"Wolfowitz at the World Bank door"-- Asia Times

Mar 18, 2005

Wolfowitz at the World Bank door
By Emad Mekay and Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in US history, is President George W Bush's choice to head the World Bank, the world's largest development agency. His nomination has sparked a wave of outrage among independent development groups, who blame him for promoting unilateralism and militarism in US foreign policy, and for a lack of transparency in bidding for reconstruction contracts in Iraq.


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Wolfowitz's 35-year public and academic career - notably lacking in direct experience either with banking or development, let alone the bank's supposed core mission of poverty reduction - has also steered a wide berth around both Africa and Latin America, two regions of enormous importance to the bank. Before moving into the Pentagon's No 2 position, Wolfowitz spent seven years as dean and professor of international relations at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. There, he recruited, among others, Francis Fukuyama, a close friend from college days at Cornell, who also worked under Wolfowitz when the latter was director of policy planning at the State Department in the early 1980s.

Many independent development groups and watchdog institutions say they are shocked at the choice. "The deputy defense secretary's strong support for the Iraq war reflects a disdain for international law and a multilateral approach to conflict resolution that disqualifies Wolfowitz from leading a multilateral institution," said the International Rivers Network (IRN), a California-based non-government organization, in a statement.

Some civil society analysts predicted a new phase of confrontation between the global social justice movement and one of the largest symbols of US and European domination, the World Bank. "In his career, Wolfowitz has so far not shown any interest in poverty reduction, environmental protection and human rights," said Peter Bosshard, the policy director of IRN. "His election as World Bank president would most likely exacerbate the current backlash against social and environmental concerns at the World Bank, and would initiate a new era of conflict between the Bank and civil society."

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"Paul Wolfowitz is the most controversial choice Bush could have made," said Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network. "As the most prominent advocate of imposing the US's will on the world, this appointment signals to developing countries that the US is just as serious about imposing its will on borrowers from the World Bank as on the countries of the Middle East," she added.


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http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GC18Dj01.html

The article deserves to be posted just for the title alone, but the contents are great too. Asia Times is da bomb.