Blair must oppose Wolfowitz<\/p>\n
Noreena Hertz
\nGuardian News Service
\nLondon<\/p>\n
This is the year Africa will be saved, and we're going to do
\nit -- that, more or less, was Tony Blair's message at the launch
\nlast week of the report of the Commission for Africa. But not
\nwith Paul Wolfowitz in charge of at the World Bank, we won't.<\/p>\n
Key recommendations -- for example, that corrupt dictators'
\ncash in foreign bank accounts should be repatriated and that
\nforcing policies such as privatisation on countries in exchange
\nfor debt relief and aid needs to be rethought -- are highly
\nunlikely to be endorsed by Wolfowitz.<\/p>\n
This, after all, is a man who, while U.S. ambassador to
\nIndonesia, was scarcely a vocal critic of the blatantly corrupt
\nSoeharto regime; a man who embodies the mindset that compels
\nother countries to adopt a particular set of values and policies,
\nwhether they are right or not.<\/p>\n
Wolfowitz is hardly even a champion of the values on which the
\nbank itself was founded. He is neither well placed to help it
\nmeet its early goal of helping countries rebuild, nor its later
\none of poverty alleviation. Wolfowitz recently told the U.S.
\ncongress that war-ravaged Iraq should pay not only for its
\nreconstruction but also for the war itself out of its oil
\nrevenues.<\/p>\n
Although the bank today is hardly a collaborative or
\nprogressive operation, any moves its current president, James
\nWolfensohn, has made to include environmental considerations in
\nlending decisions and to broaden the range of nations consulted
\nare unlikely to be continued under Wolfowitz, who has a track
\nrecord of rewarding subservience. He banned countries that
\nopposed the war with Iraq from bidding for reconstruction
\ncontracts.<\/p>\n
Perhaps most worryingly he is George Bush's chosen one. And
\nthe Bush administration is a very long way from the bank's
\nespoused goals and mandate. Development thinkers are now pretty
\nmuch unanimous that trade subsidies are a serious barrier to
\ndevelopment. Wolfensohn has spoken out against trade subsidies.
\nBut the Bush administration continues to reject calls to remove
\nsubsidies on its cotton and sugar producers, while its response
\nto the recent World Trade Organisation ruling that U.S. cotton
\nsubsidies breached its trade rules has been an attempt to
\nnegotiate a way out of the ruling with Mali and Brazil.<\/p>\n
There could hardly be a less suitable administration to choose
\na candidate to lead an organisation whose mission is to alleviate
\npoverty. At home Bush has implemented a series of tax cuts for
\nthe rich and his latest proposal to reduce the U.S. deficit has
\nbeen to suggest the slashing of food aid to his country's
\npoorest.<\/p>\n
Of course, the U.S. hijacking the World Bank to serve its
\nforeign policy interests is not a new phenomenon. But the Bush
\nadministration is unabashedly forthright in its pursuit of self-
\ninterest, and in its willingness to use aid as a tool to promote
\nits geo-political goals.<\/p>\n
Bush has said that he nominated Wolfowitz because he had
\nproved himself adept at promoting U.S. interests while ambassador
\nto Indonesia. But the nomination of the World Bank president is
\nbeing left to a government that has cut off aid to any country
\nthat does not exempt it from being held to account by the
\ninternational criminal court and that has resisted attempts by
\nWolfensohn to weaken the U.S. stranglehold over the bank.<\/p>\n
It is only a matter of convention that America gets to
\nnominate the president of the World Bank. The U.S. has twice
\nsuccessfully rejected Germany's candidate to head the IMF,
\ndespite the convention that allows Europe to nominate its head.<\/p>\n
A rejection of the presumption that the U.S. nominates the
\nbank president would chime well with today's climate of demands
\nfor more democracy and transparency in the development arena. It
\nis also something that fits with the Labour government's position
\non necessary reforms of the international financial institutions.<\/p>\n
The UK foreign secretary Jack Straw said of Wolfowitz's
\nnomination: \"If his appointment is confirmed, we look forward to
\nworking with him.\" That is not the response the world is looking
\nto Britain for. If Blair is serious about making poverty history,
\nhe will have to do away with such diplomatic niceties for once. A
\nU-turn on Blair's wider support for Bush unfortunately remains a
\npipe dream. But Blair credibly can, and should, oppose the Wolf.<\/p>\n
The writer is the author of IOU: The Debt Threat and Why We
\nMust Defuse It, and professor of global political economy at the
\nUniversity of Utrecht, the Netherlands.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/blair-must-oppose-wolfowitz-1447893297",
"image": ""
},
"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
}