Wolfowitz Profile in the New Yorker

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in at 4/10/2007 01:02:00 AM
There is a lengthy profile of World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz in the New Yorker magazine that I highly recommend to all of you interested in IPE, international relations, economics, development, or all four. Paul Wolfowitz is a highly controversial figure (especially as a key architect of the Iraq war) and the World Bank already was a highly controversial organization without him; the combination of both has made for some spectacular infighting. The inside angle on the reassignment of Wolfowitz's girlfriend from the World Bank; the skirmish with England's DfID over his anti-corruption measures; accusations of cronyism in installing allies while self-styling himself as an anti-corruption crusader; and the continuation of a "neoconservative" agenda are but a few of the topics covered. Here are a few teasers for you, but do read the whole piece if you have the time:

Many people at the World Bank remain suspicious of Wolfowitz. He has suspended loans to developing countries that he regards as corrupt—among them Chad, Kenya, and Bangladesh—while expanding the bank’s activities in places where the United States and its allies have intervened militarily, including Lebanon and Iraq. “Karl Rove would be proud: the man whom the world associates with the war in Iraq has recast himself as the crusader for good governance and development,” Manish Bapna, the executive director of the Bank Information Center, a not-for-profit organization in Washington that monitors the bank’s activities, said. “But inside the bank there is still a perception on the part of some staffers that his real agenda remains hidden, and that it reflects priorities from the Bush Administration...”

However, current and former World Bank officials, as well as a number of bank shareholders, have questioned Wolfowitz’s actions. Why were projects being suspended in India and not in Indonesia, which by many measures is more corrupt? Why Uzbekistan and not Tajikistan? Why Congo-Brazzaville and not the Democratic Republic of the Congo? “No one in the development community really understands what criteria we should use to withhold lending from poor countries,” Nancy Birdsall, the head of the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank, said...

The decision to establish a World Bank office in Baghdad seemed to confirm the fears of Wolfowitz’s critics about his intentions. “Paul couldn’t do nation-building in the Pentagon, because Rumsfeld and the military didn’t want anything to do with it,” Dennis de Tray told me. “He saw the World Bank as another way to make it happen. It lends money; it’s got people on the ground in the region; it knows the terrain. I really think that was one of the attractions of the job to him.”