<incom> WELL, AT LEAST HE'S NOT A WAR CRIMINAL (Modified by Geert Lovink)

[robert weissman]

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WELL, AT LEAST HE'S NOT A WAR CRIMINAL*
Robert Weissman
May 30, 2007

Well, at least he's not a war criminal.

George Bush's new selection to head the World Bank, Robert Zoellick has 
that over his predecessor, Paul Wolfowitz.

But can't the world demand a slightly higher standard?

The selection process for chief of the World Bank, which claims to be 
the world's preeminent anti-poverty institution, is preposterous. By 
tradition, the post goes to a U.S. citizen, to be selected by the U.S. 
President. There is no pretense of democracy at this international 
institution. Nor is there any pretense of demanding relevant 
development experience. None of the past presidents of the Bank, 
including Wolfowitz and Zoellick, has had any meaningful experience in 
development policy. There have been longstanding calls by people who 
actually care about development, and do have relevant expertise, to 
reform the Bank's archaic government structure.

But more important than the Bank's governing process are its policies.

The World Bank's great failings over the last decades are rooted in its 
commitment to the market fundamentalism known as "the Washington 
consensus." This is a set of maniacal market-oriented policies 
including: deregulation of the economy, opening countries up to capital 
inflows and outflows, removing all trade barriers and orienting 
economies to support exports, massive privatization (including even of 
such traditional government functions as customs collection), 
eliminating subsidies for basic necessities, rolling back legally 
guaranteed labor rights, cutting back on government services and 
restricting government spending. The Bank has also maintained a 
penchant for environmentally and socially destructive mega-development 
projects: big dams, oil and gas projects, road-building. The result has 
been a literal human disaster: the developing countries that have most 
closely hued to policies imposed by the World Bank (and its sister 
institution, the International Monetary Fund) have found themselves 
much poorer, less healthy and less educated than countries that have 
resisted Bank recommendations.

In one notable example, the Bank's historic support for user fees for 
education and healthcare has denied millions of children the right to 
schooling, and deprived millions of people access to healthcare.

The Wolfowitz controversy obscured the bigger issues at the Bank, and 
the questions now facing Zoellick:

- Will Zoellick oppose user fees for healthcare?

- Will he support robust public health systems that rely on public 
providers -- not wishful thinking about HMO-style schemes delivering 
health care in developing countries?

- Will he abandon support for water privatization?

- Will he end the Bank's heinous opposition to labor rights in its 
influential Doing Business report?

- Will he insist that countries be able to expand healthcare and 
education budgets, despite pressure from the International Monetary 
Fund?

- Will he support the recommendations of Bank-supported expert 
investigations, and end support for mega-development projects?

As the U.S. Trade Representative, Robert Zoellick pushed market 
extremist policies akin to those of the Bank, in World Trade 
Organization negotiations, and especially in bilateral and regional 
trade agreement negotiations.

His very aggressive agenda as USTR included advocating for increased 
monopoly rights for drug companies, eliminating precautionary health 
measures, removing protections for small farmers and eliminating 
industrial tariffs in developing countries (a key element of the 
misnamed "Doha Development Round" of World Trade Organization talks 
that Zoellick helped kick off).

To be fair to Zoellick, every recent person in his post, Republican or 
Democrat, has pushed the same Big Business agenda that he did. And on 
pharmaceutical and patent issues -- some of the key considerations at 
USTR -- he did not do everything Big Pharma wanted, and sometimes 
really pushed against the industry's interests (until overridden by the 
White House.)

On the other hand, the fact that other former U.S. Trade 
Representatives pushed a broad Big Business agenda is hardly an 
argument for why Zoellick should be rewarded with the World Bank post. 
It is a better argument for why no former USTRs should be given the 
job.

And even though Zoellick had major conflicts with Big Pharma, he did at 
the end of the day deliver on almost everything the companies wanted. 
As my colleague Asia Russell of the AIDS activist organization Health 
GAP says, "It's very difficult to imagine the same Bob Zoellick who 
carried water for Big Pharma being the kind of advocate ministers of 
health need in order to expand their investments in salaries for 
doctors and nurses to address 6,000 preventable AIDS deaths each day in 
Africa alone."

The same point could be echoed about the rest of Zoellick's performance 
as USTR.

Unless Zoellick makes a break from market fundamentalism, expect the 
World Bank to continue to generate rather than reduce poverty.

And yes, the world should demand better. For the immediate term, 
Zoellick should be pressed to make specific commitments to abandon key 
components of the Bank's failed preferred policy set. The longer term 
agenda must involve achieving not just better governance at the Bank, 
but a completely refashioned orientation.

-------

* Zoellick does not seem to have been an active part of the 
Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal that concocted the case for the Iraq war and then 
carried it out, but he was (along with Paul Wolfowitz and others) a 
signer of the 1998 letter from the Project for a New American Century 
to Bill Clinton, urging Clinton "to turn your Administration's 
attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from 
power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and 
military efforts."



Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational
Monitor, <http://www.multinationalmonitor.org> and director of
Essential Action <http://www.essentialaction.org>.

(c) Robert Weissman

This article is posted at:
<http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/corp-focus/2007/000258.html>.


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