[Flame Of Liberty]

Wolfowitz at the World Bank's Door
by William Norman Grigg
March 18, 2005

Liberals who are horrified over the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank are focusing on the wrong target: It is the Bank itself that should be considered horrifying.

The selection of former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank is "truly terrifying," exclaimed an anonymous British official. The same could be said of being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness — an unwelcome bit of news that could be a blessing if acted on in a timely and appropriate fashion.

The Wolfowitz nomination could serve a similarly useful function if it scares well-intentioned but misled people into reassessing the need for agencies like the World Bank. That reassessment could build on second thoughts American liberals are having about the merits of interventionist government on the domestic front.

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As they [liberals]giddily went about the subversive business of destroying constitutional limits on government, American liberals apparently never considered the possibility that they would be on the receiving end of the Leviathan they were creating. Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet dictatorship, famously stated that the key question in politics was "who does what to whom." Contemporary liberals are learning that it’s no fun — and potentially deadly — to find yourself on the bad side of that formula. Thus there's hope that at least some of them will be disabused of the notion that Big Government is dangerous only in the "wrong" hands — that is to say, in the hands of others.

It is to be hoped that the Wolfowitz nomination will leave liberals similarly disillusioned about the World Bank and the other organs of globalism.

Created as part of the post-WWII constellation of globalist organizations (which includes the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization), the World Bank has an entirely unearned reputation for promoting economic development and relief around the world. In fact, it has done more to sow misery, poverty, corruption, and war than practically any institution in history. This is why Wolfowitz, a warmonger and disciple of Soviet terror master Leon Trotsky, is a perfect choice to serve as World Bank commissar.

n his recently published book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, economist John Perkins describes the role played by the World Bank in a global loan-sharking scheme. Covertly recruited by the National Security Agency in the late 1960s, Perkins was dispatched to various countries — including Indonesia and Panama — to help induce national leaders to take out huge World Bank loans to fund mammoth infrastructure programs.

According to Perkins, he was just one Economic Hit Man (EHM) among thousands plying the same trade worldwide. If an EHM is successful, writes Perkins, "the [World Bank] loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the Mafia we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military bases, or access to precious resources…. Of course, the debtor still owes us money — and another country is added to our global empire."

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Left-leaning commentator David Corn of The Nation correctly points out that Wolfowitz is following in the footsteps of Robert McNamara, "the captain of the Vietnam tragedy, [who] left his post as secretary of defense to become president of the World Bank. So Bush is establishing a bipartisan tradition: you screw up a war, you get to run the World Bank. With this announcement, the impoverished of the world have less reason for hope."

In fact, the World Bank, as John Perkins points out, has done more than its share to crush the hopes of the world’s impoverished peoples. The problem with the World Bank is not that sometimes it is run by the "wrong" people, but rather that it exists at all.

"Throughout sub-Saharan Africa," observed Ian Vasquez of the Cato Institute’s Project on Global Economic Liberty more than a decade ago, "the IMF and World Bank have been loaning enormous sums to oppressive socialist and authoritarian regimes for decades, with pretty much the same abysmal results: a steady decline in per capita income, agricultural production, food production, and many other areas as well."

Somalia, described by the World Bank as "the quintessential failed state," also perfectly illustrates the point made by Vasquez. Between the 1960s and the early 1990s, Somalia was the "beneficiary" of huge loans from the World Bank; by 1987, those loans accounted for 37 percent of the country’s GNP. Siad Barre, the Marxist thug on whom the World Bank bestowed that beneficence, lived in opulent splendor even as the nation’s infrastructure rotted away.

The 1991 collapse of the Barre regime and the ensuing civil war resulted in an abortive UN-commanded "humanitarian" military intervention — following the formula described by Perkins, Conable, and Barnett. But the constituency for that mission proved fragile, and the mission ended in the early 1990s. Confounding the expectations of globalist humanitarians, Somalia flourished precisely because of the "world community’s" neglect.

In Somalia, "the very absence of a government may have helped nurture an African oddity — a lean and efficient business sector that does not feed at a public trough controlled by corrupt officials," wrote Peter Maas in the May 2001 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Tele-communications, transportation, and shipping companies were organized up to provide services to the liberated private sector. Internet cafes have sprung up in Mogadishu. Private security firms helped businessmen protect their investments and property.

It is the nature of institutions like the World Bank to underwrite vicious regimes, and to attract the services of the likes of Wolfowitz and McNamara. And as long as it has access to U.S. taxpayer money, the World Bank will continue to cultivate corruption and conflict abroad. This is why abolishing the World Bank — and, for that matter, the entire corrupt architecture of globalism — should be an objective of decent people everywhere, irrespective of their ideological affiliations.

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Wolfowitz at the World Bank's Door