War Manager, World Bank
And Our ProtestBy Anu Muhammad
20 August, 2005
Countercurrents.orgWe are not happy with the news of Paul Wolfowitz’s visit to Bangladesh on 21st August 2005. In fact we feel worried and angry specially when we go though his work history and find him as an active one in making destruction in Iraq and patronizing rulers accused for committing crime against people in many other countries. The man we are talking about is the President of the World Bank. He was chosen by the Bush administration to head the World Bank few months back. Although the Bank has been known as a development agency representing almost all countries in the world, the appointment of its President comes always from the White House.
On 16 March 2005, Associated Press reported, ‘President Bush tapped Defense Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who has been a lightning rod for criticism of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and other defense policies, to take over as head of the World Bank.’ President Bush offered two main reasons for selecting Paul Wolf-o-witz, as people call him. First, he was a good manager. He managed Pentagon, so he would manage the World Bank well! Second, he was committed to development!!
In the real world, Wolfowitz has been known as one of the most war-loving conservative, was among the most active of those in the Bush administration in pursuing war by manufacturing lies on ‘weapons of mass destruction’ etc. He has earned a reputation for being a ‘foreign policy hawk -- the view that the United States should use its superpower status to push for reforms in other nations’.
People around the world including those who live within imperial power box criticized the decision. Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist who heads the UN Millennium Project opposed the selection saying, ‘does Wolfowitz have any professional qualifications for the job -- he's not an economist, nor a banker (as is the bank's current president, James Wolfensohn), nor a doctor who knows about fighting disease, nor an agronomist who can combat the developing world's food shortages, nor an environmental scientist who can assess how global climate change might affect the world's poorest nations. It's true that Wolfowitz has been a diplomat, which probably isn't bad professional experience for an organization that's frequently criticized by many nations across the globe.’
Joseph Stiglitz, ‘Nobel Prize’ winner in economics, Professor at New York's Columbia University and a former chairman of the US government's Council of Economic Advisors and also the former chief Economist of the World Bank said, ‘this is either an act of provocation by America, or an act so insensitive as to look like provocation...The World Bank will once again become a hate figure. This could bring street protests and violence across the developing world.’
The staff of the World Bank also tried to raise their voice. According to web discussions and exchanges it can be said that the most of the Bank staff did not like the selection. Although it was obvious what a bank official said: ‘there have been wild e-mails about petitions and rallies, but the association has assured us it definitively is not going to be involved in any of that.’
Wolfowitz had been a long advocate for the Iraq invasion; he had ‘constant irritation’ on Saddam Hussein’s control over a lot of the world’s oil. Years before the US occupation of Iraq, in 1998, he advocated the creation of a “liberated zone” in Southern Iraq, and the creation of a ‘provisional government to control the largest oil field in Iraq.’ With Wolfowitz in lead, the World Bank will now try to do everything to achieve what US corporate bodies need around the world including IRAQ.
Wolf’s career has been a ‘textbook example of Cold War politics’
that focused for nearly 50 years on the ‘caring and feeding of dictators’
like Suharto in Indonesia, Chun Doo-hwan in South Korea, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Pinochet in Chile and so on. During the Reagan years, Wolf was the main link of support from the US administration with these criminal dictators. Differences between Democratic and Republican parties do not affect policy of imperial domination, here policies remain remarkably consistent. During his responsibility on East Asia Wolfowitz played a key role in defining US policy toward South Korea and the Philippines at a time of intense repression and growing opposition to authoritarian rule. He termed policy of embracing the repressive regimes as the ‘best hope for Asian democracy’!Stiglitz again expressed his worry with the appointment, ‘the World Bank will now become an explicit instrument of US foreign policy. It will presumably take a lead role in Iraqi reconstruction, for instance. That would seriously jeopardize its role as a multi-lateral development body.’
Stiglitz’s worry would seem surprising while one knows that, from the very beginning, the Bank has been ‘an explicit instrument of US foreign policy’. In fact the World Bank has always been an extension of the US treasury. This appointment was a crude reflection of that and also a reflection of the US war of terrorising world which need to choose people everywhere in its administration according to that line.
Appointment of war manager as the President of the World Bank makes many people surprised. But by scanning history we find more of the same kind. Robert McNamara, who later became the ‘champion of poverty’, came straight from Pentagon, served earlier as the Defense Secretary in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to preside over genocide in Vietnam. In 1967 this war champion left his post as secretary of defense to become the President of the World Bank!
What the other people did here? Little different, actually; because, the root of policies has been the same. Policy consistency regarding dismantling peripheral economy to structurally adjust with the need of monopoly corporate bodies has always been alive. No deviation was tolerated. The exits of Joseph Stiglitz and Ravi Kanvur from the Bank can give a lesson to naive people. Officially, World Bank provides more than US$20 billion in funds to developing countries each year. This fund should not be counted as development fund but the fund used for creating path for corporate bodies in the peripheral economies. The countries like Bangladesh have experiences of anti-development in development disguise under projects offered or guided by the World Bank. (For further discussion, see two of my relevant articles in this regard, “Crime and Reward: Immunity to the World Bank” http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan05/Muhammad0114.htm, 2005; and for the discussion on ‘projects of mass destruction’, “Bangladesh Waterlogged Again”, Economic And Political Weekly, July 31-August 6, 2004).
The Bank becomes impatient to have immunity in Bangladesh when people seem to be disillusioned about development rhetoric of the Bank and started locating responsibility of the same behind devastation in many areas like water, energy, agriculture, industry, health and education. Is this also the agenda of the visit of Bank’s President? Is he carrying more projects of mass destruction with him to sell? Very likely. We record our protest.
With piles of facts and strength of logic we stand against any attempts to provide immunity to the World Bank. Rather we demand its public trial for the crimes committed against people and environment here and everywhere. The President should not be spared from his personal liabilities.
