[Translation from Le Courrier (Geneva)]

International

Editorial

WOLFOWITZ AND THE OTHERS
By Marco Gregori

Le Courrier (Geneva)
March 31, 2005

http://www.lecourrier.ch/modules.php?op=modload&name=NewsPaper&file=article&sid=39359&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Yesterday the good Mr. Deiss met the good Mr. Wolfowitz. The former said he was delighted about his informal chat with the latter. Reassured, the federal counsellor shared his “very good feeling” about the intentions of the present U.S. deputy secretary of defense. Like other heads of state, Joseph Deiss will support his nomination today to the presidency of the World Bank. In mid-March, when President George W. Bush presented the Wolfowitz candidacy, some NGOs spoke of a “catastrophe.” Here, they said, was something that would completely nullify reform efforts by the present World Bank president, James Wolfensohn. Their argument is worth repeating. Given Paul Wolfowitz’s antecedents, his limitless neoconservatism, his extreme unilateralism, there’s not much chance that the poorest countries will find his a helping hand to enable them to raise their heads above an ocean of debt. In a commentary that appeared in the Le Courrier international, Noreena Hertz, professor of economics at the University of Utrecht, emphasized: “Just recently, Wolfowitz said to the U.S. Congress that no matter what its level of devastation, Iraq ought to use its petroleum revenues to pay not only for reconstruction but for the war itself.” [Noreena Hertz, “Main basse sur la Banque mondiale” [’Buying Up the World Bank’], Le Courrier international, March 24, 2005.]

But at least this nomination will, if it is confirmed today, have the merit of clarity. It will rigidly fix the World Bank in the line of what it has been for a good part of its sixty years of existence: an instrument singing the pseudo-virtues of a productivism designed to make free-market economics (‘le libéralisme’) last forever. A few months ago the economist Eric Toussain, a fervent partisan of the abolition of the debt of third-world countries, published a rather pointed analysis of the World Bank’s behavior toward autocratic regimes. The verdict: the international organization, when pressured by big business, did not hesitate to support dictatorships and then take home its marbles when democratic governments that were less subject to the reigning economic rules succeeded them. [Eric Toussain, “The World Bank’s and the IMF’s Support of Dictatorships,” http://www.cadtm.org.]

Interviewed by Le Monde about the possible pursuit of such policies, Paul Wolfowitz had this astonishing response: “The countries that have free political institutions very much have a tendency to succeed economically. Those that succeed economically very much have a tendency to develop a powerful civil society and free institutions.” [Le Monde, March 24, 2005.] The rest of the interview was very much in the same vein, and calls for two observations. First, Paul Wolfowitz is a past master at not answering embarrassing questions. Second, despite his wanting to look like a good guy, the Washington hawk didn’t conceal very well his scorn for, when he is not showing his lack of knowledge about, international organizations. His single credo constantly resurfaces: to favor unbridled economic development, which is supposed to bring peace and prosperity to all the earth.

At present, more and more groups of economists and ordinary citizens are denouncing this hallucinatory belief, which constitutes a threat to the planet itself. By approving Paul Wolfowitz’s nomination today, the majority, perhaps even the totality of the member countries of the World Bank will show on the contrary that they still are still clinging to it. At this stage, complicity is becoming the equivalent of crime.

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Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Home page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu