Last Thursday President Biden officially declared what corruption fighter have long known:

Biden then did what no corruption fighter could. He issued a National Security Memorandum making “countering corruption . . . a core United States national security interest.”   To that end he pledged “to promote good governance; bring transparency to the United States and global financial systems; prevent and combat corruption at home and abroad; and make it increasingly difficult for corrupt actors to shield their activities.”

The Biden memo directs the most senior member of his government to develop a presidential strategy to fight corruption both within the United States and abroad that targets precisely the issues the global anticorruption community, including this Blog, have identified as critical. They are measures to: combat illicit financial flows; increase asset recovery efforts and the return of stolen assets to victim states; target grand corruption by leaders of foreign states; strengthen civil society, the media, and other agents of accountability; incorporate anticorruption measures into foreign assistance programs; pressure international agencies and organizations to focus on the demand side of bribery; and enhance U.S. assistance to foreign law enforcement agencies investigating and prosecuting corruption.

That the Biden memo reads like the anticorruption community’s wish list should come as no surprise. Before taking up his post as Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan was a member of the community in good standing (some of his writings on corruption here, here, and here), and in his first interview after being named the president’s top adviser on foreign policy he said his goal was “to rally our allies to combat corruption and kleptocracy, and to hold systems of authoritarian capitalism accountable for greater transparency and participation in a rules-based system.”

The headline on a column on the prospects for success of the Biden initiative by the Washington Post’s leading foreign affairs commentator captures what I suspect are GAB readers’ sentiments: “Biden’s anti-corruption plan appears to have some teeth. Here’s hoping they bite.”