The decision of the United States to name Paul Wolfowitz as the successor to James Wolfensohn as President of the World Bank only underlines the historical fact that the World Bank continues to be an instrument of the global power structure, and that at the head of that power structure lies the United States Government.

Other members of the G8 along with the so-called “donors” might pretend to be scandalized at the selection, but the real scandal are the policies and practices of the World Bank/ Washington Consensus of which they too form a part.

Without a doubt the nomination of Wolfowitz is reprehensible, a man of the Pentagon who is stained with blood and oil, continuing the tradition which ceded to the US the “right” to name the World Bank’s president and which years passed, was covered by another businessman-warrior and then minister of defense (sic), Robert McNamara, for his commanding of the war against Vietnam. But what really matters is the policy that is carried out independently of personalities - an ever-faithful institution belonging to a power structure that daily claims the lives of 250,000 persons victims of structural adjustment policies and imperial mind-sets and interests that are dead set against the radical redistribution of economic and social power required on a systemic level.

Jubilee South believes that the external debt of the South is illegitimate, that it is an ideological construct that oppresses peoples. That construct, embodied in the International Financial Institutions and the WTO, is shared and defended by most governments and governing elites North and South. That some of those elites, and some well intentioned organizations are launching appeals and efforts to stop the nomination of Wolfowitz, is indicative of a rebellion against the crudeness and contempt which the current US administration holds for the very notion of “development”.

Washington’s message however could not be clearer or more “transparent”: the World Bank, and indeed the very notion of development, must continue to take their unambiguous place in the US-driven neoliberal war against people’s right to self-determination and autonomous development. The nexus between economic and military imperialism stands exposed.

Jubilee South condemns the Bush Administration decision and the policy that shapes those decisions. We call on all those concerned to direct their campaign efforts not simply at reversing that decision, but at decommissioning the World Bank itself, holding its owners and directors accountable for the genocidal consequences of its lending and collections, and resisting the neoliberal economic offensive that it is now entrusting Wolfowitz to unambigously lead.

-JUBILEE SOUTH, March 18, 2005 www.jubileesouth.org secretariat@jubileesouth.org jubileosur@wamani.apc.org