A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

With all due respect to the great and good Hunter Baker, my choice for President of the World Bank is Ambassador Robert Zoellick, who served as United States Trade Representative and Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration. He would be an outstanding head of the institution.

Ambassador Zoellick's diplomatic career goes back quite a long way. He served in the Administration of George Bush the Elder as Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs as well as serving as Counselor to the Department. Former Secretary of State James Baker listed Zoellick in his memoirs as one of the most brilliant intellects Baker had encountered in government, and Zoellick's hypercompetence and dedication to duty won over the famously demanding Baker. Indeed, so valued was Zoellick that he was asked to serve as the United States representative to the "Two Plus Four" talks that ultimately led to German reunification in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

As United States Trade Representative during the first term of the current President Bush, Ambassador Zoellick did his utmost to push for the maximum degree of trade liberalization possible. To be sure, the Administration faltered at times in its work on trade--opting to impose steel, lumber and shrimp tariffs during the first term--but it is probably fair to say that there would have been more trade apostasy if Zoellick were not the Trade Representative. Additionally, his courageous and sensible decision to call protectionists what they were and are--"economic isolationists"--and to do battle with them in public instead of smoothing over disagreements and thus compromising the rigor of the campaign behind trade liberalization, was greatly welcomed by those who believe that free markets and free trade are indispensable ingredients to attaining widespread prosperity and a better general quality of life. Ambassador Zoellick's deep involvement in trade liberalization in general and in the specifics surrounding negotiations in the Doha Round, the Uruguay Round, the crafting of a CAFTA agreement and other items on the trade liberalization agenda made him one of the most forceful advocates of free trade around. As President of the World Bank, Ambassador Zoellick would be in a prime position to marry the promise of free trade with the World Bank's anti-poverty efforts. Additionally, his mastery of policy in general and his economic expertise in particular, along with his diplomatic skills and his admirable infighting capabilities would make Ambassador Zoellick a formidable force in combating the degree of corruption that is endemic to the World Bank, corruption that all too sadly had defenders in the institution who turned on Paul Wolfowitz when the latter sought to clean up the Bank's practices. Ambassador Zoellick is every bit as smart as Paul Wolfowitz and a tougher bureaucratic power player to boot. He won't be rolled by a hostile bureaucracy as easily as Wolfowitz was. Indeed, in any fight, my money is on Zoellick to win. His past justifies the confidence.

A January 12, 2001 article in the New York Times entitled "Man in the News; A Washington Veteran for Labor; a Tested Negotiator for Trade; Robert Bruce Zoellick" (link unavailable to non-subscribers) had the following to say about Ambassador Zoellick:

People who worked with Mr. Zoellick, 47, during two earlier Republican administrations describe him as a policy wonk whose sharp-edged negotiating tactics and mastery of details often won over, or wore down, his rivals -- notably over the past several weeks as he lobbied for the trade job and its role within the new administration. A confidant of former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, he rallied Western allies to back a speedy German reunification and finagled a compromise that led to the creation of the World Trade Organization.

''He was the most impressive thinker of my time in government,'' said Richard Burt, a former assistant secretary of state. Derek H. Burney, Canada's former ambassador to the United States, called Mr. Zoellick a sharp-elbowed negotiator, but added, ''in the end he won the argument through the power of his intellect, not the raw political power of the U.S.''

[. . .]

''He was the best prepared guy in the room,'' said Edward Djerejian, a former ambassador and State Department official. ''He often had an outside-the-box solution for many issues.''

Concerning the Ambassador's work regarding German reunification, the article had the following to say:

But he is most widely remembered in foreign policy circles for being the United States' representative at the multiparty negotiation over the future of divided Germany. He persuaded the Bush administration to embrace German unity despite the qualms of allies and alarm in the former Soviet Union.

By defusing the potentially volatile issue of Germany, Mr. Djerejian said, Mr. Zoellick ''gets a lot of credit for the fact that the cold war ended with a whimper.''

No small feat that. And no less a personage than George Will had the following to say about the Ambassador's time as the United States Trade Representative:

Zoellick, the most important government official most voters have never heard of, holds a job that is one of the underestimated stakes in this presidential election. John Kerry, who is given to complaining that questions about his policies impugn his patriotism, has said smarmily that as president he will "appoint a U.S. trade representative who is an American patriot." Zoellick, the man Kerry slandered, is President Bush's trade representative, and on one day last month in Geneva he did more discernible good for his country than Kerry has done in 20 years in the Senate.

[. . .]

Zoellick's aim is to insinuate "some Hamiltonian concepts" into U.S. foreign policy. Remember, he says, that without the sinews of economic strength that Alexander Hamilton provided, Thomas Jefferson, who despised Hamilton, would not have been able to achieve his greatest triumph, the Louisiana Purchase.

Furthermore, free trade amounts to domestic political reform. This is because tariffs, export subsidies and other forms of protectionism are examples of what economists call rent-seeking -- interest groups bending public power to private advantage.

Kerry praises multilateralism in the abstract. However, his trade policy -- "fair trade," which means protectionism with an uneasy conscience -- would be much more unilateralist than Bush's has been.

In the world's long postwar march, under both parties, toward ever-increasing trade liberalization, the United States has been, in former secretary of state Madeleine Albright's phrase, the "indispensable nation." If it does not push relentlessly, progress stalls. This matters now more than ever. As Zoellick correctly says, his work is one front in the war on terror, because liberalizing trade is a means of opening closed Islamic societies and strengthening the modernizers within them.

Kerry may still be, as he was in earlier incarnations, more of a free-trader than he now seems while pandering to his party's base. However, his trade policy would be hostage to Democratic factions -- organized labor, especially -- whose hostility to free trade will make his trade representative a McClellan.

Zoellick, who hails from northern Illinois, resembles the pride of Galena, Ill. -- U.S. Grant. President Abraham Lincoln, while enduring McClellan, tersely explained why he liked Grant: "He fights."

He certainly does. And that is why at the beginning of President Bush's second term, Ambassador Zoellick became Deputy Secretary of State, serving alongside Condoleezza Rice. The Deputy Secretary's traditional role is to run the State Department as a sort of Chief Administrative Officer. In addition to this demanding role, however, Zoellick took on two huge substantive policy tasks.

The first was China. Specifically, Zoellick was tasked with the duty to engage China as a strategic partner and he involved himself as well on the issue of revluation of China's currency. As I have argued in the past, I am against revaluation. But my policy stance does not detract from my admiration for Zoellick's work on China--a maddeningly challenging policy brief for even the best of diplomats to handle. When we consider the huge role China plays in the economic sphere and when we think of the many ways in which the job of the World Bank's next President will intersect with China's economic role in the world, we see that the "Zoellick For World Bank President" campaign almost propels itself. As this article notes, Zoellick has pressed for constructive engagement with China, recognizing that it is a strategic competitor in many ways while at the same time understanding that there are a great many instances in which American foreign policy goals and Chinese ones intersect.

The other issue that Zoellick involved himself in as Deputy Secretary is Darfur. The horror attendant to the situation is well known. Ambassador Zoellick's work concerning Darfur has helped construct the general outlines of any future peace plan and will come in handy for a World Bank President who must consider the geopolitical situation and problems affecting likely recipients for World Bank aid.

The only downside that I can see to this appointment is that it may delay Zoellick's ascendancy to the position of Secretary of State in a future Republican administration. Ambassador Zoellick is a foreign policy advisor for the campaign of Senator John McCain and would be a leading candidate for the top job at Foggy Bottom should the Senator win the Presidency. At the same time, one might argue that a few years at the World Bank would season the already experienced Zoellick even further so that he would bring yet another dimension of expertise to what one easily expects would be a brilliant career at the State Department.

In any event, there is little reason to fuss about a hypothetical appointment in the future when there is an actual appointment to work on now. Future work at the State Department can be dealt with in due time. For now, Robert Zoellick for World Bank President.