It's not about our laws, it's about their laws. Whether bribery is legal or otherwise tolerated seems to be a question properly for the country whose officials are being bribed. It may be hard to imagine, but this is just how it works in some countries. They don't pay their public officials enough, and everyone expects that they pad their inadequate official salaries with corruption. I certainly wouldn't want my country to be run that way, but it's just how some societies work.
Yes, the bribery is technically illegal in most of those countries, but thinking that is is of primary importance is mistaking western legalism for a universal ethos. In many other places, the technical requirements of the law are much less important. The real law in all cases is what is actually practiced, which in these societies can be quite different from what's on the books.
> mistaking western legalism for a universal ethos.
If our laws aren't reflecting a "universal ethos," then it seems to me we need to change our own laws. If, on the other hand, our laws are tuned to reflect our judgment that bribery is universally ethically and economically problematic for a multitude of defensible reasons (regardless of whether it's a common practice elsewhere), then perhaps we are doing the right thing.
Sometimes theory and practice come into conflict. Persuading others to adopt our policies, which we believe to be grounded in universally applicable ethics, through economic pressure is the best thing we know how to do that doesn't involve going to war.
Yes, the bribery is technically illegal in most of those countries, but thinking that is is of primary importance is mistaking western legalism for a universal ethos. In many other places, the technical requirements of the law are much less important. The real law in all cases is what is actually practiced, which in these societies can be quite different from what's on the books.