By Richard Norman
As World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz waits to hear from the Bank’s Board of Directors about his future (he’s accused of giving a large pay-raise to his companion), I thought this video from 1995 might be interesting. Here Wolfowitz, talking about Bosnia, describes nation building as "a futile exercise" and, contra Brent Scrowcroft (the other guest), favours uncommitted intervention, efforts not to save the Bosnian Muslims, but just to help adjust their position in the conflict.
Yesterday, according to the NYT:
[Wolfowitz] appealed to [World Bank] staff members to look beyond his role in planning the Iraq war and join him in fighting poverty in Africa and other missions of the bank.
‘For those people who disagree with the things that they associate with me in my previous job, I’m not in my previous job," he said.
A president without Wolfowitz’s baggage might easily move past this recent controversy; but Wolfowitz, so closely tied to Iraq and the Bush Administration, becomes more toxic almost every month, and the knives are out for him.
Well, I guess when I wrote a piece about Wolfowitz’ anti-corruption efforts I should have known he was doomed to implode in a bout of corruption himself. (Or maybe it was the Wall Street Journal op-ed praising his anti-corruption efforts a few weeks ago). What’s interesting to me is how these sorts of personal networks are omnipresent but usually only get people into trouble if they work for the government. I guess there is something special about “service.”