Asymmetrical Information

Is the article secretly you, Jane?

I for one would much rather have Wolfowitz at the World Bank than anywhere in the US government. I'd like to find suitable posts for Rumsfeld and Cheney too if possible. As to Feith, there's always the Rotary Club.

It's a good thing that you are not in charge of who does what in thehigher echalons of our gov't Jim.

I for one am thankful that your druthers are meaning less.

thedaddy

The Repudiation continues!

If nothing else, not really caring much about the World Bank or who runs it, I'm simply happy that this is evidently giving all the right people conniption fits.

Stratfor had an interesting article about this yesterday:

The 'Wolf' and the World Bank
March 16, 2005 16 46 GMT

Summary

The White House will nominate Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to be the
next World Bank president. Far from being an attempt to spread "neocon" ideology
to an international institution, the nomination is part of an ongoing effort to
change the way the United States fights the war and minimize the impact of
Wolfowitz and his ilk on U.S. policy making.

Analysis

Via a veritable torrent of leaks released March 16, the White House all but
confirmed that it would nominate Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as its
candidate for the next World Bank president. Once it is official, he is sure to
get the post; the United States and European Union have a deal ensuring that a
European gets the top post at the International Monetary Fund and an American
snags the presidency of the World Bank.

Pundits -- all of them, seemingly -- immediately condemned the decision as
unwise, bullying and obtuse. Wolfowitz, they screamed, has minimal economic
expertise. The dominant fear was that the decision is an effort by
"neoconservatives" to dictate policies at one of the world's dominant
multilateral financial institutions.

There are times when you really have to wonder about the media.

Let us take a largish step back. Wolfowitz played a leading role in drafting
both the war on terrorism and the 2003 Iraq war. That has guaranteed him a spot
at the table -- sometimes at the head of the table -- at every major planning
and strategy meeting of the Bush administration for the past three and a half
years. His place has been among the corridors of power, making key decisions
about how the Big Issues will develop under his watch.

And now, he is going to an organization that will be institutionally hostile to
him to discuss microloans in Bangladesh, terracing in Nepal, corruption in
Burundi, diarrhea in Lesotho and harvesting rainforest nuts to make buttons in
Suriname. Not to mention begging countries such as Belgium and New Zealand to
please, please, please increase their contributions to the bank's budget.

People think this is a promotion??

The fact of the matter is that the nature of the war is changing -- and changing
rapidly. The Defense Department -- indeed, the entire U.S. government -- no
longer needs a practical ideologist like "the Wolfman" to put together invasion
plans. The war has become regularized. Regularized does not mean over, but it
does mean that the fighting is predictable on a strategic level and the key
issue now is to seal deals with the major Middle Eastern players about the
future of U.S. power in the region and ultimately finesse a deal with the
jihadists themselves.

That requires tanks in the background, not the foreground. So the Bush
administration also has set up the rest of the government to do just that. U.S.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has brought her cadre of pragmatists into
the top echelons of the State Department, and Stephen Hadley, her replacement as
the national security adviser, is someone she trusts implicitly. It is now Rice
and Co.'s turn to drive the bulk of U.S. foreign policy, and they plan to use
many more dossiers than cruise missiles. In the meantime Wolfowitz's boss and
partner in neo-conservatism, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, will be spending
more time doing what he was originally brought on board to do: modernize the
U.S. military.

This is not an unprecedented development. In 1967, Robert McNamara resigned (was
fired) from his post as defense secretary after years of being the chief
architect of everything from the Vietnam War to U.S. nuclear strategy to move to
-- you guessed it -- the World Bank. At the press conference when the
announcement was made, he wept.

Promotion indeed.

----

I hope it's okay that I post it here, as I think it is an interesting (although somewhat incorrect) interpretation of why Wolfie was picked (aside from the reason Jon Stewart gave last night, which was that alphabetically, he was next).

Glad to see you safely ensconced in London with internet access.

I think it's a great appointment. I have long argued that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand, each reinforcing the other, because they both rely so heavily on the rule of law. From what I've seen and heard of Wolfowitz, he believes the same.

It's no accident that the countries with the most economic freedom also have thriving democracies. And unfortunately, the actions of the World Bank (and the IMF) haven't taken this connection into account. I think that this is about to change.

Surprisingly, even Slate endorsed his nomination, although (unsurprisingly) there was a bit of backhandedness involved.

There's an amazing quote embedded in the Economist article.

As Germany's development minister, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, put it: “Enthusiasm in old Europe is rather limited.”

Capitalism and democracy have nothing to do with each other. It is entirely possible for a country to embrace capitalism and not democracy. Singapore is a great example of this. Indonesia was for many years capitalistic, yet not democratic and has gotten less capitalistic as it has moved towards democracy. China is moving toward capitalism, yet is not moving toward democracy.

"I'm simply happy that this is evidently giving all the right people conniption fits."

So would have appointing an incontinent dachshund, that doesn't make either appointment a good idea.

Ah, but Michael, an incontinent dachshund can't do the job, but I have no worries at all that Wolfowitz can't manage it. By all accounts he's super-smart and very generally competent.

Though the libertarian joker in me thinks the dachshund might be a good idea, though I've never thought President Bush was anything like Lord Julius.

("Last time I didn't read the fine print I ended up ordering half a ton of goat chow." ... and no, it's too hard to explain. But trust me, it's funny. It's about a goat running for Prime Minister...)

OB,

I disagree. I think that China IS moving towards democracy, and their slow movement towards capitalism is helping to bring that about.

I disagree. I think that China IS moving towards democracy, and their slow movement towards capitalism is helping to bring that about.

Rex,

You may want to check out John Derbyshire's most recent NRO column. He's somewhat of an expert on China, and his take on the capitalism/democracy thing is basically the opposite of yours. However, he's also a pretty pessimistic old curmudgeon (as he admits), so who knows?

My opinion is that we shouldn't be lamenting the fact that China isn't democratic so much as we should be lamenting the fact that civil liberies haven't burgeoned alongside economic liberty. Freedom - including economic freedom, which Marxists have long since convinced everyone to refer to as the "capitalist system" - is an unequivocal good, while democracy is morally neutral. That is, democracy is good if what a majority of voters have chosen is good, and bad if what they've chosen is bad. I for one am not willing to confer the imprimatur of "justice" on any old thing a plurality wants, are you? Many pirate ships were run democratically. And were it left to an all-inclusive vote, a majority of the antebellum American south (where whites outnumbered slaves by a ratio of 2:1) would no doubt have elected to continue the practice of slavery forever. Funny I don't hear any glib shibboleths about the "will of the people" or "self-determination" in those cases.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating a dictatorship, or that anyone be disenfranchised. I'm just saying that in an ideal government, much is set in stone, and very little is left open to vote on. The great thing about America is our Constitutional rights, not the fact that we all get to go to the polls every November. All of the talk about "spreading democracy" tends to obscure this fact. We should really be emphasizing the spread of freedom.

Rob,

You're right--John Derbyshire is a bit pessimistic. My feelings are in line with his relatives: "My Chinese friends and relatives have been telling me for years that with rising prosperity and the demands of a confident middle class, China will morph into a rational, constitutional state any day now."

I will be the first to admit that we're not at that stage right now. The longer I live the more amazed I am at how long it takes to implement real change, whether in industries, business models, or countries. In hindsight, one wonders what took so long, but I am convinced that the answer lies in a concept that I'm sure others have talked about, but which I call "critical mass." Take the PC industry, for instance. The first PC's came out in the late 70's but weren't really user friendly. (I never could get my Timex Sinclair to read and write from a tape recorder.) Then the IBM PC came out, and it grew slowly in acceptance. When the XT model came out, with a whopping 5 Meg hard drive, we thought we had died and gone to heaven. The initial success in the commercial world gave impetus to hordes of programmers and other manufacturers to develop other products, including games. The gaming community, combined with the business community, formed the critical mass that led to the wild and crazy explosion of innovation throughout the 80's and 90's that grew exponentially.

So too with democracy and/or freedom. By the late 80's, the fax machine meant that the Chinese were no longer dependent on the State for their news. I never thought that I would see a lone Chinese stand up against the tanks at Tianneman Square. The Internet is also working its magic in China. I see the changes as inevitable, but I have no idea when they will occur. It may happen within 20 years or it may take another generation or two. But I have been seeing the gradual signs for some decades now, and even though I am resigned to taking the long view, I think that freedom for China is inevitable.

And I should clarify something. I don't think that democracy causes capitalism, nor that capitalism causes democracy. What I said earlier was that they go hand in hand, each reinforcing the other, because they are both heavily dependent on the rule of law. Implementing one without the other leaves the institution (either one) fragile, but implementing both together forms a strong institution that endures.

It's hard to guarantee freedom without democracy. Democracy is a peaceful way to oust bad leaders. It doesn't always work perfectly, but over time it has worked far better than dictatorships (including dictatorship by "the Party", as in
China). Better designed democracies work better, while it's hard to come up with a dictatorship with a good incentive system.

A key advantage of the U.S. is that the founders did a brilliant job of incorporating checks and balances into the Constitution. The power of any one branch of government is limited, as is the power of the majority to force certain things on the minority. 'Majority rule with minority rights' has functioned better than absolute power in the hands of any one person or group of people, even in those rare cases where the dictator was smart, capable and well-intentioned.

Singapore is a bit on the authoritarian side for a democracy, but it's a democracy. The ruling party pulls sleazy little tricks such as letting people know that the neighborhoods that vote the "wrong" way will be last on the list for upgrading housing buildings. And their use of the courts and large damage awards to limit public opposition is disgraceful. But overall, the PAP has stayed in power because they've performed well.

With China, it's debatable whether or not they will move towards democracy (as in South Korea and Taiwan when the middle class developed). But there's no question that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) plans to prevent any real shift to democracy, while trying to collect the profits of capitalism. They'll attack Taiwan before they'll allow substantive moves towards an open political system in which CCP members are subject to the law.

Without the rule of law, it's not clear how far China can move towards capitalism, and they still have a long, long way to go.

"freedom for China is inevitable" - I'm inclined to think that, in the long run, freedom for pretty much all countries is inevitable. But for China, gradual change is far from the only likely path.

The Chinese have never been good at gradual change. They greatly value what they call stability, which is better described as stagnation. So, they stagnate as long as possible and then explode. The pain of the explosion and the resulting chaos reinforces their idea that stagnation is better, thus making another eventual explosion almost inevitable. Yes, these are broad generalizations, but if you look at their history, I think they fit pretty well.

I spent several years in Hong Kong and was surprised at the deep resistance of the Chinese to any changes to the system. Changing the system is instability, which is awful, so they prefer to keep the system officially in place while cheating to get around it. That works for a while but gets less and less efficient over time.

Besides, there's still the question of whether the law should someday apply to Party members. It's hard to gradually transition to democracy without crossing that line at some point, and they'd rather attack Taiwan to stay in power.

Maybe China will peacefully transition. I hope so. But an explosion is also a very strong possibility. It was impressive to see that lone person standing up to the tanks around Tiananmen Square, but ask yourself - where is that person today? The last I heard, the CCP had him in protective custody, at an undisclosed location (for his own good, of course).

If you've followed the repudiation of anyone that advocated a soft line against the protestors of the "June 4 incident", or watched how the CCP has dealt with Falun Gong or even with people who have committed the crime of releasing accurate statistics on AIDS in China, then you know that the CCP isn't planning to sink gently away. They'd like to be both rich and powerful, which is why they're flirting with capitalism. But if they have to choose, they can give up the wealth.

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