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, and director of Essential Action .

 

 

---