Bush taps Zoellick for World Bank

President Bush today plans to name Robert Zoellick, a former U.S. trade negotiator and career diplomat, for the presidency of the World Bank.

Zoellick will become Bush's nominee to replace Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy secretary of defense who became World Bank president in 2005 only to make a personnel decision that ultimately would result in his withdrawal under a cloud this summer: Wolfowitz moved girlfriend Shaha Riza from a job inside the bank to a higher-paying bank-financed role at the State Department to avert conflict in his new post.

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Wolfowitz, as one of the architects of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq at the Defense Department, had entered the World Bank facing animosity from European leaders who opposed the war. Zoelleck, who also was among the foreign policy advisers whom Bush brought to office with him in 2001, is not viewed as representing as much of a hardliner as the neo-conservative Wolfowitz is regarded.

Still a Puke

In a January 2000 Foreign Affairs essay entitled "Campaign 2000: A Republican Foreign Policy," he was one of the first of those now associated with Bush's foreign policy to invoke the notion of "evil," writing: "[T]here is still evil in the world - people who hate America and the ideas for which it stands. Today, we face enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them. The United States must remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat its enemies. People driven by enmity or by a need to dominate will not respond to reason or goodwill. They will manipulate civilized rules for uncivilized ends." The same essay praises the "idealism" of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Two years earlier, Zoellick was one of the signatories (who also included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John R. Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Bill Kristol) of a January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton drafted by the Project for the New American Century calling for "removing Saddam [Hussein]'s regime from power."