The Financial Times just doesn't understand the motivations behind the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz. They completely misunderstand the nature of President Bush and his strategy for moving the security of the US forward through the spread of freedom and connectivity throughout the world. It really is astonishing as President Bush has been quite plain about his intentions. Force is a last resort but it will be resorted to. Iraq, already the subject of a bipartisan law in favor of regime change when Bush entered office, was the immovable object that was pulverized by US military might. This was done for several reasons, not least of which was that we had committed ourselves to doing it in 1998 and post 9/11 it became much more important that what we said we were going to do actually got done.
But Iraq was always a special case as it was the subject of existing UN resolutions it was in defiance of and that dozens of countries were already technically at war with it, merely subject to a cease-fire accord. The only other country that approached Iraq was North Korea and there were significant differences that differentiate the two nations.
The Bush Doctrine is much more often going to be carried out by the jackhammers and chisels of diplomacy and development aid rather than the explosive charges of the US military. The Financial Times' dislike of Wolfowitz is akin to assuming that the man that just set off charges to blast rock for a tunnel is going to turn into a car bomber because he just climbed into an earth moving vehicle to clean up the debris. It's somewhat unhinged.
FT speculates that Wolfowitz's appointment is a "consolation prize". In fact, it is a promotion and a bigger job for a trusted subordinate who got the big questions right in his old job and now is being tasked to shoulder a heavier load, the reformation of the World Bank into an institution that actually works as advertised and lifts countries out of poverty by providing them with the funds to do so and the oversight so that those funds are not wasted. This is the US interest in this new world and George W Bush means to attain it as effective development aid is key to achieving his central aims as he so clearly laid them out in his 2nd inauguration speech, and so many other speeches before and since.
Posted by TMLutas at March 19, 2005 07:43 AM