Provoke American surrounded by corruption (5)
I believe the answer is:
roust
'provoke' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are verbs in their base form.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'american surrounded by corruption' is the wordplay.
'american' becomes 'US' (United States).
'surrounded by' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'corruption' becomes 'rot' (rot can mean corruption or decay).
'us' inserted into 'rot' is 'ROUST'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for roust that I've seen before include "Treat roughly - disturb" , "Root out" , "Rouse, disturb" , "Get out of bed maybe" , "Create stir" .)