How Paul Wolfowitz can save the world

Hardheaded, passionate and conservative in the old-fashioned sense, Jeffrey Sachs' new book could -- but probably won't -- show the next head of the World Bank how to end global poverty.

By Farhad Manjoo

Mar 27, 2005 | Europeans greeted the Bush administration's nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to the presidency of the World Bank with quite a bit less kicking and screaming than one might have initially expected. In the past week and a half the deputy defense secretary and Iraq-war enthusiast has moved swiftly to shore up support among diplomats, bank officials and influential Irish rock stars, and word from Washington says that he's now all but certain to get the job.

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."

But what should Wolfowitz do? How can he pleasantly surprise us? Here's one modest proposal: He should pick up a copy of "The End of Poverty," the fine new book by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, and then he should push hard to implement every one of its anti-poverty strategies. Sachs, who heads Columbia's Earth Institute and has guided several of the world's struggling nations to economic success, presents a rigorous examination of the foundations of extreme poverty -- defined as people whose incomes fall below $1 a day -- and, more important, a plan for completely eliminating such destitution by the year 2025. At bottom, the book, which is an intriguing mix of memoir, economics text, and polemic, argues that international development is worth pursuing, and that hope is not lost. Indeed, Sachs says, we ought to be more hopeful now than we've ever been before. The world now enjoys unprecedented wealth, and our technology makes confronting the poor world's problems easier than ever before. A generation ago, proposing the end of world poverty would have marked you as a revolutionary; these days, nirvana is a matter of simple, capitalistic economics, pursued in clever ways and with determination.

More than a plan for economic development, then, Sachs is really proposing a new world order. Our age, he says, has much in common with the early 20th century, when relative peace and prosperity reigned throughout the globe. It wasn't paradise -- especially outside of Europe, which controlled the planet through its colonies -- but with continuing economic interconnectedness and technological progress, many in the world stood the chance to one day shake off the shackles of poverty. But those chances were squandered in 1914, with the sudden, irrational outbreak of the First World War, which sank the globe into 70 years of trouble. Only now, with the Cold War's end and renewed global cooperation through technology and trade, do we have another shot at global prosperity.

In many ways the world Sachs envisions is similar to the kind of planet George W. Bush has said he wants -- one in which people are free, healthy and prosperous. Any way you look at it, this is an ambitious idea, of course, but in Sachs' hardheaded telling the goal looks eminently more attainable than in Bush's pious, dreamy inaugural phrasing. That's because Sachs, unlike Bush, is not an idealist; he's not proposing, as Bush seems to be, an idea that he knows is too big to pursue, that only a miracle will help us attain. Bush -- and, from what we know, Wolfowitz -- wants to improve the world at the end of a gun. Success in this quest, while perhaps possible, has proved, in the Middle East, tremendously costly, and you've got to have a lot of good luck on your side for things to work out. Sachs, who as an academic in favor of foreign aid would be labeled a bleeding heart by anyone in the White House, offers a plan that is much more conservative than Bush's. His ideas are based on the soundness of trade and technology, and he believes that capitalism, if nurtured through hefty foreign grants and disease-reduction projects, will flower even in the most hardscrabble lands.

Despite its foreword by Bono and a recent excerpt in Time magazine, "The End of Poverty" is unlikely to become a mega-bestseller; because Sachs strives mightily to offer advice that's pragmatic and useful, he can sometimes veer too deeply into wonky economic analyses, making for a prose style that's not likely to enjoy broad appeal. I'd call this a downside -- more people really should read this book -- if I thought the world already had enough rigorous plans for achieving global prosperity, but that's clearly not the case. Sachs' economic analysis, even if it's difficult, is therefore welcome, especially if it can help Paul Wolfowitz get up to speed.

And anyway, Sachs' wonkiness is not entirely off-putting, because he's clearly animated by passion, and even rage. People in the rich world, particularly American politicians, believe that we do too much for the world's poor and that we have too little to show for it. Sachs knows that we do too little, that the little we do is not wise, and that, if we were to act wisely, we'd see enormous gains. It's a frustrating position, and reading this book, and comparing Sachs' plans to what's actually being done in the world, is, alas, an exercise in keeping your cool.

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