A severely corrupt society is a country with serious vulnerability to soft power projection, open and covert influence operations, catalyzing of political instability, the triggering of disruptive events and divisive pointless debates, and deep and broad penetration of society, undermining of independent foreign and local policies that align with the values and principles of democracy by the Communist Party of China (CCP) and its myriad of government units, agencies and organizations.
Certainly, CCP-China can corrupt institutions, hijacking the very functions of democracy including elections. In many parts of the world, CCP operatives and sanctioned organized crime lords-agents have successfully penetrated the inner core circles of top decision-makers, lawmakers, and even those in the judiciary and law enforcement in the Western societies. Entire segments and political groups of the mainstream population in a poor, weak or even developing, susceptible country could be adopting the desired narratives of the Communist Party of China and their views of the United States and Americans, and Westerners could be nudged, shifted in the direction of disfavor or disapproval of certain policies in Western countries.
Beyond security cooperation, severe corruption and prevalence of organized crime also create constrictions for investments and trade between an afflicted country and Western powers. American, European and Japanese private companies can hardly compete in environments where bribery dictates processes and outcomes of transactions and contracts, more than competitive advantages and guardrails in laws and regulations in home countries. Thriving operations in gravely corrupted countries also help sustain transnational organized crime cross-border operations and in the case of illicit drugs and money laundering, among others, this means more violent crimes, disruptions in community peace and order, deaths and additional billions in tax money expenditures for law-enforcement, prevention and mitigation programs.
The semblance of regularity and seemingly independent functional units of government and even entire institutions and agencies in developing countries could actually be compromised, ready to follow CCP operatives’ prodding (not even needing aggressive push, that communist operatives also do so) whenever there is a need for a mission to advance commercial, military, diplomatic, political or organized crime and communist interests. Maybe, I think I speculate that I know of at least 3 key officials who are actually in the pockets of the CCP-China’s communist operatives, they receive millions a month in the form of bribes for legitimate commercial operations as a hedge against operational hassles, and what’s disgusting is that it’s an open secret. Thus, they, as many others, compromise national security. Billions of taxpayer money from Western powers’ citizens pouring to help the poor segment of the population and developmental assistances in all forms be damned, the constituents’, and country’s (national) interests come last due to excessive greed and easy money. Disgusting, because we have risked our lives to help save not a few local poor people including babies (during devastating calamities) and advance developmental agendas supposed (intended) to benefit entire poor communities.
Head-on: Severe corruption makes it far easier for organized transnational crime and terrorist organizations to operate, survive and thrive. So any society afflicted with a self-reinforcing dynamic between poor governance, sprouting of seeds of future conflicts and social chaos, and corruption would resist efforts by any leader and even entire institutions to substantially stem this. Even with civil society and mainstream population clamoring for more decent governance, this remains an intractable dilemma. Our work now would get negatively affected by my pronouncements on this topic, even by raising this issue again, so publicly, especially this site. But recent revelations of massive corruption in the infrastructure projects in the country, at scale that somewhat shocked even mainstream population and simple street smart folks and the non-tech savvy elderly in the remote rural areas, called for my personal stand on this.
Seemingly benign in local communities, organized crime operations kill, in all ways, including in killing-me-softly ways, and a corrupted local society is fertile ground for undermining of communist operatives of CCP-China
Organized criminality is corrosive, and destroys the very fabric of any society. It’s not only disruptive, but entirely undermining all other (collective) efforts to make a country and local communities more peaceful and safer on a long-term basis. Organized criminality even in its seemingly benign manifestation in and subtle penetration of local communities makes for a platform for heinous crimes, grave kinds of corrupt acts and practices to easily happen at any time. In the past, and I can say this in public now, it even caused double the national inflation, yes on a long-term period of time, in parts of the country where poverty rate was much higher than national average (so sad, their plight, so that inspired me to work against that too).
Yes, corruption kills, in all kinds of ways but more so in insidiously ways just below thresholds for active attention and interventions by higher-level authorities in national government agencies. Presence of elements of organized criminality makes feasible subtle acts of oppression-repression of individuals and families or entire groups of people whose interests are in contrast or at least not aligned with corrupted local leadership and bureaucracy.
Organized crime operations and unmitigated corruption sustain terror groups’ and undermine nation-building and aids and assistances by Western powers to anti-poverty and developmental programs in some developing countries
In areas, regions, of any country where there are organized armed groups waging insurgency, separatist and terroristic war against the government, organized crime groups without cultural, ideological and political anchors exponentially multiplies the intractability of all kinds of problems because of both the overlapping and also clashing special interests and confounding the bases for pursuing solutions. The United States, Japan, Australia and European nations have been helping on this dilemma in the Philippines for many decades in the past.
The United States, using American taxpayer dollars, and other Western countries and Japan, have spent in direct aids and assistances billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of pesos, for both intervention and long-term programs to prevent and mitigate violent activities and bigger conflicts, in Mindanao in southern Philippines. The strategic rationale beyond humanitarian motivations is that a weak super-region in any country makes a weak country and thus a weak security and economic partner-ally of the United States, Japan and the West. Yes I heard a voice, indeed there are of course self-serving economic and political benefits too, and I need not say that as it’s an inherent part of foreign policies of all countries (CCP-China is blatant in its practices and even contract requirements for this).
A weak, worse, internal-conflict troubled regions are operational heavens for interference by those with nefarious intentions among external (state and transnational non-state) actors. These areas and the social and political environments are fertile breeding grounds for all sorts of illegal activities and also terrorism and plots. There is a no clear boundary between the functioning of organized crime groups and some government officials, or even entire government units or institutions. President Trump, and Israel’s leaders and top security officials, spoke of NGOs and aid mechanisms having been somewhat hijacked by terror-tagged organizations. As to what was the situation relevant to this, in southern Philippines, is something I can’t tackle here, but I can just say we helped save lives and not a few of it in this context.
It’s not my intention to give my comprehensive personal take on this issue and realities, and the overall topic. This is a subject close to my heart as a serious-crime victim in the past, and for having suffered from torture (definition in Western countries and international institutions and bodies) a number of times. So there’s so much and many topics for me to feel like publicly say things, but I have far more and better reasons to not go into that here and now.
Thriving organized crime in a conducive regional social and political ecosystem breeds superpower political and even non-political entities, those who can influence national politics, policies, administration of justice, and be decisive in national elections thus practically undermining the most fundamental exercise of democracy. As if it could not get worse, it always did. And we were direct witnesses to this, with kind of front-seat vantage point. Organized crime groups, especially those within or with ties to transnational crime groups and security establishment of a foreign country can cause, trigger, design programmed and controlled national political environments using a dual-edge sword to undermine the rule of law, undermine national interests and security (even in the name of it, how nefarious) and catalyze and excuse widespread violence. As I stated earlier, on this I can’t say more on this, and I already said more than what’s necessary.
President Marcos Jr. of the Philippines
President Ferdinand “Bong Bong” R. Marcos has done more to facilitate a process to tackle severe corruption in the country. He has taken very serious political and even personal risks here, and I personally admired him for this. He has done far more than almost all other presidents of the country, and I am specific on his whole-of-government and institutional and direct presidential efforts here. At the scale, the enormity of the dilemma, to directly tackle this at the full scale necessary would not be practical and at all feasible for him and his administration, because of the likelihood that he would be held hostage by all the rest of non-allied political forces and the alternative would be that the most financially and politically capable corrupt forces would try to wrestle control of the country to protect and advance their special interests too and that includes capture of ever more wealth and powers to guarantee lifelong impunity for past bad deeds.
So in this case, we are firmly on the side of relative stability and the improving governance during his current term. We can disagree on some of the means and ways in the anti-corruption drive of the incumbent government, but we are in agreement in his overall approach and many of his administration’s policies and national priorities. I do think he can go more decisive and be also targeted at local levels in terms of crackdown on corruption afflicting this country. We have also advocated for his audience with former POTUS Biden early in the Marcos assumption of power, and audience with President Trump this year.
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