Bribery is always the cost of doing business, everywhere, even in countries like ours where there are strong ethical guidelines and legal authorities to prosecute it, it still goes on under the table. Corruption also occurs at more abstract levels, such as quid pro quo, lobbying, political favors, propaganda, crooked elections, regime change, destabilization, etc. It isn't always about handing a sheik a bag full of simoleons or giving a rebel leader a shipment of rifles. It's not the local custom, or a quaint peculiarity of some inferior culture, it is inevitable wherever big money is chasing even bigger money. It's how the game is played, how it has always been played, and when money is the prize it also becomes a weapon. And where money is a weapon, the one with the most of it usually wins.

But this is a very fine academic distinction for the individuals who are the victims of this game, or even for those who play it willingly and still lose. This is how rebels, fascists and communists take hold, how agrarian reform and labor movements take over; injustice, frustration and anger and poverty breed nationalism, terrorism, religious fanaticism and revolution, and because the world is not a simple, black and white place, the reaction is often as bad as the original injustice. But there is blame enough to go around for everyone. Just because there is an overreaction doesn't mean a change wasn't necessary.

So if you come in from outside, working for one of the players, it doesn't matter if you're honest and fair and trying to do a good job or even if your boss feels that way too. The whole system has a dynamic to it, an inevitablity, it can't help but corrupt everything it touches. Let's just be charitable and call it a clash of cultures, like the one between the Indians and the palefaces.

No, I don't know how to fix this, maybe no one does, maybe no one can. But I do know one thing, if you pretend there isn't a problem it will never go away, it will only get worse and cause even more misery and war down the line.