Esperanto for Neocons

What’s next, Donald Rumsfeld being shipped off to run UNICEF?

Someone in the White House’s human resources department is having too much fun. First, John Bolton, a bona fide skeptic when it comes to things like diplomacy and treaties, was nominated to be the U.S. ambassador to that den of multilateralism, the United Nations. Now President Bush has nominated Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense and one of the intellectual authors of the Iraq war, to lead the World Bank. And we thought we were being provocative when we nominated Bono, the rock star, for the same job.

An American traditionally heads the bank (leadership of the International Monetary Fund goes to a European), and its board of directors is expected to ratify the White House’s nomination. Even so, it’s a leap to think of the administration’s most notorious Iraq hawk working with Europe to lead the global struggle against poverty and hunger.

There is a precedent, of course, of a high-profile U.S. official expiating his sins (at least what much of the world considered sins) at the World Bank. Robert McNamara, the onetime Ford Motor Co. executive and Democratic secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, went on to lead the bank from 1968 to 1981. In fact, if Wolfowitz is to succeed at the bank, he will have to continue pulling the organization away from the approach it took in the McNamara years of indiscriminately lending money to corrupt governments in the name of development.

The question is whether Wolfowitz -- a former Yale political scientist and ambassador to Indonesia -- has the diplomatic skill and credibility to preach to governments that need to clean up their economic act. And can he display sufficient independence from the Bush administration?

As for the president, his ongoing redeployment of neocon ideologues from his inner circle is intriguing. Does this signal a desire for a kinder, gentler second term? And if so, will the intent backfire overseas if he keeps exiling hard-liners to organizations that the outside world cares deeply about, even if he doesn’t? The Wolfowitz appointment will be seen as an affront not only in Berlin and Paris but London as well.

Maybe Bush is playing a more sophisticated game. He could be sending these dodgy multilateral outfits the influential right-wing lieutenants he trusts -- even Condoleezza Rice’s move to the State Department fits the pattern -- because he genuinely wants to emphasize collaboration and diplomacy. He would need hard-nosed people with unassailable credentials among conservatives to sell this approach to his political base.

It’s a theory anyway, and time will tell whether it has merit. In the meantime, maybe Rumsfeld ought to study Esperanto.