Pentagon hawk Paul Wolfowitz to run World Bank

Wolfowitz to Be Nominated as World Bank President (Update1)

March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Paul D. Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense and an architect of the Iraq War, will be nominated as the next head of the World Bank, a U.S. official said.

President George W. Bush will name Wolfowitz later today, the official said. He would replace James Wolfensohn, 71, who said in January that he will leave the institution when his term ends May 31.

Wolfowitz's nomination must be approved by all of the World Bank's member countries. In the past, that's been largely a formality as by tradition the U.S. chooses the head of the World Bank and European officials choose the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.

``He is someone of high intellect, broad experience in and out of government and he has many of the qualifications needed to lead the bank,'' Wolfensohn said in an interview in Washington today. ``I look forward to a successful transition.''

Treasury Department spokesman Rob Nichols declined to comment on the nomination. Treasury oversees U.S. policy at the World Bank and IMF.

Other candidates for the World Bank position included former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina and Bush administration AIDS policy chief Randall Tobias.

``Lot of Baggage'

The U.S. official called Wolfowitz a proven leader, intellectually and operationally. His management experience running the Pentagon, the largest government agency with nearly 700,000 civilian employees and 1.3 million in uniform will serve him well at the World Bank, the official said.

``The truth of the matter is that Paul Wolfowitz is better qualified to be at the World Bank than any other possible candidate,'' said Edwin Truman, former assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury. ``On the other hand, he comes with a lot of baggage.''

Wolfowitz was a strong advocate of the Iraq war, calling for the toppling of Saddam Hussein and helping the administration craft its rationale for the invasion.

He pushed a hard-line policy against Iraqi aggression in Kuwait during the Gulf War, then played a negotiating role after its end, seeking to strengthen Saudi Arabia's military capabilities and reduce arms sales to the region.

A critic of former President Bill Clinton's approach toward China and Russia, Wolfowitz urged tougher stances on those countries' missile transfers to Iran.

World Bank Focus

Responding to a report in the Financial Times earlier this month that Wolfowitz was a candidate for the World Bank, a Defense Department spokesman said he would remain at the Pentagon. ``Secretary Wolfowitz has been asked to stay on in an extremely important job, one that he likes doing very much,'' Defense Department spokesman Larry DiRita said March 1.

Under Wolfowitz, the Bush administration may now try to narrow the focus of the World Bank, returning the international lending institution to its roots of primarily financing large infrastructure projects and limiting the practice of handing out zero-interest loans, analysts such as Alan Meltzer, who led a 2000 congressional inquiry into the World Bank, said.

``He's a strong-minded man,'' said Meltzer, a Carnegie Mellon economics professor who chaired a 2000 congressional panel on the World Bank. Unlike Wolfensohn, ``Paul Wolfowitz is the kind of person who is likely to look to have a focus.''

The lender, the largest financier of projects in developing nations, broadened its scope under Wolfensohn, who sought a more ``humanizing'' role for the bank, according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning professor at Columbia University and former chief economist of the World Bank.

State, Defense Veteran

Since taking over in 1995, Wolfensohn cut by 40 percent financing for dams, bridges and infrastructure projects, and shifted that money to programs promoting climate change and development.

The U.S. is seeking to scale back some of Wolfensohn's projects, overhaul the bank's $20 billion a year lending operation and more effectively manage more than 10,000 employees scattered in 109 nations, Meltzer said.

Bush named Wolfowitz, 61, as deputy to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in February 2001. Then dean of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Wolfowitz was a veteran of both the State and Defense Departments.

He served as undersecretary for policy for Vice President Dick Cheney when Cheney headed the Pentagon during the administration of former President George Bush, the current president's father.

From 1986 to 1989, Wolfowitz was the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, and assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 1982 to 1986. He worked on arms control and disarmament issues in federal agencies in the 1970s.

From 1995 to 2001, Wolfowitz was a director of toymaker Hasbro Inc. He received a Masters degree in administration and a Doctorate in political science and economics from University of Chicago.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a1Sxb3vEFVpU&refer=us

The US president George Bush has picked the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, one of America's leading neo-conservatives, to head the World Bank, it was announced today.

Mr Wolfowitz, one of the leading hawks in the Iraq war, is a very unlikely choice to lead the World Bank, although he would not be the first Pentagon figure to be president of the world's leading development institution.

Robert McNamara, the US secretary of defence when America sank into the Vietnam quagmire, was president of the World Bank from 1968 to 1981.

Mr Wolfowitz will succeed James Wolfensohn, who is stepping down as head of the 184-country development bank on June 1 at the end of his second five-year term. An Australian-born naturalised American, Mr Wolfensohn has led the World Bank for 10 years.

During this time he has launched a charm offensive with development groups that had been strongly critical of the Bank. He won much kudos from NGOs such as Oxfam when he started championing debt reduction for the world's poorest countries through joint initiatives with the Bank's sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund.

While widely recognised as a defence intellectual, Mr Wolfowitz is not exactly known as an expert on poverty. When his name first emerged as a candidate for the job, along with that of the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, Carly Fiorina, there was widespread incredulity among development experts.

Peter Bosshard, the policy director of the International Rivers Network, an American NGO, said: "In his career, Wolfowitz has so far not shown any interest in poverty reduction, environmental protection and human rights. 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."

As a forceful proponent of the war against Saddam Hussein, Mr Wolfowitz will be viewed with suspicion by many in the developing world. Given the controversial nature of the choice, the secretive selection process - as well as the choice itself - is almost certain to invite criticism. Mr Wolfowitz's appointment will not require senate confirmation.

This is the second time in as many weeks that Mr Bush has confounded the international community with an unlikely personnel choice for a top international institution. Last week, the president picked John Bolton, another administration hawk, to be the US ambassador to the UN.

During the first Bush administration, Mr Bolton was number three at the state department, responsible for arms control and security issues. Strongly opposed in principle to the international criminal court, the very embodiment of multilateralism, Mr Bolton told a conservative audience 11 years ago: "The [UN] secretariat building in New York has 38 storeys. If it lost 10 storeys, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1439192,00.html

It's not Bono??? Damn

WASHINGTON, March 16 (Reuters) - The head of the International Monetary Fund said on Wednesday if Paul Wolfowitz was confirmed as the World Bank's new president, he would bring an "impressive record" and experience in world affairs.

I look forward to working with him," IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said in a statement, in reaction to Wednesday's nomination by the Bush administration of Wolfowitz for World Bank president.

James Wolfensohn steps down at the end of May after 10 years as head of the Washington-based development bank.

http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=bondsNews&storyID=7922082

First John Bolton, now Paul Wolfowitz. A week ago, George Bush raised eyebrows when he nominated Bolton, one of the administration's leading hawks who had little but contempt for international institutions, to be America's ambassador to the UN.

Today another bombshell of a nomination. Bush has named Wolfowitz to succeed James Wolfensohn as president of the World Bank. If anything this is an even more astonishing choice.

Bolton could be said to have some expertise with multilateral institutions. But Wolfowitz, although a highly respected defence intellectual whether you agreed with him or not, would be the last person to claim an in-depth knowledge of development issues.

Peter Bosshard, the policy director of International Rivers Network (IRN), a US development group, expressed shock at the nomination. "The deputy defence 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."

IRN was frequently critical of Wolfensohn, but it is probably missing him already. Alex Wilks at worldbankpresident.org does not mince words either. He thinks think that Wolfowitz "would be a diplomatic disaster at the Bank". For a tongue-in-cheek appraisal of Wolfowitz's nomination, there are these 10 points by John Cavanagh at the left-leaning Institute of Policy Studies in Washington.

Wolfowitz has yet to talk about his nomination, but it would be fascinating to hear why he would want to give up a position of huge power for the one he is about to take up. True, the World Bank stewardship is an influential position, but cannot really compare with being No 2 at one of the world's most powerful organisations, the Pentagon.

We can be sure of one thing. Going to the Bank is not an act of contrition as was the case with Robert McNamara, who was defence secretary when Kennedy and Johnson got bogged down in Vietnam. The former whizz-kid from the Ford motor company who brought his management techniques to the business of war with calamitous consequences, left the Pentagon for the World Bank where he was president from 1968 to 1981.

McNamara's years at the Bank were widely seen as an attempt at redemption after the desperate failure of Vietnam. Wolfowitz, however, harbours no such second thoughts about Iraq. For him the World Bank will be a new forum to blow the trumpet for freedom and democracy around the world.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/world_news/2005/03/16/from_wolfensohn_to_wolfowitz.html

no doubt, Wolfowitz will transform the World Bank into an explicit arm of expansionist American policy around the world

but, it is easy to overreact, it's not as if the World Bank was saintly during the Clinton years

if anything, the selection should be praised for bringing out in the open power relationships that had previously been obscured

it's one of Bush's few endearing qualities: he's very open about his imperial goals, and does not betray the least bit of embarassment about them, wearing them proudly, in marked contrast to Clinton

--Richard

The World Bank mainly does stuff in countries where Wolfowitz is extremely hated both by the business class and the working class. Perhaps his nomination is an attempt to let the Left destroy the World Bank since Bush wants such international institutions to disappear so the US can run things more directly. In a way thats a good thing since it will be easier to fight the US directly than having to fight the World Bank as a front but the fact that Bush isnt that worried about this is a little scary.

. . . . the neo-conservatives want to strip the corpse of all of its valuables before leaving it out for the vultures

--Richard

[?
by ? Wednesday, Mar. 16, 2005 at 12:11 PM

The World Bank mainly does stuff in countries where Wolfowitz is extremely hated both by the business class and the working class. Perhaps his nomination is an attempt to let the Left destroy the World Bank since Bush wants such international institutions to disappear so the US can run things more directly. In a way thats a good thing since it will be easier to fight the US directly than having to fight the World Bank as a front but the fact that Bush isnt that worried about this is a little scary.]

Senior Israeli officials reacted with satisfaction Wednesday to news that US President George W. Bush tapped Paul Wolfowitz as his choice to be the next head of the World Bank.
...
Wolfowitz's appointment to head the World Bank will have significance for Israel since the World Bank is expected to play a key economic role in Gaza after Israel's withdrawal.
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