While many ambassadors still pursue anti-corruption policies, the Trump administration has sometimes undercut them
who have testified to Congress over the past two weeks have underlined a fundamental point about the impeachment investigation into Donald Trump: it grows out of America’s fight against corruption in eastern Europe. First George Kent, a State Department official, explained that since Ukraine’s revolution in 2014 America had come to see corruption as a vital tool of Russian influence.
As relations with Russia soured early this decade, American intelligence agencies grew concerned about Russian money-laundering flows. “Corruption was being used as a tool of coercion by outside actors, but it was also rottingmembers from inside,” says Victoria Nuland, an architect of policy under the Obama administration. Mr Biden began visiting central and eastern Europe to stress that America now saw corruption as a national-security issue.
Instead of backing anti-corruption stances by its embassies, the Trump administration has sometimes undercut them. Mr Trump’s withdrawal of Ms Yovanovitch had a chilling effect on diplomats. Bill Taylor, who replaced Ms Yovanovitch as ambassador, has testified to a “second track” of diplomacy, in which those with personal connections to Mr Trump sidelined the government’s official policymaking process.
The impeachment conflict may also hurt independent anti-corruption prosecutors, such as those in Romania, who depend for information on co-operation with American intelligence agencies. Those agencies will be less eager to share information if they do not think the White House cares about the issue. Anti-corruption activists say it does not; they have learned to phrase their appeals as efforts to protect American investors.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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