The World Bank adrift

OP-ED: "The World Bank, Stuck in the Mud," by Sebastian Mallaby, Washington Post, 13 April 2007, p. A17.

Great piece.

Begins by noting how Bush has wasted a lot of great opportunity:

After Sept. 11, the world launched the Doha round of trade talks, which was supposed to help developing countries; now Doha has fizzled. After Sept. 11, there was hope for more humanitarian interventions; now the Iraq syndrome undermines the Western will to intervene, even in the extreme case of Darfur. The most lasting impact of Sept. 11 on the West's attitude toward development is perhaps a negative one. Opponents of immigration have been handed a convenient argument, with the result that workers from poor countries may have fewer legal opportunities to earn paychecks in rich countries and send money home.

Then there is the aid story [goes on to talk about how the G-8 promises at Gleneagles haven't been met].

The West's financial retreat is a policy retreat, too, because an alternative patron of poor nations is emerging in the form of China ... [and] China cares little for controlling corruption.

Indeed.

So Wolfowitz is mired in personal scandal and the WB is thus sidelined.

Terrible timing for the Gap, more evidence of Bush's early post-presidency--by extension.

An America that cares in pol-mil terms, combined with a China willing to invest, and you almost have a full-service, principled superpower for the Gap.

But when we opt out or let ourselves get bogged down in Iraq in our go-it-our-own-way-ism, it's just China's mercantilism and the West's moral outrage.

My, what a useless combination.

Comments

[Shawn in Tokyo]

Today the WSJ brings clarity to the situation with Wolfowitz.

[Mark in Texas]

Here's the Wall Street Journal that provides a different view of Wolfowitz at the World Bank.

http://opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009948

The short version is that Paul Wolfowitz said that he would have to recuse himself from any issues involving his girlfriend at the World Bank.

The Ethics Committee of the World Bank said that there was a de facto conflict of intrest if both of them worked there so Ms.Riza, the girlfriend, would have to go. In order to avoid adverse effects on her career due to the untimely termination, they recommended a promotion as part of the termination (she was already on the promotion list).

Wolfowitz signed off on the Ethics Committee recommendations.

Then somebody leaked the information about the promotion recommendation to the press, leaving out the offer to recuse and the Ethics Committee recommendation to terminate with promotion.

The lesson that I get from this is that the bureaucrats who run the World Bank are as corrupt as the ones who run the United Nations. They will fight a dirty war to prevent reform or accountability with all the determination that the dead enders from Saddam Hussein's government are fighting in Iraq. For those who believe that we can't win a dirty guerilla war in Iraq, perhaps we should also cut and run from the World Bank and United Nations.