Salon.com Books | How Paul Wolfowitz can save the world: "The United States has traditionally picked the World Bank's chiefs, so it's perhaps not exactly shocking that foreigners didn't fight Wolfowitz very hard; after so many battles with the Bush administration, the world is no longer in a fighting mood. But the quick concession on the Wolfowitz nomination may reflect something deeper, too. International development, which the World Bank is charged to pursue, is a confounding business these days. About 1.1 billion people around the world live in conditions of persistent, extreme poverty, and there sometimes seem to be just as many ideas, ranging from the radical to the reactionary, over what to do about this awful state of affairs. Among residents of rich nations, there's a sense that everything we've done to help the underdeveloped world during the past half-century has failed, and that now, in the age of AIDS, the poor world's problems look nearly unsolvable. We need new ideas and new leaders, the thinking goes. Wolfowitz, who's done little development work during his long career in government, is a blank slate, and he's got good connections. As Gerhard Schroeder, the German chancellor and dependable Bush critic, remarked to his countrymen this week, 'People could be pleasantly surprised by his performance.'"

(Via Salon.)