April 19, 2007
Wolfowitz, the bank and Iraq
The row about whether Paul Wolfowitz should step down as president of the World Bank has nothing to with Iraq. But it also has everything to do with Iraq. How so? Well, as even inattentive readers of the FT will have noticed, Mr Wolfowitz is in a spot of bother about the salary and job he helped to arrange for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza.
Those calling for his resignation (including the FT) argue that it is untenable for a man who has made the fight against corruption the centre-piece of his time at the bank, to hang onto the presidency in these circumstances.
None of that has anything to do with Iraq. But it would also be naïve to suppose that people’s attitudes to Wolfowitz are not deeply coloured by his central role in the origins of the Iraq war.
Zbigniew Brzezinski notes in his new book "Second Chance", that -
"Within days of 9/11, the outspoken and highly motivated Wolfowitz dared to speculate publicly about the need for a follow-up operation against Iraq, but Secretary of State Powell - mindful of the unpredictable risks of a larger war - reacted sharply, stating that the deputy defence secretary spoke only for himself. Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, however, the president took the alleged offender aside and quietly told him to ‘keep it up, keep it up’, revealing his own early predisposition."
Doubtless the World Bank employees who are calling for their president to resign are genuinely appalled by the ethical issues thrown up by the Riza affair. But the fact is that Wolfowitz commands very little loyalty at the bank. And that surely has a lot to do with his role as a key architect of the Iraq war. Now Wolfowitz’s fate seems to rest with the Bush administration. And once again, it is surely naïve to assume that the Iraq war will have nothing to do with the decision. In his book Brzezinski identifies three people as the "intellectual source" of the president’s ideas after 9/11 - Condi Rice, Scooter Libby (Dick Cheney’s chief of staff) and Wolfowitz. Libby has now been convicted for his role in revealing the identity of a CIA agent and faces jail time. Could President Bush really face seeing another of his key advisers on Iraq end his career in disgrace?
Wolfowitz is often bracketed in the public mind, not with Libby, but with Richard Perle - another neocon intellectual. And having seen Perle and Wolfowitz in action at a conference, they do make an interesting - and contrasting - pair. Perle is aggressive, self-satisfied and alarming; you do not want to tangle with him. Wolfowitz, by contrast, is courteous and professorial in manner.
Of the two, Perle was also more obviously interested in the high-life. In his remarkable book on Conrad Black, Tom Bower notes that even Black - who is currently on trial for alleged fraud - found Perle’s behaviour as a director of Black’s company (Hollinger) a little on the greedy side. As Bower notes -
"Every month he (Perle) was spending up to $6,000 on his Hollinger American Express card - and in 2000 and 2001, he had received $3.1m under the Digital incentive plan, despite the company’s losses. Nevertheless he seemed to want more. There was, Black complained to Peter Atkinson, ‘a good deal of nest-feathering being conducted by Richard."
By contrast with Richard Perle, Wolfowitz has always seemed a rather ascetic character. The amounts of money involved in the Riza case are not huge and Wolfowitz did not benefit directly. Nonetheless, the scandal may be enough to do for him.
Surely the Ethics Committee at the Bank was initially asked for their approval about the woman’s promotion, which they gave to W. And didn’t the deputies to the HR head also agree to the salary increase? It’s the miffed HR head who started the furore.
Therefore it’s just office politics at play and Wolfowitz needs to sack the HR head asap then get on with his job.
I also agree with you: Bush will back W till the end.
Posted by: owl | April 19th, 2007 at 7:09 pm | Report this commentUndoubtedly, Wolfowitz is a hypocrit and must be kicked out if he doesnt leave himself. He represents the perverse core of the George W. Bush neocon fringe that is slowly but surely being exposed.
Posted by: ready | April 20th, 2007 at 9:39 am | Report this commentDear readers,
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Kate Mackenzie
Interactive editor, FT.com
It strikes me as quite sensible that people should question Wolfowitz’s fitness for the presidency based on his involvement in the decision to invade and occupy Iraq - a foolish decision based on false information and delusion, with no thought given to the possible consequences.
Posted by: The strategist | April 20th, 2007 at 11:12 am | Report this commentOne out of two ain’t bad. this has nothing to do with corruption; wolfowitz has not personally, directly, profited from this! So it has everything to do with Iraq, and only Iraq; and it’s payback time!
Posted by: eliXelx | April 20th, 2007 at 3:52 pm | Report this commentAmerica is a house divided. In future there will be no such thing as merit to dictate who gets jobs; just whose escutcheon is the least blotted.
To my mind the furore about Wolfowitz at the world bank says a lot about the value system of ‘the west’. A lot of hullabaloo about what is a trivial matter when set against his other crimes. Certainly set against the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as a direct and predictable result of policies he played a central part in designing and implementing. Wolfowitz and others should be on trial for war crimes. The fact that there seems little prospect of this is what should exercise us, not a few grand extra for his girlfriend.
Posted by: Conor | April 20th, 2007 at 4:38 pm | Report this commentI haven’t seen any evidence that Mr. Wolfowitz did anything unbecoming of a person in his position; everything that happened happened transparently and was procedurally approved and documented at the world bank. If this had been anyone but a neoconservative Bush ally it would have been a non-issue. Mr. Rachman you would be more correct to say; they’re out to get him. The tar is boiling and the feathers are plucked.
That the FT has called for his resignation is sloppy me-too journalism unbecoming of a publication of quality. Mr. Wolfowitz deserves a fair investigation and not the public hanging the entire world condemns him to.
Posted by: Felix Drost | April 23rd, 2007 at 12:58 am | Report this commentThe World Bank board meets today to consider the fate of President Paul Wolfowitz, and the truth is that the verdict may already be in.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117919516414802856.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
( http://news.google.com/news?q=World+Bank+Jobbery )
How much would Mrs. Riza make if she had a similar position in the private sector? Didn’t giving up her senior world bank position and career entitle her to compensation? I’m still waiting for some FT columnist to put this story in perspective and do it some justice. If this had been anyone but a neoconservative, would it still have been this story. Come on guys earn a living.
Posted by: Felix Drost, Amsterdam NL | May 15th, 2007 at 7:41 am | Report this commentBoth wolfowitz and Perle are linked to the israeli lobby Aipac, wherefrom they promoted the idea of war against Iraq. The pwoer of the lobby is such the the book written concerning Aipac by two jewish authers could not be published in the US.
Posted by: ressan | November 25th, 2007 at 7:52 am | Report this commentWill the american citizen be ever able fo find out the truth??