Wolfowitz for World Bank

[Snowden]

March 17, 2005

Wolfowitz Gets Bush Nomination for World Bank

Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse

President Bush in the Oval Office on Wednesday with Paul D. Wolfowitz, left, the deputy secretary of defense, and Treasury Secretary John W. Snow.

By ELIZABETH BECKER and DAVID E. SANGER
ASHINGTON, March 16 - President Bush said Wednesday that he planned to nominate Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense and one of the administration's earliest and most outspoken advocates of using American influence to spread democracy around the globe, to become the next president of the World Bank.

While Mr. Wolfowitz has been best known in recent years for his role as one of the architects of the Iraq invasion, his background includes years spent on strategies for development. As the American ambassador to Indonesia, he became engrossed in aid projects and later, as the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, he oversaw the training of numerous students who went on to careers in development.

Mr. Bush cited some of this background in making public his choice of Mr. Wolfowitz at a wide-ranging news conference, saying, "Paul is committed to development," and adding, "He's a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job." (Excerpts | Full Transcript)

But the announcement comes on the heels of the appointment of John A. Bolton as the new American ambassador to the United Nations and was greeted warily in many foreign capitals where the Iraq conflict and its aftermath remain deeply unpopular.

"The storm of enthusiasm in old Europe is muted," said Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the German development minister.

Still, initial public responses from several European leaders to the selection of Mr. Wolfowitz were largely positive, including one from President Jacques Chirac of France, who opposed Mr. Wolfowitz and other administration officials on the decision to go to war. Through a spokesman, Mr. Chirac said he would examine Mr. Wolfowitz's candidacy "in a spirit of friendship and bearing in mind the missions of the World Bank."

Yet Mr. Chirac's foreign minister, Michel Barnier, said France would look at Mr. Wolfowitz among "other candidates."

Pentagon and White House officials said that among the names being considered to succeed Mr. Wolfowitz were Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence and one of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's closest advisers, and Gordon R. England, the secretary of the Navy.

Mr. Bush appeared expansive and almost light-hearted at the news conference, and he was clearly reveling in recent developments in Lebanon and Iraq, where he argued that democratization was on the way.

But for the first time he made clear the limits of his patience with Iran, to which he extended modest new offers of American incentives last week to give up its nuclear program. He said it had only one chance to take the deal he has offered along with France, Germany and Britain.

Iran, he said, "must permanently abandon enrichment and reprocessing" of nuclear material, a step the Iranians have so far insisted they will not take. He added: "The understanding is we go to the Security Council if they reject the offer. And I hope they don't."

Yet he set no timelines, and said at the end of his news conference that "there's a certain patience required in order to achieve a diplomatic objective."

William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard and a longtime political ally and friend of Mr. Wolfowitz, said he believed the nomination was "totally good."

"Paul is a neoconservative who actually believes in helping countries develop and improve democracies, not just overthrowing dictators," Mr. Kristol said. The United States traditionally picks the head of the World Bank, though the nomination needs approval by its board of directors. While Mr. Wolfowitz seems all but certain to win that approval, his move is likely to have a major effect on the dynamics of the Bush administration, because it removes him from the war cabinet that dominated the first term, and may clear the way for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to take further control of Iraq policy.

Because the World Bank allocates the resources and sets development policy for much of the third world, Mr. Wolfowitz's candidacy to succeed James D. Wolfensohn, the Australian-born investment banker who has headed the bank for the last 10 years, was viewed with some concern by those who consider the deputy secretary's record on postwar reconstruction in Iraq to be a development failure.

His appointment also comes at a time when the disparity between wealthy and poor countries is growing and the amount of foreign aid is diminishing. Those trends have put the World Bank at the center of an international debate over what strategies will work best to lift countries out of poverty, and what kind of resources wealthy nations should commit to that goal.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Wolfowitz said his nomination should be viewed as a sign of the importance that Mr. Bush places on development and the World Bank.

"It is a noble mission to lift people out of poverty and in doing so to strengthen the whole political movement towards democracy, and I hope my critics understand this," he said.

He said he had learned some lessons from missteps made in Indonesia, when the bank was financing huge projects in a country that at the time was run by a dictator, Suharto, who was forced to resign in 1998 in the midst of the Asian economic crisis.

The bank, he said, "did some wonderful work" in Indonesia, but "it didn't do enough to empower those advocating" better development strategies against the government. "The bank itself assessed that money had gone off to places it shouldn't have," he said, adding that Mr. Wolfensohn, an old friend of Mr. Wolfowitz, had already done much to link development strategies to the promotion of "democracy and transparency."

While Mr. Wolfowitz's views are often unpredictable - those who know him say the shorthand label of "neocon" that has been used to describe him oversimplifies his positions, some of which anger conservatives - his role in Washington in the last four years will probably be the focus of the debate on his candidacy. William Easterly, a professor of economics at New York University, who spent a decade as a research economist at the World Bank, said Wednesday that he believed "the French and the Germans would take it as deliberate provocation or insult."

"The World Bank already had a bad reputation from a decade of structural adjustment of forcing economic reforms down countries' throats by saying you won't get our money unless you do what we tell you to do," Mr. Easterly said. "That really generated huge resistance in Africa and Latin America and some places in Asia."

Mr. Wolfowitz, he added, "is the embodiment of Americans forcing other societies to adopt American values whether they want them or not."

Mr. Bush said he had already called various foreign leaders, including Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, to make the case that Mr. Wolfowitz will be a strong and effective leader at the World Bank, in part because of his experience helping manage the huge bureaucracy of the Pentagon.

Foreign diplomats here said that the United States had suggested Mr. Wolfowitz as the nominee to the World Bank's board of directors but that they had asked that more than one name be presented. They said the Europeans were disappointed that instead of presenting more candidates, Mr. Bush had made a public announcement that Mr. Wolfowitz was his choice.

While the diplomats who raised questions about the choice did so anonymously because of the delicacy of the nomination, Democrats publicly criticized it and wondered what signal it was sending to allies.

"It makes you wonder whether all the administration's words about mending fences with our allies are just lip service," said Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat. "After Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz's repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq, I don't believe he is the right person to lead the World Bank."

Some officials of the World Bank said Wednesday that they hoped Mr. Wolfowitz would follow the model of another famous former defense secretary, Robert S. McNamara, who took over the bank after orchestrating the early years of the Vietnam War. At the bank, Mr. McNamara quickly became an advocate of the poor, and was later credited with moving the mission of the bank to find innovative ways to help the world's most impoverished nations.

While the United States picks the World Bank president, Europe chooses the head of the International Monetary Fund, the other organization in the United Nations family that together with the bank determines international economic and financial policy. Most developing countries want this tradition to change to allow candidates from other nations to be considered and for all the bank's directors to be part of the decision.

Mr. Wolfensohn, who was part of the consultations that led to the choice of Mr. Wolfowitz, had high praise for him as his possible successor, saying in a statement that he is "person of high intellect, integrity and broad experience both in the public and private sectors and has qualifications that would be critical to leading the Bank Group."



On a separate matter at the news conference, Mr. Bush acknowledged his administration's policy of "rendering" terror suspects to nations that have been suspected of using torture. He defended the practice by saying he never knowingly allowed anyone to be sent abroad so that they could be subject to interrogation techniques not permitted in the United States.

The United States sends suspects "back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured," he said. "That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture." But then, almost as an aside, he added, "We do believe in protecting ourselves."

He also left open the door, as he did on Tuesday, for the militant Shiite group Hezbollah to enter Lebanese politics. But he did not budge on the question of labeling it a terror organization. "Hezbollah is on the terrorist list for a reason, and remain on the terrorist list for a reason. Our position has not changed on Hezbollah."



Celia W. Dugger contributed reporting from New York for this article, and Katrin Bennhold of The International Herald Tribune contributed from Paris.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/po...?th&oref=login

[Snowden]

Washington Post:

Nomination Shocks, Worries Europeans

By Keith B. Richburg and Glenn Frankel

PARIS, March 16 -- President Bush's nomination of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz as the next president of the World Bank was met with much surprise, little enthusiasm and some outright opposition in Europe, where he is best known as a leading proponent of a conflict deeply unpopular here, the Iraq war.

"We were led to believe that the neoconservatives were losing ground," said Michael Cox, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics. "But clearly the revolution is alive and well."

He added that despite recent efforts from Washington to mend relations, "Europeans are still inclined deep down to suspect the worst, and this appointment won't go down too well."

European countries control about 30 percent of the votes on the bank's board; opponents would be able to fight the nomination if they chose to do so. By tradition, the United States, the bank's largest shareholder, selects the president, while Europeans choose the head of the bank's sister institution, the International Monetary Fund.

Some Europeans who closely follow U.S. politics said the Wolfowitz choice, coming the week after Bush selected outspoken diplomat John R. Bolton as his U.N. ambassador, could be a sign that the president is moving to placate his more conservative supporters.

Some expressed concern that such appointments could undermine transatlantic goodwill that has developed in recent weeks through visits by Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"There are two interpretations" of the selection of Wolfowitz, said Guillaume Parmentier, who heads the French Center on the United States, a research organization in Paris. "One is the optimistic one -- that this is going to take him away from U.S. policy. . . . The pessimistic interpretation is that this administration has to give sop to the far right. There was Bolton and now Wolfowitz -- where does it stop?"

Official reaction to the nomination was muted. Questioned by a reporter, French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier said, "It's a proposal. We shall examine it in the context of the personality of the person you mention and perhaps in view of other candidates."

The German development minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, said that "the enthusiasm in 'old Europe' is not exactly overwhelming." Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld used that term for European countries that did not join the Iraq war.

The strongest praise came from the closest U.S. ally, Britain. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said, "Paul Wolfowitz is very distinguished and experienced internationally, and if his appointment is confirmed, we look forward to working with him."

Statements from private environmental and aid organizations were largely hostile. The environmental group Greenpeace called it "a disaster to put the World Bank, which should be delivering sustainable development, into the hands of a man who clearly will put U.S. and oil industry interests first."

ActionAid, a British- and South African-based aid organization, called the nomination "an unwelcome step." Referring to the selection system, Patrick Watt, a policy officer with the group, said in a statement that the announcement "speaks volumes for the need to reform a process which is neither transparent nor based on merit. . . . 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."

Other people said Wolfowitz's intellect, commitment to spreading democracy and closeness to the White House might make him an effective World Bank chief.

"Everyone knows he won't just manage the status quo, that he'll make the World Bank a player," said Mark Leonard, director of foreign policy of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research organization. Leonard was at the British government's Department for International Development when the nomination was announced, and he said the first response there was highly negative. As the aid officials got over the initial shock, he said, they began to see possible benefits.

"Let's face it, in this administration we're not going to get . . . Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama," he said. "Given that, there are a lot of people who'd be a hell of a lot worse than Wolfowitz."

Francois Heisbourg, a leading French defense analyst who knows Wolfowitz, said the first reaction of many was "fear and loathing," but added, "Paul is a man who has intellectual depth. He's not a one-agenda, single-point man." He said that as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, Wolfowitz helped steer the country toward democracy.

"He does have the breadth of experience and range of interests that could serve him well in this kind of soft-power job," Heisbourg said. "He's probably more suited to this soft-power position than his hard-power position at the Pentagon."

Frankel reported from London.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...referrer=email

[Bluehawk]

Wolfowitz needs to retire to his "Think Tank" and write his premature memoirs.

[Woodmonkey]

I've followed this with interest. Maybe he will be a positive force there and a voice for reform.

[JohnRN]

Pardon the cynicism but I wouldn't trust either the WB or the IMF...

Can't remember the book that I read on the subject which my Father heartily agrees on...

[Snowden]

www.washingtontimes.com

Appointment gratification

By Mark Steyn
Published March 21, 2005
Even if Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton weren't two of the more farsighted thinkers in the Bush administration, appointing them respectively to the World Bank and the United Nations would be worthwhile just for the pleasure of watching the Europeans, Democrats and media stew over it.
The assumption seems that, with things going his way in Iraq and Lebanon and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, President Bush needs to reach out by stiffing counselors who called it right and appointing more emollient types who got everything wrong.
Each to his own. But, as I see it, the question isn't why Mr. Wolfowitz and Mr. Bolton should hold these jobs, but why Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac, John Kerry and assorted others still hold their jobs.
Still, if you're to play the oldest established permanent floating transnational crap game for laughs, might as well pick an act with plenty of material. What I love about John Bolton, America's new ambassador to the U.N., is the sheer volume of "damaging" material. Usually, the Democrats and media must rifle through decades of dreary platitudes to come up with one potentially exploitable infelicitous sound bite. But with Mr. Bolton, the damaging quotes hang off the trees and drop straight into your bucket. Five minutes' casual mooching through the back catalog and your cup runneth over:
The U.N.? "There is no such thing as the United Nations."
Reform of the Security Council? "If I were redoing the Security Council, I'd h