When the idea was first suggested that he should take over as
president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz must have thought he
had just fallen into a honey pot. One term as the head of that
immense international institution and he would be on the way to
some multi-million dollar top post at any one of a number of major
financial firms.
He was a natural for the job they had said at the White House.
Someone decided that his previous stints as Ambassador to Indonesia
and Asst. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs had
given Paul adequate exposure to developing economies to justify the
top job at the World Bank. The trouble was that he and they ignored
the fact that he knew nothing of the world of multinational
banking.
To begin with, what had been an interesting and manageable
organization when Robert McNamara made the transition from Sec. of
Defense to the World Bank forty years ago was now a top-heavy
financial behemoth. Its table of organization is a melange of
administrative and operational sinecures where regional
vice-presidents vie with functional vice-presidents in asserting
authority over twenty billion dollars of projects annually.
The bank’s board of governors has never seriously considered the
changed character of their client nations. If they had, they would
have recognized that now only the poorer countries in Africa and
Central America really need the specific services of the World
Bank. Furthermore, the African Development Bank and the
Inter-American Development Bank could be funded to handle any
financial or technical contributions now offered by the present
World Bank structure.
Two years ago Wolfowitz arrived at the bank’s Washington
headquarters determined to modernize his new charge. Corruption in
World Bank projects abroad was endemic and well known. The
extremely well paid staff was bloated in the home office beyond all
parameters even for a town that is used to such organizational
obesity. No problem for Paul, though. He hadn’t been daunted by the
famous Pentagon bureaucracy. How much more difficult could the
World Bank be?
The part that Wolfowitz missed, however, was that he was not
only considered an outsider by the immense staff of international
banking careerists, but he was also one of the architects of the
dreaded Iraq War. In the eyes of the leadership of the world’s
leading liberal financial instrument the United States had become
an international aggressor. Paul Wolfowitz was seen as Al Capone
taking over the Salvation Army.
Paul obviously sensed some of this antagonism, but he completely
misjudged the willingness of the professional staff and directorate
to do him in. His focus on ending corruption and incompetence as
well as rationalizing priorities ran completely counter to the
culture of indolent sophistication of the bank.
The word went out that Wolfowitz intended to
Rumsfeldize the bank. “Leaner and meaner” was the
watchword Paul put forth. But this was not the Pentagon, and Paul
Wolfowitz did not have the chain of command to pull up short.
THEN HE MADE HIS really big mistake. He and Shaha Ali Riza had been
a Washington couple since around 2002 where Ms. Riza was a
respected figure in the Washington international set. Reportedly
born in Tunisia, reared in Saudi Arabia, she eventually gained a
British passport as well as a degree from Oxford. She was employed
as a communications official at the World Bank.
Paul’s special relationship with Shaha was made clear to the
bank’s ethics committee in order to avoid any infraction of the
house rules against even the appearance of nepotism. However,
ignoring the small print in other rules, Paul then went ahead and
arranged a secondment of his girlfriend to the State Department
with a very nice promotion and assorted perks.
This provided the legal device to oust the meddlesome Wolfowitz
from the presidency. He fell right into the trap because of his own
arrogance and the vigor of his enemies, who saw their own protected
fiefdom in danger of disappearing through the reorganization
ambitions of the Wolfowitz regime.
Paul Wolfowitz long has had a charmed career, shifting over from
the Democrat Party to the Republican with the newly crowned
neoconservatives of the eighties. Except for his relatively brief
stint as Ambassador to Indonesia, he has never strayed far from the
flagpole. It is a tried and true system of advancement in
Washington, but this time his own success appears to have brought
him down. Sic transit gloria mundi!
