Wolfowitz will begin his five-year term June 1, in a post that has always been held by a U.S. official since the World Bank was founded after World War II.

The appointment will further weaken “multipolarity” within this imperialist institution, which is based in Washington, D.C., and has been dominated by the U.S. government since its founding. It will also exacerbate conflicts between capitalist powers in Europe and among imperialist powers around the world.

Wolfowitz’s ascension to the World Bank “will extend and shore up the Bush Doctrine,” said an editorial in the Investor’s Business Daily on March 17, the day after U.S. president George Bush nominated the defense department official for the post.

“To many on the left and throughout the media, Wolfowitz is an evil genius, a darker force even than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who led us into a disastrous war in Iraq,” the editorial said sarcastically.

“With hard-liner John Bolton posted at the U.N. and Wolfowitz at the World Bank, the Bush Doctrine stands astride the world,” it concluded.

In January, barely two months before his nomination, Wolfowitz was dispatched to Indonesia. He toured the area for three days after the Pentagon had deployed about 16,000 troops—as well as an aircraft carrier, a Marine amphibious group, and 100 aircraft—to transport aid to the victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami.

This was part of a political operation by Washington to present the imperialist military forces as benevolent and humanitarian. “Nothing is more gratifying than being able to help people in need—as I experienced when I witnessed the tsunami relief operations in Indonesia and Sri Lanka,” Wolfowitz told the Washington Post at the time.

The operation, and the defense official’s tour, were also aimed at reestablishing or strengthening operational ties between the U.S. military and local armies, especially Indonesia’s armed forces; testing equipment and rapid response deployments in the field; and carrying out intelligence operations.

Wolfowitz was the right man for the job. He had served as the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia under the Reagan administration, when Washington was backing the Suharto dictatorship there, and as secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs prior to that. By any measure, the tsunami relief operations were a success for Washington. This was reflected, in part, in the warm welcome Jakarta extended to Wolfowitz’s appointment at the helm of the World Bank. “As a former ambassador to Indonesia, he has a lot of friends here, and knows the country well,” Yuri Thamrin, a spokesman for Indonesia’s foreign ministry, told the Antara news agency April 1. “We hope he will remain our friend.”

To appease concerns that he will use his new post to push for deeper unilateral actions by Washington, Wolfowitz said the words the World Bank’s 24 directors wanted to hear. According to the April 1 New York Times, Wolfowitz said “he respected the multilateral nature of the institution and its overall goal of eradicating world poverty through loans, aid and advice.”

His nomination was a shoo-in. None of the governments in what Rumsfeld has described as “Old Europe,” including Paris and Berlin, which have clashed with Washington over competing investment interests in the Middle East and elsewhere, opposed the nomination or proposed another candidate.

As an editorial in the March 17 Wall Street Journal put it, however, there is little indication that the new man at the top of the World Bank will mean less antagonism between Washington and its rivals in Europe. “The World Bank is a dysfunctional bureaucracy that requires deep reform,” the editorial said. “If anyone can stand up to the Robert Mugabes of the world,” the Journal editors concluded, referring to the president of Zimbabwe, “it must be the man who stood up to Saddam Hussein.” Washington and its allies have been waging a campaign to force Mugabe to step down.

Wolfowitz has spoken out recently for imposing what the U.S. rulers describe as “democracy” in the Middle East. He has argued that “peace would come to the Middle East after, not before, Arabs could enjoy self-governance,” said the March 17 Investor’s Business Daily editorial. He has advocated “freedom,” not the “balance of power,” and “liberation,” not “stabilization,” like other top Bush administration officials. These terms register not just a shift in watchwords but a historic shift in world political strategy under the second Bush administration, compared to Clinton and his predecessors.

The “Bush doctrine” is the administration’s post-9/11 transformation in combat of the U.S. armed forces, which are being reorganized into smaller, more lethal and mobile brigades capable of being deployed quickly any place around the world where Washington’s domination is threatened. These changes register the reversal of what broad layers in the U.S. ruling class in both imperialist parties—the Democrats and Republicans—now agree was 25 years of politically and militarily inadequate responses to “terrorist” attacks on U.S. targets and belated action against states deemed capable of developing weapons and delivery systems endangering Washington’s imperial interests.

As he did in the Department of Defense, Wolfowitz can be expected to accelerate similar changes from his new position atop the World Bank.
 
 
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