Journamalism from Sebastian Mallaby on Paul Wolfowitz
Noted Journamalist Sebastian Mallaby, Director of the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies, Deputy Director of Studies, and Paul A. Volcker Senior Fellow for International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations can't quite screw his courage up to the sticking place enough to call for World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz's to resign or be fired:
Sebastian Mallaby - The World Bank, Stuck In the Mud - washingtonpost.com: The scandal centers on the pay of people around Paul Wolfowitz, the World Bank president. Kevin Kellems, an unremarkable press-officer-cum-aide who had previously worked for Wolfowitz at the Pentagon, pulls down $240,000 tax-free -- the low end of the salary scale for World Bank vice presidents, who typically have PhDs and 25 years of development experience. Robin Cleveland, who also parachuted in with Wolfowitz, gets $250,000 and a free pass from the IRS, far more than her rank justifies. Kellems and Cleveland have contracts that don't expire when Wolfowitz's term is up. They have been granted quasi-tenure.
Then there is the matter of Shaha Riza, a long-standing bank official who is Wolfowitz's romantic partner. She went on paid leave (seconded to the State Department) after Wolfowitz arrived; her salary has since jumped from $133,000 to $194,000. When questions were first asked about Riza's rewards, a spokesman declared that the matter had been handled by the bank's board and general counsel, implying that the bank president himself had not been responsible. But the truth was that Wolfowitz had been closely involved, as a contrite Wolfowitz admitted yesterday.
Treating an anti-poverty institution this way would look bad under any circumstances. But the scandal is especially damaging to Wolfowitz... [who] has alienated the staff by concentrating too much power in the hands of Kellems and the abrasive Cleveland; he has alienated shareholders by presenting half-baked strategy ideas; he has alienated borrowers by blocking loans, sometimes capriciously. Moreover, Wolfowitz has made the battle against corruption his signature issue....
[F]ive years [9/11], the United States is walling off its southern border and the aid boom is over. And where is the current World Bank president? Fending off calls for resignation.
And Sebastian Mallaby can't quite screw his own courage up to the sticking place for him himself to say a peep about his own past, as a booster of Paul Wolfowitz and a big mocker of Wolfowitz's critics:
February 20, 2006:
Wolfowitz's Corruption Agenda: Nine months into his tenure as president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz has made headlines mainly by provoking a staff backlash. Neoconservative commissars are seizing control! (Actually, Wolfowitz has a grand total of four Republicans in his entourage.) The World Bank's agenda is being hijacked by a Bush man! (Actually, Wolfowitz has resisted the Bush administration's bad policies on debt relief and climate change.)...
[T]he staff backlash is obscuring something interesting. In the past few months, there have been hints of fresh thinking on corruption. Now the evidence has reached critical mass: The change appears to be genuine.... [Previous World Bank president] Wolfensohn denounced the "cancer of corruption" in 1996.... Speeches are one thing, action quite another.... [T]he anti-corruption unit was understaffed and ineffectual.... Excuses were found....
In a series of tough decisions, some of which have been widely reported and some of which have not, Wolfowitz has challenged this culture.... Wolfowitz's World Bank presidency, which had seemed to lack an organizing theme, has acquired one. The new boss is going to be tough on corruption, and he's going to push this campaign beyond the confines of the World Bank; on Saturday he persuaded the heads of several regional development banks to join his anti-corruption effort. It's amusing to see the Wolfensohn-Stiglitz left-liberal critique of narrowly economic development policy being championed by this neoconservative icon...
May 30, 2005:
Paul Wolfowitz... takes over this development powerhouse on June 1, believing that he is leaving behind a big job at the Pentagon and taking on an even bigger one.... Taking over this multilateral institution is a bit like showing up at elementary school halfway through third grade. Everyone already has a gang of friends and a newcomer is often dissed -- even if the newcomer is the principal....
Probably 90 percent of the bank's staff opposes the Iraq war, and a similar proportion regard President Bush as a dumb cowboy. Two of the three aides whom Wolfowitz is bringing to the bank share his association with Iraq, which does not impress the banksters. One is Robin Cleveland, an assertive official who put together Bush's Iraq spending bills; she has summoned bank vice presidents over to her office for meetings, but some veeps have refused to make the journey....
Wolfowitz... mostly he has charmed his way past all these prickles. He's disarmed people by eating lunch in the staff cafeteria (the bank has a separate dining room for managers, and yet a third one for the president); he has given out his personal e-address in get-to-know-you staff meetings and stressed his respect for the World Bank's professionalism. To allay fears that he's hung up on democratizing the Middle East, he's planned an early trip to Africa. In meetings he's spent more time listening than talking -- a contrast with the messianic style of the outgoing Wolfensohn...
March 31, 2005:
Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Shut Up or We'll Kill Your Development Bank! Department): THE WORLD Bank's board will meet today and will almost certainly confirm the nomination of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz as its new president. The initial expressions of shock from Europe have proved unserious and, in some cases, even hypocritical.... Imposing a particular deputy on Mr. Wolfowitz is not going to help. It will push the World Bank toward the nationality-driven hiring that is the bane of United Nations agencies.... Mr. Wolfowitz's critics, domestic as well as international, should now get beyond their dislike of his role in the Iraq war.... [T]he institution will have a hard time facing down the inevitable attacks on its decision if it is simultaneously having to defend itself against critics who dislike its new president.
Most people agree that the World Bank is necessary.... The World Bank brings big financial and intellectual resources... it provides around $20 billion a year to developing countries and houses the largest concentration of development thinkers anywhere. People who care about this institution and its mission--as many of Mr. Wolfowitz's detractors do--should think carefully before they damage it by attacking its new boss...
March 28, 2005:
washingtonpost.com: World Bank Pragmatism: Wolfowitz's strength is that he'll make the bank a tool of U.S. policy. And if you're going to have an ideology, Wolfowitz has the right one. The World Bank is an effective institution partly because it's based in Washington, dominated by U.S.-trained economists and run by a U.S. appointee.... [T]he bank's advice on how to become a successful society is generally sensible.... Thanks to its connections to successive American administrations, the World Bank has played a bigger role than it otherwise would have....
The problem with the Bush administration has not been that it bent the World Bank to its foreign policy. It's been that it often failed to do so. The planning for postwar Iraq might have been smarter if the administration had consulted the bank's experts.... If Bush had handed the World Bank presidency to some CEO campaign contributor, this malign neglect might have continued. Now that he's installing a valued lieutenant, cooperation should improve....
Wolfowitz['s] passion is the advance of democracy.... Wolfowitz appears pragmatic on economics as well. His main exposure to development comes from his time as ambassador in Indonesia, which combined miraculous poverty reduction with state intervention; he surely does not believe in privatizing everything in sight.... So there are some troubling ideologies that Wolfowitz does not share. That leaves the reasonable question: Is a passionate democratizer right for the World Bank?... Now a new consensus... holds that the chief challenge in poor countries is political. It's to fight the corruption that deters private investment and to create the rule of law.
For this new challenge, democratic virtues such as accountability and transparency are essential, and appointing a passionate democratizer as World Bank president seems less outlandish....
Wolfowitz should be cautious about pushing this agenda.... It's fair to ask whether, given his naive forecasts about the easy success of Iraqi reconstruction, he can be trusted to be cautious. But if he can avoid hubris, and if he can fight through the thicket of negative perceptions, he may prove a worthy leader for the World Bank.
March 19, 2005:
The permanent establishment of World Bank critics - who had been diverted to protesting [about] the Iraq war - can now do both at once. It's like Christmas for them...
March 5, 2005:
washingtonpost.com: Clueless On the World Bank: Wolfowitz has most of what it takes to lead the World Bank. He is a persuasive communicator; he has experience in public-sector management; and he knows something about developing countries, having served as ambassador to Indonesia. But his association with the Iraq war makes him, unfairly... anathema to most World Bank shareholders...
One cannot help but be struck by the transformation of Robin Cleveland: in May 2005 she was a mere "assertive official" from the Bush administration, one of "only four Republicans" whom Wolfowitz brought into the World Bank; today she is the apparatchick "parachuted in with Wolfowitz [when he was appointed, who] gets $250,000 and a free pass from the IRS, far more than her rank justifies.... [and] granted quasi-tenure..." that she is today.
