Paul Wolfowitz

Fire of Liberty

Since President Bush announced Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as his appointment to the presidency of The World Bank, there has been an abundant amount of stories throughout the media. In most articles, the general consensus is that Secretary Wolfowitz is the "architect" of the Iraq war, unskilled to serve in a large financial institution like The World Bank, as well as the argument that he creates anger amongst the various Europeans who will vote for him. Just look at what The Christian Science Monitor wrote about Europe's reaction to the nomination of Secretary Wolfowitz:

Calling the Wolfowitz nomination "a slap in the face" to Europe and a cold shower on the good feelings left by Bush's recent trip to Europe, one European diplomat said, "These two nominations portend a not very good time ahead."

Adding that European countries the diplomat knew of "did everything we could to prevent" the Wolfowitz nomination, the diplomat says, "the lack of consultation and willingness to listen that this suggests does not support what we understood was to be a new style."

I'd say that this person truly dislikes Paul Wolfowitz or is a tad bit jealous, you never know from those wily European diplomats. This person might just be French which would explain his somewhat seething anger at the Secretary. Sometimes you can win everyone on your side. I can assure you that Secretary Wolfowitz has spoken to the European leadership who will vote for him rather than anonymous diplomats who are full of hot-air.

I even found a piece by Robert Kaplan over @ Slate which noted that Secretary Wolfowitz lack the qualification to serve at the World Bank. Kaplan also finds time to circulate the Robert McNamara theory of Wolfowitz leaving the Pentagon. Here's Kaplan's take on the situation:

Some who know Wolfowitz tell me that he wanted to fill the impending vacancy at the bank. He may be, in this sense, a latter-day Robert McNamara—a war-weary Pentagon master seeking refuge to wring the blood from his hands. McNamara suffered something close to a public breakdown when he moved from secretary of defense to president of the World Bank in 1967, as the Vietnam War spiraled out of control. Lyndon Johnson had been complaining to aides for months that McNamara had "gone dovish" on him. It's unlikely that Wolfowitz has exactly turned tail on George W. Bush or Donald Rumsfeld. Still, Wolfowitz is a smart guy, smart enough to know that Iraq has not gone at all as he thought it would, and perhaps he sees McNamara's personal exit strategy as a model to emulate.

The only problem with this is that Paul Wolfowitz isn't the head guy and the front face of the Pentagon. Also, unlike Robert McNamara, Paul Wolfowitz actually help conduct a quick and successful war in some three weeks. Though the peacemaking and rebuilding process has hit some bumps along the way and faced seemingly impossible obstacles, it's still not as disastrous as McNamara's actions. Don't forget that McNamara's wife was also seriously ill and died while he was serving as the Pentagon's Chief. As with all wars and the subsequent peace, the playbook is thrown out the door when the first shot is fired.

Could it just be that the President appointed Secretary Wolfowitz to head the World Bank because he feels the man can do a pretty good job there. While most people reading and watching the news on Secretary Wolfowitz would surmise from the coverage that he's hated by Europe or incapable of doing the job, they would be sadly mistaken. I found three pieces on Secretary Wolfowitz which paint a different picture.

First, here's a Leader in The Times which supports Secretary Wolfowitz nomination by laying out three specific qualifications that he holds. The first qualification which few articles mention is that Secretary Wolfowitz has extensive talent and experience as an investment banker and in government service. Throughout this time, he seemed to be able to enter these institutions and shake them up and get them back on track. After ten years under the same leader, the World Bank has become an arthritic and bloated institute which has failed to keep costs down and bows before specific interest groups.

A second qualification is that he has had a considerable amount of time working in Asia in coordination with the World Bank and the IMF. As US Ambassador to Indonesia under the Reagan Administration, Secretary Wolfowitz proved his abilities to handle the various disaster relief efforts and the securing of development money.

If you look at his biography at the Pentagon, you'll notice Secretary Wolfowitz is a pretty good diplomat as well. He served as the head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Office and near four years as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs where he work extensively with some 20 Asian nations. He was also a prominent voice in urging the Marcos government in The Philippines as well as the Chun Doo-hwan government towards a path of peaceful democratic transition in the late 1980's.

The third qualification is that Secretary Wolfowitz will bring dynamism and new ideas into the institution. He can come in and fix the institutes way of running things. For too many years the people at the World Bank have lackadaisically handed out money and only created a situation what the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan generally referred to as "iatrogenic government." That is an action in which the solution or intervention by the government-the World Bank-was far worse than the problem. (I think a good area to understand this concept is within two books; Losing Ground by Charles Murrary and The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky.)

Based on The Times, Secretary Wolfowitz should be a good choice as President of the World Bank especially with such skills and experiences that they provided. Aside from The Times Leader , there's also this Op/Ed by Jacob Heilbrunn of The Los Angeles Times. I particularly like these passages in his piece:

In the bank's early days, it was cautious about making enormous loans. But during McNamara's tenure, between 1968 and 1981, that caution was set aside. Famous for having relied on body-count statistics in the Vietnam War, McNamara brought his bean-counting approach to the bank. His credo was that the more money the bank lent, the more effective it was. So he went on a lending spree, the effect of which was to create billions of dollars of debt, prop up dictatorships in Ethiopia and Mozambique, and pay for shoddy roads and useless steel factories. McNamara made no distinction between democratic and authoritarian countries; Tanzania's Julius Nyerere was a favorite of his.

Although the left has recently revved up its attacks on the bank as an exploiter of Third World countries, neoconservatives have offered their own blistering critique of its performance for several decades. While the left sees the bank as a tool of capitalism, neoconservatives argue that it has not been enough of one. It was London School of Economics professor P.T. Bauer (who influenced Daniel Patrick Moynihan and other American neoconservatives as well as libertarians from the Cato Institute and elsewhere) who first blew the whistle on the reigning development experts. Long before the concept was accepted, he declared that free markets, private property and the rule of law were the keys to development. His studies of traders in West Africa showed that not receiving aid was vastly more beneficial than going on a kind of international dole. Countries needed a foreign market, not handouts.

This should pour some cold water on the crazy left/right who are fretting and continue to keep yelling "the neoconservatives are coming." Wolfowitz is a principled diplomat who knows how to work with others. If he can be a dean of Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced & International Studies he should be well versed in dealing with various problems and wouldn't have an problems with internationalists. (Larry Summers can attest to the problems in a university).

I wish Secretary Wolfowitz good fortune in his bid for the presidency @ the World Bank. Even some Democrats agree with me. See here.