3
Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC Flog a Gift Horse Author(s): Max Bollock Source: Foreign Policy, No. 123 (Mar. - Apr., 2001), pp. 8+10 Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3183145 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Foreign Policy. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 188.72.126.181 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:14:46 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Flog a Gift Horse

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC

Flog a Gift HorseAuthor(s): Max BollockSource: Foreign Policy, No. 123 (Mar. - Apr., 2001), pp. 8+10Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3183145 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 06:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Foreign Policy.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.181 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:14:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Letters

flili Foreign Policy

ELISA CHINA GRAHAM ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER & GENERAL MANAGER

DON BURKETT ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER -

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

FERZINE ESMAIL ADVERTISING DIRECTOR -

INSTITUTIONAL & SPECIAL PROJECTS

VANESSA FRIEDMAN INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE

SHARON ScoTT SPECIAL ADVERTISING CONSULTANT

RISA SHARGEL MARKETING MANAGER

JESSICA M. WHIPPLE BUSINESS ASSISTANT

JENNIFER A. MARTIN CIRCULATION ASSISTANT

ALYCE ELSENER MARKETING ASSISTANT

FOREIGN POLICY (ISSN 0015-7228) is published bimonthly by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036, which bears no responsibility for the editorial content; the views expressed in the articles are those of the authors. (202) 939-2230; fax (202) 483- 4430; Web site: www.foreignpolicy.com.

SUBSCRIPTIONS FOREIGN POLICY, P.O. Box 2030, Marion, OH 43306-8130; (800) 535-6343. International callers only: (740) 382-3322. Subscriptions: $24.95 for one year; $44 for twvo years; $63 for three years. Canada add $9/yr., other international countries add $15/yr. Group/classroom rates available: (202) 939-2242; fax (202) 483-4430; email [email protected]. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to FOREIGN POLICY, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036.

NEWSSTAND AND BOOKSTORE DISTRIBUTION Curtis Circulation Company, 730 River Road, New Milford, NJ 07646-3048; (201) 634-7400.

BACK ISSUES $7.95 per copy. International airmail add $3.00 per copy; email: [email protected].

ADVERTISING Contact Elisa Graham

email [email protected].

SYNDICATION REQUESTS Contact Jessica Whipple email: [email protected].

GENERAL CONTACT Phone: (202) 939-2230 Fax Requests: (202) 483-4430

get health, education, and nutrition); and focusing more on issues of glob- al concern (HIV/AIDS, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immu- nization Initiative, and the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative).

As regards spending for research versus public relations, the author is similarly misinformed. The bank's budget for research and knowledge products is many times its budget for external affairs. Moreover, the bank spends a substantial portion of its external-affairs resources pack- aging and disseminating the knowl- edge produced by research-this year's World Development Report being an excellent case in point.

FOREIGN POLICY's look at who leads multinational organizations and how they are chosen was important, but Mr. Kapur should have checked his facts.

-MATS KARLSSON

Vice President, External Affairs and U.N. Affairs

The World Bank Washington, D.C.

Devesh Kapur Replies: Mr. Karlsson vigorously defends his leader, arguing that I "should have checked the facts." But check- ing facts, like charity, might well begin at home. Mr. Karlsson implies that if only I had "care[d] to confirm what our owners say," the members' "very strong sup- port" for the bank's policies as laid out by Mr. Wolfensohn would have been obvious. The argument has merits, but as obfuscation-not reality. The majority of the bank's current 183 member countries are supplicants and can scarcely be expected to exercise their nominal

ownership rights and demand accountability. While the examples of reforms that Mr. Karlsson cites as evidence of strong support for Mr. Wolfensohn's leadership have

considerable validity, that is hardly the full record.

The recent strong critique by the bank's executive board of the World Faiths Development Dialogue and the deep unhappiness among bank staff and borrowers about the dis- astrous "Budget Compact" agreed to three years ago reveal a different story; borrowers, rather than major shareholders, are picking up a major part of the bills as a result of pro- posals introduced by the bank's management in 1998.

In part this internal chaos is a consequence of a troubling feature of Mr. Wolfenson's tenure-his intol- erance of internal dissent resulting in rapid turnover in the banks's senior management, the highest ever in its history. A cowed senior manage- ment may be music to some of the bank's critics but is a recipe for orga- nizational ineffectiveness.

Mr. Karlsson is right that the dis- tinction between research and exter- nal affairs is not that sharp at the bank, and the controversy sur- rounding this year's World Develop- ment Report underscores his point. As for numbers, the fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget confers $26 million for external affairs and $36 million for development economics. The bank's Operations Department received $21 million in FY 2000 for "External Part- nerships and Outreach." Some of this was for dissemination and some for public relations. Assuming that half of this last item was the latter, budgetary expenditures for public relations in FY 2000 were $36.5 million, while research was $36 million. Indeed, the late Michael Bruno raised this precise issue before he resigned as chief econ- omist of the World Bank in 1996.

Flog a Gift Horse I received a trial copy of the November/December 2000 edition of your magazine, and while I hate

8 FOREIGN POLICY

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.181 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:14:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Letters

NAVAL AFFAIRS

SIEL III

SHIELD AND SWORD The U.S. Navy and the Persian Gulf War By Edward J. Marolda and Robert J. Schneller #1-4857/$36.95

COMMAND OF THE

SEAS By John F. Lehman Jr.

1-5349/$21.95 (PB)

COMMAND OF T?LSEAS

JOHN I-- LEHMAN.jr.

A ONUS EUR O H

HEAR O

F DARKNESIS] Jll

CAPTIVE IN THE CONGO A Consul's Return to the Heart of Darkness By Michael Hoyt 1-3230/$29.95

COLD WAR AT SEA High-Seas

Confrontation between the

United States and the Soviet Union By David F. Winkler

1-9557/$38.95

Cio -liPar

at Searil•l~l~llqi

EdIiad byoHanryN'

- and John MO'Lnnell

PRELUDE TO TRAGEDY Vietnam, 1960-1965 Edited by Harvey Neese and John O'Donnell 1-4911/$32.95

NAVAL INSTITUTE PRESS

800-233-8764 or 410-224-3378 (Ad Code 5611)

www.nip.org

to look a gift horse in the mouth, I will! I especially want to comment on the article "Bottom Feeders" by Daniel W. Drezner.

Drezner demonstrates a curious form of myopia when he claims that "there is no evidence that corpora- tions direct their investments to developing countries with lower labor or environmental standards." There are literally hundreds of exam- ples of U.S. manufacturers that have shuttled from Central America to China, Pakistan, and finally to Myanmar, where their contractors pay kids 9 cents per hour.

Has he never heard of the term "structural adjustment policy"? It is all too familiar to over 1 billion of the world's workers who struggle and suffer under bank-imposed poli- cies, which force borrowing gov- ernments to curtail basic health, edu- cation, and food subsidies as a condition of their loans.

-MAx BOLLOCK Belmont, Calif.

Getting Warmer You ask rhetorically: Who's blow- ing smoke? ("Emission Impossible?," November/December 2000) Then you display climate data selectively. True, "global" surface temperatures appear to be increasing. But the same authoritative NASA data source shows no significant increase since about 1940 for the United States; a similar result holds for Europe. The "global" warming comes from sus- pect thermometers in Eastern Siberia and the tropics.

Both National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather satellites and weather bal- loons independently confirm that the atmosphere has not warmed appreciably, contrary to what the- oretical climate models predict. Nonthermometer data from well-

calibrated sources, such as tree rings, ice cores, and ocean sedi- ments, show no warming either.

About your graph on emissions trading, the Clinton administration's favored policy for reducing the cost of complying with the Kyoto Protocol: Buying unused permits for emitting greenhouse gases from other nations saves money, but it does not reduce overall emissions into the atmosphere. As pointed out correctly by several environmental groups, it is a cop-out.

-S. FRED SINGER

President Science & Environmental

Policy Project Alexandria, Va.

Author Comments Looking at my article, "Prisoners of Geography" (January/February 2001), I realize that I failed to highlight sufficiently the immense contribution made to this topic by Harvard Uni- versity's Jeffrey Sachs and his coau- thors. In the last five years, the writ- ings and data produced by Sachs and his coauthors on the role of latitude, transportation costs, and the burden of tropical diseases have had a huge impact on the development commu- nity. These results were central to the Inter-American Development Bank report on which I based my article.

-RICARDO HAUSMANN

Professor of the Practice of Economic Development

John F. Kennedy School of Government

Harvard University Cambridge, Mass.

Editor's Note: Readers can consult the writings of Jeffrey Sachs and his coauthors cited in the "Want to Know More?" section of Ricardo Hausmann's article and on the Web site of Harvard University's Center

10 FOREIGN POLICY

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.181 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 06:14:46 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions