Neoconservatives care about the poor. This proposition may not be entirely ludicrous: that poverty, underdevelopment and failed states breed jihadists with empty bellies and fiery eyes (or vice versa) is one of those claims with all the force of triteness working in its favour. Whether it is strictly true is a more complicated question.
Two years ago, Paul Wolfowitz, fresh from his Mesopotamian triumph, became president of the World Bank. Unlike Robert McNamara, who went to the bank to wash the blood of Vietnam from his hands in a flood of infrastructure loans, Wolfowitz came in the wake of ”Mission Accomplished” to complete the neoconservative project. In Iraq, he had shown that democracy could flow from the barrel of a gun; now he would turn his hand to concrete mixers and soft loans. With his hand on a spigot of cash, he would foster development and security while choking off the corruption that has too often fed on World Bank projects.
Of course, most of the world had no choice in the matter. Ever since striking a cosy deal at Bretton Woods in 1944, the Europeans have picked the head of the International Monetary Fund and the Americans have chosen the top World Banker. Despite profound changes in the world over the past six decades, neither has budged on demands for a governance overhaul.
But, that doesn’t mean the World Bank, or its president, can do without support and Wolfowitz has worked hard to win it, particularly in Africa. When his name was first mentioned in connection with the job, he telephoned Trevor Manuel, the African who wields most influence in bank structures, to reassure him about his intentions. They have continued to talk regularly.
For a while there, the unlikely convergence of interests between Bush administration hawks and the governments of poor countries seemed to be working. Whatever the motivation, United States aid, as a proportion of GDP, roughly doubled during the first Bush administration and a significant programme of debt relief got under way.
It was never going to last. There is no doubt that it is in the interest of rich countries that poor countries should be helped to become less miserable. But Wolfowitz brought a disturbingly narrow version of that approach with him from the Bush administration, along with the disastrous foreign policy legacy, peremptory arrogance and ethical weaknesses that have crippled the White House.
It is ethics that have pushed him into deep crisis: his partner works at the World Bank and, when he arrived, he sought to avoid the appearance of impropriety by having her seconded to the US state department. She not only got a cushy posting there, but also a $60 000 annual boost in salary on his instruction.
None of that looks very good for a man who made the fight against corruption the centrepiece of his tenure and who has angered people inside and outside the bank by abruptly cutting funds when he detects a lapse in propriety.
He has admitted that he erred, but insists that he wants to stay on, citing among other things his commitment to African development and calling on the support of African finance ministers. Some of them are giving it, despite deep private misgivings. Manuel is remaining studiously, tellingly neutral, saying a review by the board must take its course. He almost certainly agrees with Gordon Brown, who wants Wolfowitz out, as do the Germans.
But it is the World Bank staff who have been most vocal, booing their boss at a meeting last week and calling for his resignation. They have disliked and mistrusted him from the start. The lieutenants he brought over from the defence department are universally derided as underqualified, high-handed hacks; his association with the Iraq war puts all his policy decisions in question and he has now handed his enemies an excuse to go for his throat.
For now, the board is cogitating and the Bush administration is backing its man, but the wind has turned chilly in Washington for the neocons, and it is darkly hinted that Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary, wants him out.
It will be a real pity, though, if it all comes down to a battle in the Bush team. A crisis in the governance of the World Bank is a historic opportunity: the bankruptcy of the current arrangement is in clear view and, if multilateralism in development finance is to survive it must be seized by the Europeans, Asians, Africans and the Americans. Democracy at the World Bank may not suit the neocons, but if their blunders bring it on, we’ll drink a toast to Wolfowitz and dance a jig to his political obituary.
Nic Dawes is associate deputy editor