such that some governments now resemble criminal gangs, provoking extreme reactions ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Through intensive firsthand reporting, Sarah Chayes explores the security implications of corruption throughout our world: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government-but also redesigning Al Qaeda-and Nigerians embracing both evangelical Christianity and Islamist terrorist groups like Boko Haram. The pattern, moreover, pervades history. 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 that connects the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Chayes asserts that we cannot afford not to attack corruption, for it is a cause, and not a result, of global instability.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 19, 2015
    ISBN9781490650081
    Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security

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    Reviews for Thieves of State

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    • 4/5
      Whilst is concerned with a very important topic, this book is nowhere near being the vehicle to solve the problem. We got myriad stories of corruption and kleptocracy with wholly unrealistic solutions. She even threw in that China is the most corrupt country in the world and yet I remember almost nothing about China in the rest of the book. Finally, as an historian, I think should have researched the pronunciation of the words she couldn't say properly.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating book about the terrible costs of corruption in developing nations, and also about the costs to America of supporting corrupt regimes and systems in the name of stability (and patronizing assumptions that the citizens of those regimes are inured to corruption so it’s not a big deal). Chayes has extensive experience in Afghanistan, but also discusses various Middle Eastern countries where she identifies similar dynamics, and says that other experts saw similarities with narcoterrorism etc. in other afflicted countries. The basic argument: when corruption reaches down into citizens’ everyday lives, such that they can’t plan on going to market or getting a business license without paying a bribe—and maybe without even any certainty about how much the officials/police will take—they are outraged, and willing to listen to radicals who promise that only strict religious control can fix the worldly corruption in government. Corrupt regimes then use the threat of religious extremists and separatists to extract more support from the US, which support they use to strengthen their power networks and to validate their legitimacy. Chayes tells a terrifically depressing story of American officials who were either ignorant of the corruption going on in their names (as she initially was) or indifferent, not understanding corruption’s devastating long-term effects on security. It’s hard not to read books like this and think that we should really just get the hell out, and not just militarily; Chayes has suggestions for constructive engagement that pushes in the direction of reform, but her experience indicates that the political will to implement tough stances against corrupt officials is generally lacking in American representatives abroad.