Thieves of State
A former adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff explains how government's oldest problem is its greatest destabilizing force. The world is blowing up. 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
eBook, English, 2015
W.W. Norton & Company, [Place of publication not identified], 2015
1 online resource
9780393246537, 0393246531
1151442842
Intro
Title
Contents
Chapter One. "If I See Somebody Planting an IED . . ."
Afghanistan, 2009
Chapter Two. "Lord King, How I Wish That You Were Wise"
Mirrors for Princes, ca. 700-1516
Chapter Three. Hearing the People's Complaints
Kandahar to Kabul, 2001-2009
Chapter Four. Nonkinetic Targeting
Kabul, 2009
Chapter Five. Vertically Integrated Criminal Syndicates
Kabul, Garmisch, 2009-2010
Chapter Six. Revolt Against Kleptocracy
The Arab Spring: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, 2011 Chapter Seven. Variation 1: The (Overlooked) Military-Kleptocratic Complex
Egypt, ca. 2010
Chapter Eight. Variation 2: The Bureaucratic Kleptocracy
Tunisia, ca. 201091
Chapter Nine. Variation 3: The Post-Soviet Kleptocratic Autocracy
Uzbekistan, ca. 2013
Chapter Ten. Variation 4: The Resource Kleptocracy
Nigeria, ca. 2014
Chapter Eleven. Up a Level
Afghanistan and Washington, June 2010-January 2011
Chapter Twelve. Forging an Appeal on Earth
The Netherlands, England, America, ca. 1560-1787
Chapter Thirteen. Violent Extremists
Chapter Fourteen. Remedies Epilogue Self-Reflection
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Also by Sarah Chayes
Praise for THIEVES OF STATE
Copyright