The Hindu Business Line : Bush stokes anti-US embers — `Shock-and-awe' dispenser as World Bank chief

A truly terrifying appointment. You can't have a situation where rich countries lecture developing countries about democracy and then aren't prepared to exercise democracy in this kind of appointment.

Dave Timms,

World Development Movement

The enthusiasm in old Europe is not exactly overwhelming.

Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul,

German Development Minister

The appointment is another provocation from the US administration and the neo-conservatives to the Third World, especially the Arabs and Muslims.

al-Quds al-Arabi,

Arabic newspaper

As well as lacking any relevant experience, he is a deeply divisive figure who is unlikely to move the Bank towards a more pro-poor agenda.

Patrick Watt,

ActionAid

The position of president of the World Bank is one of the most important in the world. It's a very surprising and, in many ways, inappropriate nomination. He is a man without international development experience, without professional qualifications. He has not demonstrated an interest in the Millennium Development Goals, the shared international commitments to the fight against extreme poverty. (He) is not a banker, an economist, a public health specialist, a water management specialist, an agronomist, a climate change specialist — any of the professional specialisations that stand at the core of the poverty challenge.

Jeffrey Sachs

FROM the above sampler of the reactions provoked by the nomination of the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Mr Paul D. Wolfowitz, for the World Bank chief in the place of Mr James Wolfensohn retiring in June, made by the US President, Mr George W. Bush, it is obvious that the high priest of the neocon(servative) ideology of scorched earth and shock-and-awe has not exactly endeared himself to the world community. No wonder.

Here is a person who, as early as in the Administration of the senior Bush in the 1970s, propounded the doctrine of aggressive diplomatic and military interventions, preemptive strikes and regime change, and even went so far as to asseverate in a Defence Policy Guidance draft that the US should actively deter nations from "aspiring to a larger regional or global role".

He was impatiently spoiling for an operation to topple Saddam Hussein immediately after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, even without the pretext — subsequently concocted by twisting the arm of intelligence agencies — of possession of weapons of mass destruction. At that time, Mr Wolfowitz angrily proclaimed the US' determination not only to pursue terrorists, but "end" states sponsoring or harbouring them.

Blinkered view

He is an unabashed and uncompromising supremacist when it comes to holding that the US is the best that has happened to God's universe, and spreading its power and influence is next in importance to spreading the gospel. It is said that in May 2001, he ordered the recall and destruction of 600,000 Chinese-made berets intended for use by troops, explicitly stating the reason in an official memorandum that "The Army Chief of Staff has determined that US troops shall not wear berets made in China or berets made with Chinese content."

This blinkered view of the world has much in common with that of another neocon maestro and Mr Bush's appointee for the post of the US Ambassador to UN, Mr John R. Bolton, who said scathingly of that body that it wouldn't make a bit of difference if it lost 10 out of its 38 stories, and that the UN Security Council needed only one permanent member, the US, "because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world."

As the whole world knows, Mr Wolfowitz was the principal prime mover behind the invasion of Iraq and all that it has set in train. The US Congressional inquiries and the investigative reports of that country's media point to the possibility that the atrocities perpetrated in the Guantanamo Bay and the Iraqi detention camps by the US military could not have occurred without the knowledge, if not the connivance and encouragement, of the top echelons of the Department of Defence itself, in which Mr Wolfowitz held a high rank.

The mission statement of the World Bank and the prescription of Mr Wolfowitz for dealing with the developing world could not be more diametrically opposite. He is one soaked in the neocon economic philosophy of free-for-all market and trickle-down benefits of flourishing private enterprise. A corollary of that philosophy is that the poor are so by choice, and development aid, by which the World Bank swears, will only act as a disincentive for improving one's lot, whether it is an individual or a country.

The only thrust area of the World Bank with which Mr Wolfowitz may be in total agreement is the purported "reform of government services" in countries as part of the conditionality of the Bank's loan or aid, as this gives a readymade handle to change, if not the regimes, at least the recipients' policies towards acceptance of the neocon ideology. Unless Mr Bush thinks that the world should swallow whatever he chooses to thrust down its throat, he could not have thought of a more unsuitable person to head an agency meant "to wipe every tear from every eye" (as Mahatma Gandhi said in another context setting out the goal of human existence) with its annual allocation of close to $20 billion as aid.

Mr Bush has, with his usual bravura, justified his choice by citing Mr Wolfowitz's three-year stint as the US Ambassador to Indonesia which has ostensibly given him the opportunity of watching at close quarters the problems besetting a developing country. Mr Bush has also been adequately impressed by the welling of compassion that he noticed in Mr Wolfowitz for the people of the tsunami-affected areas during his recent tour.

Mr Bush goes on to mention the insights into the world's ills his protégé had acquired during his career in the US State Department in the early 1980s as Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs and head of state department policy planning staff and the skills he has mastered as a denizen of the gargantuan Pentagon which vests him with the capacity to handle the affairs of the World Bank, impliedly a pygmy by comparison.

Supporters' arguments

To give Mr Wolfowitz his due, it must be acknowledged that in addition to Mr Bush, there are also a few others who forcefully support him with the argument that what the World Bank needs at this juncture is not a development expert (there is plenty of that kind of expertise on call within and outside the Bank) but a brisk, brusque, no-nonsense, military type reformer who would mercilessly sweep the cobwebs accumulated within its precincts over the years — a role which he, in their eyes, fulfils admirably.

For instance, Dr Allan Meltzer, author of a comprehensive report on the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, has been quoted as saying: "The critical dimension is management... The Bank needs to find out what it does well, what it does badly: What do we do around here that works? How many people have we lifted out of poverty? How many children are inoculated against measles every year? What have we done to bring water to the villages? Those are not development questions, those are administrative questions... Poverty has come down, but mainly because of growth in China and India, not because of the Bank's efforts... The Bank really needs a thorough restructuring, even people who defend the Bank realise it needs that."

Mr Wolfowitz's defenders also point out that this is not the first time that a hawk had been thought of to take charge of the Bank. Robert McNamara, having been a thorough-going boat-rocker in the US Defence Department in the 1960s, was inducted into the Bank in an equally controversial move, but proved to be a conspicuous success in raising the quality of life in developing countries and gaining their confidence.

No time to gamble

Maybe. But conditions today, in realpolitik terms, are vastly different. The world does not have a Soviet Union, which kept the US within its bounds. The US is seeking in an unbridled manner to force almost every forum to kowtow to its dictates.

The complexities of information technology derived from the velocity, volume, variety and versatility of transactions and the dizzying pace of change were not there in those far-off days.

This is no time to experiment or to gamble on an ugly duckling becoming a swan. All those who have the good of the Bank at heart and care for harmonious international relations must combine and exhibit the will to ensure that the mode of selection conforms to the universally acceptable criteria of professionalism, objectivity and credibility.

(Also, see the author's article "Selection of the World Bank chief — Time to end Western `carve-up'", Business Line, January 21.)

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