Juan Cole: Paul Wolfowitz's fatal weakness
The executive board of the World Bank mulled a possible vote of no confidence in the leadership of its president, Paul Wolfowitz, this weekend. How did the renowned neoconservative and former deputy secretary of defense, a primary architect of the Iraq war, come to these straits? Is he, as he claims, the victim of a smear campaign by those who dislike his politics? Or do the charges of favoritism and nepotism reflect genuine character flaws?
The small morality play unfolding at the World Bank tells us something significant about how the United States became bogged down in the Iraq quagmire when Wolfowitz was highly influential at the Department of Defense. The simple fact is that Wolfowitz has throughout his entire career demonstrated a penchant for cronyism and for smearing and marginalizing perceived rivals as tactics for getting his way. He has been arrogant and highhanded in dismissing the views of wiser and more informed experts, exhibiting a narcissism that is also apparent in his personal life. Indeed, these tactics are typical of what might be called the "neoconservative style."
Soon after becoming head of the World Bank, Wolfowitz lapsed into his typical favoritism, even while he was, ironically, decrying the technique as practiced by governments of the global South. Instead of having an open search for some key positions and allowing for promotions from within, Wolfowitz simply installed Republicans from the Bush administration in high positions with enormous salaries. He brought Kevin Kellems from Dick Cheney's office (where he had been communications director) and gave him a tax-free salary said to have been as high as $250,000 a year. As Wolfowitz's new senior advisor, Kellems was leap-frogged over hundreds of officials with serious credentials in development work, something about which he knew little. When representing Cheney, Kellems went to great lengths to defend the vice president's implausible conspiracy theory linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden....
The management techniques that got Wolfowitz in trouble at the World Bank mirrored those he used at the Pentagon to get up the Iraq war. Without cronyism, tag-teaming, and running circles around opponents of the war such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, the pro-war cabal could never have persuaded Bush to launch the conflict or persuaded the American public to support it. State Department officials have complained bitterly to me about meetings called by Wolfowitz and others on Iraq in 2002, to which some relevant officials were pointedly not invited, or where the agenda was prearranged and rigidly stage-managed so as to ensure that only neoconservative points of view were heard. Other officials have spoken of being spied on by the neocons at the Department of Defense, to the point where they were reprimanded for cartoons or posters that they had hung on their office doors.
When Donald Rumsfeld appointed Wolfowitz his deputy in January 2001, the latter plumped to have his longtime associate Feith installed as assistant secretary of defense for policy and planning. Feith was an odd choice to be the No. 3 man at the Pentagon, given that he opposed much official U.S. government policy. He was, among other things, a diehard opponent of the Oslo peace accords between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Feith then appointed his former boss, Richard Perle, also close to the Israeli right and a man who had advocated an Iraq war for Israel's benefit, to head the Defense Policy Board, a civilian oversight body for the Pentagon....
The tight network of neoconservatives, linked by their background in the 1960s and 1970s as Democratic Party hawks, by their devotion to right-wing Israeli politics, and by their previous alliances and networking during the Reagan administration, proved able to "stove-pipe" analysis and so-called intelligence to the office of Vice President Cheney and thence to George W. Bush. Once the stove-piped intelligence had helped to bring about the desired war with Iraq, any dissenters from that preordained policy had to be punished. Domestic critics were accused of treason; historical allies were marginalized. When he could not strong-arm French President Jacques Chirac into supporting his illegal war on Iraq, Wolfowitz told the U.S. Senate, "I think France is going to pay some consequences, not just with us but with other countries who view it that way." It was not enough that Chirac lost the battle to stop what he saw as a ruinous Middle East war that would likely blow back on France. Paris had to "pay."
Wolfowitz's record of favoritism, ideological blinders, massive blunders and petty vindictiveness has inflicted profound harm on two of the world's great bureaucracies, the U.S. Department of Defense and now the World Bank. He has left both with thousands of demoralized employees and imposed on both irrational policies that pandered to the far right of the Republican Party. He has, in addition, played a central role in destabilizing the Middle East and in leaving one of its major countries in ruins.
Many of his Himalayan-size errors were enabled by his careful placing of close friends and allies in key and lucrative positions. In the end, his career suffered remarkably little from his substantive policy mistakes. But once he moved beyond the forgiving world of high Republican Party politics, his dependence on cronyism finally caught up with him. That he ran into such trouble at the World Bank for behaving in ways that apparently were business as usual for him at the Department of Defense only underlines how corrupt the Bush administration really is.
Read entire article at Salon
The small morality play unfolding at the World Bank tells us something significant about how the United States became bogged down in the Iraq quagmire when Wolfowitz was highly influential at the Department of Defense. The simple fact is that Wolfowitz has throughout his entire career demonstrated a penchant for cronyism and for smearing and marginalizing perceived rivals as tactics for getting his way. He has been arrogant and highhanded in dismissing the views of wiser and more informed experts, exhibiting a narcissism that is also apparent in his personal life. Indeed, these tactics are typical of what might be called the "neoconservative style."
Soon after becoming head of the World Bank, Wolfowitz lapsed into his typical favoritism, even while he was, ironically, decrying the technique as practiced by governments of the global South. Instead of having an open search for some key positions and allowing for promotions from within, Wolfowitz simply installed Republicans from the Bush administration in high positions with enormous salaries. He brought Kevin Kellems from Dick Cheney's office (where he had been communications director) and gave him a tax-free salary said to have been as high as $250,000 a year. As Wolfowitz's new senior advisor, Kellems was leap-frogged over hundreds of officials with serious credentials in development work, something about which he knew little. When representing Cheney, Kellems went to great lengths to defend the vice president's implausible conspiracy theory linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden....
The management techniques that got Wolfowitz in trouble at the World Bank mirrored those he used at the Pentagon to get up the Iraq war. Without cronyism, tag-teaming, and running circles around opponents of the war such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA Director George Tenet, the pro-war cabal could never have persuaded Bush to launch the conflict or persuaded the American public to support it. State Department officials have complained bitterly to me about meetings called by Wolfowitz and others on Iraq in 2002, to which some relevant officials were pointedly not invited, or where the agenda was prearranged and rigidly stage-managed so as to ensure that only neoconservative points of view were heard. Other officials have spoken of being spied on by the neocons at the Department of Defense, to the point where they were reprimanded for cartoons or posters that they had hung on their office doors.
When Donald Rumsfeld appointed Wolfowitz his deputy in January 2001, the latter plumped to have his longtime associate Feith installed as assistant secretary of defense for policy and planning. Feith was an odd choice to be the No. 3 man at the Pentagon, given that he opposed much official U.S. government policy. He was, among other things, a diehard opponent of the Oslo peace accords between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Feith then appointed his former boss, Richard Perle, also close to the Israeli right and a man who had advocated an Iraq war for Israel's benefit, to head the Defense Policy Board, a civilian oversight body for the Pentagon....
The tight network of neoconservatives, linked by their background in the 1960s and 1970s as Democratic Party hawks, by their devotion to right-wing Israeli politics, and by their previous alliances and networking during the Reagan administration, proved able to "stove-pipe" analysis and so-called intelligence to the office of Vice President Cheney and thence to George W. Bush. Once the stove-piped intelligence had helped to bring about the desired war with Iraq, any dissenters from that preordained policy had to be punished. Domestic critics were accused of treason; historical allies were marginalized. When he could not strong-arm French President Jacques Chirac into supporting his illegal war on Iraq, Wolfowitz told the U.S. Senate, "I think France is going to pay some consequences, not just with us but with other countries who view it that way." It was not enough that Chirac lost the battle to stop what he saw as a ruinous Middle East war that would likely blow back on France. Paris had to "pay."
Wolfowitz's record of favoritism, ideological blinders, massive blunders and petty vindictiveness has inflicted profound harm on two of the world's great bureaucracies, the U.S. Department of Defense and now the World Bank. He has left both with thousands of demoralized employees and imposed on both irrational policies that pandered to the far right of the Republican Party. He has, in addition, played a central role in destabilizing the Middle East and in leaving one of its major countries in ruins.
Many of his Himalayan-size errors were enabled by his careful placing of close friends and allies in key and lucrative positions. In the end, his career suffered remarkably little from his substantive policy mistakes. But once he moved beyond the forgiving world of high Republican Party politics, his dependence on cronyism finally caught up with him. That he ran into such trouble at the World Bank for behaving in ways that apparently were business as usual for him at the Department of Defense only underlines how corrupt the Bush administration really is.