Still Too Legitimate

So aspiring World Bank prexy Paul Wolfowitz has told EU ministers that he is committed to the bank’s mission, such as it is. According to Dow Jones News, after meeting with EU officials:

Wolfowitz struck a conciliatory public tone after a two-hour session with development and finance ministers at E.U. headquarters, promising to work closely with European partners and saying he would make fighting poverty his top priority.

Belgian Development Aid minister Armand De Decker afterward said “there are no objections of E.U. countries” to Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz, whose nomination is expected to be approved Thursday, said he was “eager to take on this challenge” of heading the bank.

“Helping people lift themselves out of poverty is truly a noble mission,” said Wolfowitz, currently the U.S. deputy defense secretary.

I had hoped the Wolfowitz nomination, along with naming John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations, would help sour some people on the efficacy of these international institutions, and further delegitimize them as tools of global management. Alas, this has not happened, and the attachment that “progressives” and leftists have with “international governance” continues apace. In fact, things are getting worse, as do-good “conservatives” (neo and otherwise) learn that these institutions can be useful ways of projecting and strengthening American power.

I wish I knew what it would take for people everywhere to repudiate organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the UN, the Paris Club, the fiction of “development” as endorsed by the global managerial class, and the “Washington consensus.” I really wish I knew.

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9:08 am on March 30, 2005