As America marks its 250th birthday this summer, the celebrations come amid growing public skepticism about the health of American democracy. In the spring of 2026, a Pew Research survey exposed that 62% of Americans were dissatisfied with the way democracy was working.
This dissatisfaction is hard to square with the numbers. The United States has continued to maintain the world’s largest military budget by far, making up 37% of the world’s military spending in 2025. Meanwhile, China accounted for 12% and Russia approximately 5.5%. Economically, the United States still represents over a quarter of global GDP. By traditional measures of power, America remains dominant.
So why does the United States’ decline feel so real to so many Americans? And how do countries such as China and Russia continue to pose serious security challenges despite America’s overwhelming advantage in raw power? This contradiction reveals a fundamental truth that Washington has been slow to accept: America’s greatest threat is no longer military defeat from abroad, but democratic erosion from within.
While the United States remains strategically focused on traditional power balancing and military buildup, its adversaries increasingly recognize that democratic societies can be weakened more effectively from within through corruption, polarization, and the erosion of public trust. Allowing democratic institutions to become vulnerable to corruption is strategically comparable to leaving critical national defenses exposed to an adversary. Traditional measures of national strength are no longer trustworthy indicators of true global influence.
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Russia, in particular, is possibly more aware of America’s military and economic advantages than America itself. It knows it cannot outproduce the United States, or outspend NATO, or even come close to defeating America in a direct military conflict. So, it pursues a strategy of asymmetry and strategic corruption through the deliberate use of dark money, influence networks, and disinformation to weaken democratic societies from within. Where conventional warfare targets armies and territory, strategic corruption targets something more fragile and more foundational: public trust in democratic institutions. Strategic corruption transforms bribery and influence into instruments of geopolitical warfare, beyond the everyday, and depends on the foundational characteristics of democracy, such as openness, economic freedom, and lack of regulation, to erode it from within. Strategic corruption is not simply a failure of democracy; it is a strategy specifically designed to exploit the openness, economic freedom, and institutional accessibility that democratic systems require.
Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election demonstrated that modern geopolitical competition increasingly targets institutions rather than territory. According to national security analysts, Kremlin-backed influence operations sought not merely to support specific candidates but to deepen polarization, weaken confidence in democratic processes, and erode public trust in American institutions themselves. Declassified U.S. intelligence assessments have described Russian efforts to cultivate networks of academics, political figures, media personalities, and emerging Western leaders through organizations operating under the appearance of civil engagement. As U.S. Treasury statements on Kremlin malign influence operations have repeatedly noted, these campaigns aim to exploit societal divisions, reduce confidence in democratic processes, weaken alliances, and erode institutional legitimacy. In other words, the target is social cohesion itself.
This is not a new phenomenon. American policy creators have been aware of this growing threat for decades and have been attempting to respond. In December 2021, the federal government made significant attempts to defend against malign influence and improve anti-corruption measures, issuing the nation’s first United States Strategy on Countering Corruption. This action streamlined whole-of-government anti-corruption action in an influential way by strengthening multilateral anti-corruption enforcement through efforts such as appointing the first director for anti-corruption at the National Security Council and utilizing foreign assistance to support these initiatives. Additionally, by creating the Office of the Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption (CGAC) in the US Department of State, the initiative promoted an understanding of corruption as a national security threat.
Many of these institutions have since been dismantled in recent years. The Office on Global Anti-Corruption was closed, the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice was gutted, and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery initiative was cut. One of the most concerning actions taken was the end of the FBI’s foreign task force, whose mission was to investigate foreign influence campaigns, as well as the general loosening of anti-corruption restrictions, such as the suspension of the Corporate Transparency Act.
This is a break from precedent, not a partisan tradition being corrected. Tools like the Magnitsky Act, which sanctions human rights abusers and corrupt officials, and the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which mandates transparency regarding foreign influence, were established with substantial bipartisan support, reflecting a long-standing consensus that transparency and anti-corruption enforcement serve U.S. interests regardless of who holds power. Dismantling that infrastructure unwinds a bipartisan safeguard decades in the making.
The list of anti-corruption reversals goes on, and collectively, these actions represent a significant reduction in the federal government’s capacity to detect, investigate, and deter corruption and foreign influence operations. Fighting domestic corruption is not just an accountability issue; it is a pressing security threat that is continually overlooked, as the defense of democratic institutions is now inseparable from national defense. Continuing to make threat perceptions based upon outdated standards that fail to include strategic corruption, rather than purely aggregate power, risks serious miscalculations—for this administration and the next.
What was lost wasn’t military might or economic sway. It was institutions that were perceived as trustworthy. It was a vote that was guaranteed to be counted. It was the belief that foreign actors couldn’t buy political power. Democracies rarely collapse from external conquest alone; instead, they erode from within. The greatest threat to America in the coming years will most likely not be a nation that can match its military might. It will be a nation that can bring down its institutions through corruption and sow distrust in its leadership. This process of eroding government accountability has already begun, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be reversed. Rebuilding the anti-corruption architecture that’s been dismantled is not only possible but an absolute national security necessity.
