What are the other European concerns?
Making sure that the senior management of the Bank has adequate representation of the diversity of the Bank and, in particular, that some of the many highly qualified Europeans are playing roles in the senior management. I don't have any problem with that.
Isn't the argument that you and [John] Bolton [the president's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations] represent a unilateralist American push in international organizations?
Well, I think that's a misreading of President Bush. But, John Bolton is going to the U.N. as the president's representative. . . . If I become the president of the Bank, I will be working as an international civil servant responsible to the entire membership of a global organization. It's different. It doesn't mean U.S. views are irrelevant, and they have an important voting share, but they're one of many voices.
So it's not fair to link the two appointments?
No. . . . I know people tend to do that, but I think each have their separate logic. I've had a lot of experience, including particularly when I was in Indonesia as ambassador, living in a different country and understanding the problems of a developing country, understanding both the good and bad of foreign assistance -- and there's a lot of good. I'm not somebody who thinks we can do without it. But I think there are a lot of ways to improve it, and I think one way to get more foreign assistance . . . is to demonstrate that it can be used effectively.
Do you agree with Wolfensohn's reforms and plan to continue them?
Certainly I agree with many of the key thrusts that he started. I think the decentralization thrust is very laudable, [as is] his emphasis on the need to combat corruption and to develop good governance as an essential part of economic development. Generally I like the direction he's set the Bank in.
Do you think that what's going on in Lebanon and the recent vote in Iraq are vindications of your policies in Iraq?
I know people use that word a lot, and I wouldn't. I think we still have a lot more work to do. . . . But I think that I have believed and continue to believe that the desire of people to be free and to choose their own leaders is one of the most powerful forces in the world. It's not utopian . . . I think it's realistic to figure out how to mobilize that force on our side because we are the natural allies of people with those goals.
Do you take responsibility for any mistakes made in planning for the war in Iraq, and what do you see as the key mistakes? Dissolving the army?
There's so much finger-pointing that goes on. It's a long exercise to dissect all the things that are wrong that are said about why this has proven to be difficult. And the notion that there was no planning is simply wrong.
You mean that there was planning for the aftermath?
There was a lot of planning, and the State Department was involved in the planning. The usual phrase is, there was no planning for the post-conflict phase. And the real problem is that the conflict hasn't ended, and that there is an enemy still out there actively trying to prevent the emergence of a new Iraq. . . . I think people shouldn't have been surprised that a regime that had burrowed into Iraqi society over 35 years and killed and tortured and intimidated people so effectively didn't quit just because they were driven out of Baghdad on April 9, 2003.
But do you think there were mistakes? We said we were going in to get weapons of mass destruction and there were no weapons of mass destruction, so there were obvious mistakes, right?
And there were some great successes as well. And I think if people want to go through this exercise, instead of first deciding who they want to blame, they ought to first do an assessment and put the pluses up there with the minuses.
