How tribalism drives graft and impedes real progress

I have said it before, and will do so here again — no nation, or people, have ever become great without a great elite. Countries are only as great as their elites. Several states in Asia — South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, China, Japan, and India — are Exhibit A.

Even North Korea — in spite of being ruled by a dynasty of a megalomaniacal family of dictators — has proven that a tiny state can exert power on the global stage. Not every lunatic can do what test-tube dictator Kim Jong Un is doing — unsettle and paralyse the great United States into a checkmate. That’s why I want to interrogate the cancer of corruption, and how it stunts states. My definition of corruption isn’t boilerplate.