When I heard about Paul Wolfowitz’s appointment by Bush as head of the World Bank on Wednesday, the main things which sprung to mind about him were that he was one of the main proponents of the Iraq war, having been amongst the most vociferously adamant that Saddam Hussein had vast weapons arsenals, and is regarded as the archetypal neo-con. Anxious to make my mind up further about him, I decided to do some research, and, being exhausted after a night of insomnia, chose the lazy way, and dug out my ‘Bush Cards‘ (carefully stacked deck) to see what they had to say about the man.
In the interests of writing a balanced character assassination, I fought off my intellectual torpor to look for what those who favour him have to say. The Washington Post journalist, David Ignatius, described him as “the Bush administration’s idealist in chief,” a man who “bleeds for (the Arab world’s) oppression and dreams of liberating it.” I discussed this blog entry with my friend The Rogue, and he reminded me that while Wolfowitz’s champions remember his writing on the importance of reducing global poverty during his time as Ambassador to Indonesia for Ronald Reagan, what is often overlooked by these people is that Wolfowitz was supporting Suharto, described in an article by Noam Chomsky as ‘one of the last century’s worst mass murderers and aggressors.’
Journalists and international bodies have brought up the fact that the World Bank appointment process is flawed: there is a tradition that of Washington’s two multilateral financial bodies, one of them must be headed by an American. As the IMF has a European leader, Bono (who was purported to be another contender for the World Bank post) was never really in the running. The Commission for Africa has expressed concerns that the selection is based on nationality rather than suitability. And Oxfam condemned the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ which sees the US picking the president, arguing that the candidate should be chosen on merit.
The worrying thing, of course, is that the World Bank makes decisions which affect the lives of the hundreds of millions of people living in extreme life-threatening poverty world-wide. The outgoing head, James Wolfensohn, was lauded for his attempts to eradicate debt in the developing nations, and for making this the primary concern of the institution. With the recent press coverage generated by the likes of Bob Geldof and Bono, and the Make Poverty History campaign, there are few people who do not know that the aid dependency problem needs addressing urgently. Not just to help the poor, but to create a world which is sustainable for those who live in the richer nations.
America recently rejected Gordon Brown’s ‘richest nations’ debt relief plan, which proposes not only a write-off of African debt, but also a borrowing scheme for African countries, which would be underwritten by richer nations. The American Government’s own, recently revealed, debt relief proposals have been criticised as they could undermine the World Bank’s own development objectives, and possibly even eventually collapse the International Development Agency. In the light of these American stances, and of Wolfowitz’s political history, it looks likely that the World Bank will be turned into another global puppet looking after America’s interests.
