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US President Donald Trump reacts after signing executive orders imposing tariffs on imported goods in the Rose Garden at the White House on April 2, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik via Getty Images)
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Photo by: Ivan Vdovin
Recent global events show that the post-Cold War flow of money and values was not a one-way affair. The West is witnessing an increasingly coordinated assault on its own democratic system. This destructive import of corrupt practices comes not only from post-Soviet kleptocratic regimes like Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Russia, but also from China and other countries around the world whose ruling elites now possess far-reaching financial and political interests in the West.
On October 11th, Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative held a discussion of Ilya Zaslavskiy’s report, How Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West After opening remarks by Mr. Zaslavskiy and responses by Jeffrey Gedmin and David Kramer, two expert panels explored the development of corrupt norms and the true nature of contemporary kleptocratic regimes, as well as the methods they deploy to undermine Western democracy – and what can be done to fight back.
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