Paul Wolfowitz, the number two person at the Pentagon, has been nominated by the United States to be the new president of the World Bank.
In an interview Friday with Reuters, Wolfowitz said, “I am not going to impose the U.S. agenda on the bank.“
How can this be? If it is true, why would President Bush nominate him? If it is false, why did he say it?
I look at Wolfowitz’s resume, posted at pentagon.mil with wonder — does this look like someone who has a fair and balanced, non-US-centric outlook on world affairs?
Paul Wolfowitz has spent more than 30 years as a public servant and
educator, including 24 years in government service under six
Presidents. In March, 2001, he began his third tour at the Defense
Department as the 28th Deputy Secretary of Defense.In the Pentagon’s number two post, Wolfowitz manages day-to-day
operations and supports Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his
efforts to transform the U.S. Armed Forces to meet the threats of the
21st century.Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, Wolfowitz has assisted in
planning the global war on terrorism, including military operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq. He has also played a diplomatic role in
speeches before international audiences and in outreach to potential
friends and allies, including moderate Muslims who aspire to freedom
and self-determination.In 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed Wolfowitz to his second
Defense Department tour as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the
Pentagon’s third-ranking post. He assisted Defense Secretary Cheney
in developing plans for prosecuting the Gulf War and in raising more
than $50 billion in allied financial support.Under President Reagan, Wolfowitz served three years as
U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, the fourth most-populous country in the
world and the largest in the Muslim world. During his tour, he was an
advocate for political reform and negotiated on behalf of American
intellectual property rights. Under his direction, U.S. Embassy
Jakarta was recognized by the Inspector General as one of the
best-managed U.S. diplomatic missions.Before being posted to Indonesia, Wolfowitz served two years as head
of the State Department’s Policy Planning Office and three-and-a-half
years as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs, working with the leaders of more than 20 countries.
Wolfowitz assisted in a major improvement in U.S. relations with China
and a strengthening of our alliances with Japan and Korea. He also
played a key role in supporting the peaceful transition to democracy
in the Philippines and laying the groundwork for the subsequent
democratic transition in Korea.During his first Pentagon tour as Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Regional Programs from 1977-1980, Wolfowitz led the first
major assessment of U.S. strategic interests and challenges in the
Persian Gulf, a study which helped to create what later became the
United States Central Command. He also helped initiate the Maritime
Pre-positioning Program, a plan that positioned heavy weapons and
ammunition aboard ships in the Persian Gulf region. That preparation
was the backbone of the initial U.S. response 12 years later during
Operation Desert Shield.Wolfowitz’s time outside government has been spent principally as a
leader in higher education. From 1994-2001, he served as Dean and
Professor of International Relations at the Paul H. Nitze School of
Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of The Johns Hopkins University.
During his tenure, Wolfowitz also contributed to the public debate on
national security issues through his writings, testimony before
Congress, and service on public commissions — among them the 1998
Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States
and the 1996 President’s Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of
the U.S. Intelligence Community. Earlier, Wolfowitz taught political
science at Yale University from 1970 to 1973. In 1993, he was the
George F. Kennan Professor of National Security Strategy at the
National War College.Wolfowitz has written widely on national security strategy and foreign
policy. He was a member of the advisory boards of the journals
Foreign Affairs and National Interest. Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz
earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cornell University in
1965 and a doctorate in political science from the University of
Chicago in 1972.
Comment (1)
Pentagon Contradicts General on Iraq Occupation Force’s Size
By Eric Schmitt
New York Times
February 28, 2003
In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon’s second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general’s assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.
Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, “wildly off the mark.” Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war’s duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward.
“We have no idea what we will need until we get there on the ground,” Mr. Wolfowitz said at a hearing of the House Budget Committee. “Every time we get a briefing on the war plan, it immediately goes down six different branches to see what the scenarios look like. If we costed each and every one, the costs would range from $10 billion to $100 billion.” Mr. Wolfowitz’s refusal to be pinned down on the costs of war and peace in Iraq infuriated some committee Democrats, who noted that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the budget director, had briefed President Bush on just such estimates on Tuesday.
“I think you’re deliberately keeping us in the dark,” said Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia. “We’re not so naïve as to think that you don’t know more than you’re revealing.” Representative Darlene Hooley, an Oregon Democrat, also voiced exasperation with Mr. Wolfowitz: “I think you can do better than that.”
Mr. Wolfowitz, with Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon comptroller, at his side, tried to mollify the Democratic lawmakers, promising to fill them in eventually on the administration’s internal cost estimates. “There will be an appropriate moment,” he said, when the Pentagon would provide Congress with cost ranges. “We’re not in a position to do that right now.”
At a Pentagon news conference with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld echoed his deputy’s comments. Neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Mr. Wolfowitz mentioned General Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, by name. But both men were clearly irritated at the general’s suggestion that a postwar Iraq might require many more forces than the 100,000 American troops and the tens of thousands of allied forces that are also expected to join a reconstruction effort.
“The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces I think is far off the mark,” Mr. Rumsfeld said. General Shinseki gave his estimate in response to a question at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday: “I would say that what’s been mobilized to this point — something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers — are probably, you know, a figure that would be required.” He also said that the regional commander, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, would determine the precise figure.
A spokesman for General Shinseki, Col. Joe Curtin, said today that the general stood by his estimate. “He was asked a question and he responded with his best military judgment,” Colonel Curtin said. General Shinseki is a former commander of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia.
In his testimony, Mr. Wolfowitz ticked off several reasons why he believed a much smaller coalition peacekeeping force than General Shinseki envisioned would be sufficient to police and rebuild postwar Iraq. He said there was no history of ethnic strife in Iraq, as there was in Bosnia or Kosovo. He said Iraqi civilians would welcome an American-led liberation force that “stayed as long as necessary but left as soon as possible,” but would oppose a long-term occupation force. And he said that nations that oppose war with Iraq would likely sign up to help rebuild it. “I would expect that even countries like France will have a strong interest in assisting Iraq in reconstruction,” Mr. Wolfowitz said. He added that many Iraqi expatriates would likely return home to help.
In the 1991 Persian Gulf War, many nations agreed in advance of hostilities to help pay for a conflict that eventually cost about $61 billion. Mr. Wolfowitz said that this time around the administration was dealing with “countries that are quite frightened of their own shadows” in assembling a coalition to force President Saddam Hussein to disarm.
Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, he said. “I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact,” Mr. Wolfowitz said. Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. “To assume we’re going to pay for it all is just wrong,” he said.
At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, “I’ve already decided that. It’s not useful.”