2014: VP Joe Biden on Corruption to Romanian Civil Society Groups and Students.

Corruption is a cancer, a cancer that eats away at a citizen’s faith in democracy, diminishes the instinct for innovation and creativity; already-tight national budgets, crowding out important national investments. It wastes the talent of entire generations. It scares away investments and jobs. And most importantly it denies the people their dignity. It saps the collective strength and resolve of a nation. Corruption is just another form of tyranny.

And corruption can represent a clear and present danger not only to a nation’s economy, but to its very national security. There are nations, and we’ve seen it recently, that exploit corruption to exercise malign influence and undermine the very sovereignty and independence of their neighbors.

In this way, corruption has become an instrument of foreign policy for some nations. When politicians can be bought, when courts can be manipulated, when the media becomes a tool of propaganda, there you will find a society that is susceptible to manipulation from the outside. There you’ll find a society that loses control of its own destiny -- not only its political security, but its physical security and military readiness is also compromised.

We’ve recently seen that in Ukraine. We saw how over a decade and a half of corruption, literally has hollowed out their military institutions and weakened that country’s very capacity to defend itself.

So fighting corruption is more than just good government. It’s self-defense. It’s a guarantor of your national sovereignty.