Left: World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz apparently lacked the ability to become wise. - Reuters   Right: Persaud

Wilberne Persaud, Financial Gleaner Columnist

After a prolonged ill-advised battle, Paul D. Wolfowitz's resignation as president of the World Bank becomes effective the end of June.

Among a sheaf of questionable decisions and apparently vindictive rulings, Mr. Wolfowitz had arranged for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion and an employee of the bank, to be transferred with a hefty raise in pay which he requested be hidden from other officials.

The May 18 New York Times tells us that in early 2005 he was "ready to move on from the Pentagon. He had been thwarted in his effort to become defence secretary or national security adviser. And the war in Iraq had deteriorated. So when the World Bank presidency became open, he jumped at the opportunity."

This seems correct. From all reports, Mr. Wolfowitz is an ambitious man.

Here was, as the Times reports it, a second chance at a career that went sour. In discussing his failure at his 'second chance' an unnamed Bush administration official said: "Mr. Wolfowitz did not understand that a World Bank president can be successful only if he can form alliances with the bank's many fiefs, something he failed to do."

I don't think this Bush Administration official gets the big picture at all.

Mr. Wolfowitz's true failing is at least threefold: he is an unrepentant neo-conservative who embodies the Bush/Rove doctrine that loyalty is the supreme test; he seems fervently to believe that the standing of the United States as the lone superpower, the wealthiest nation - not to mention its unimaginable military might - gives it the absolute right to dictate to others who, matching their military and financial inferiority, possess an inferior understanding of the world in which we live; finally, and this to me is the crowning failing, Mr. Wolfowitz has lacked the ability to become wise.

Notice that we never hear youngsters referred to as wise. We speak of young and gifted, bright, a genius. Of the many adjectives we use, never as far as I am aware, do we use the term wise in reference to youth. And this seems to be the case for all human society.

The reason appears to be our recognition that wisdom is an attribute available to us, attained by us, through understanding that develops with our experience, be it what we have been taught, what we have read, listened to or seen, or have in other ways vicariously experienced and our actual experience of life.

No shortcut to wisdom

Thus, there is no shortcut to wisdom - passage of time is essential. But make no mistake; age or time's passage is a necessary but by no means a sufficient condition.

So Ghandi was wise. So were Churchill and Mandela and increasingly it appears Jimmy Carter has become wise.

Wisdom has nothing to do with ideology. It is just as possible for a conservative or a liberal, right or left wing to attain wisdom. Yet it is entirely possible for the unwise on either side to deny the possibility to the other.

Wolfowitz had an important mission. He grasped the fact that corruption in countries that received World Bank assistance was the single most important factor in failure of development schemes and poverty alleviation strategies - there have been others such as arrogance of World Bank technical experts who disdainfully discounted local knowledge, et cetera.

But most of that kind of thing is now behind us. So Wolfowitz was on to a good thing.

How could he fail so miserably? It was so easy. He took with him not only personnel but behaviours and tactics he used in the Bush Administration to the World Bank.

He totally discounted human nature, and he apparently, honestly believed there was one morality for people like him and another for the rest of us. He did not allow himself to understand that he was not running his own private company where at least for a time, his tactics may have worked.

Now at the end of the day, this almost bizarre episode allows us the opportunity to give the World Bank the tools required to do the job that it has, over the years of skewed world prosperity, been assigned.

It cannot be sensible - perhaps I should say wise - for the United States of America simply to choose a World Bank president with regard neither to competence nor other abilities necessary for so sensitive a position.

Ambassadorships to unimportant or even important capitals may be reserved as reward for political affiliates.

The World Bank is too important an institution for today's challenging realities of climate change and religious fundamentalism to condemn it to such an anachronism.

wilbe65@yahoo.com