CURRENT BOOKS States grew increasingly unilateralist, Wolfen- which has been occupied with two expensive sohn contended with an international board of military conflicts and a number of domestic directors that did not share the American policy battles, is only now beginning to articu- appetite for war in Iraq or protracted engage- late a comprehensive international develop- ment in Afghanistan. In 2002 the bank estab- ment strategy. lished its first ground office in Afghanistan In the meantime, under the leadership of for- since 1979, but rebuilding activities were mer U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick, stymied by ongoing conflict, corruption, and a the bank has ratcheted up its commitments to brisk drug trade. In 2003, it was shut out of crisis locales including various African states, the Pentagon’s planning for reconstruction in earthquake-ravaged Haiti, and now Pakistan. Iraq but was later pressed to help with nation- Many of the additional billions have come from building. Still, Wolfensohn was buoyed by developing countries themselves—countries that global enthusiasm for poverty alleviation. An are now the engines of global economic growth. international coalition of nonprofits mounted In exchange, the bank recently changed its voting the Jubilee 2000 campaign for debt relief for structure to give nations such as China (now its poor countries, and the United Nations’ mem- third-largest shareholder), Brazil, India, Indone- ber countries pledged through the Millennium sia, and Vietnam greater say in running the Development Goals to reduce poverty and to place, and is considering ways to shift the balance improve health, education, and development of power further, including, quite possibly, the assistance by 2015. inauguration of a non-American president. Per- Since Wolfensohn’s presidency, the global haps more than the legacy of any leader (even economic crisis has exacerbated entrenched one of Wolfensohn’s wattage), it is the more poverty around the world. According to World prominent role of developing countries in deter- Bank figures, nearly half of the world’s six bil- mining bank policy that will redefine the institu- lion people still live on less than two dollars a tion: a brave new World Bank for the new day; when factors such as education, health economic order. care, and credit access are taken into account, the picture is even direr in some of the world’s Georgia Levenson Keohane writes and consults on social and economic policy. Her work has appeared in Harvard Business poorest places. The Obama administration, Review, The Nation, The American Prospect, and elsewhere. CONTEMPORARY AFFAIRS versity, has often walked the fine line between scholarship and mass-audience opinionating. As a American Conspiracy self-styled realist, he has mostly crafted these posi- Reviewed by Thomas Rid tions with detached, historically balanced analysis. Washington Rules breaks with this trend: It is Over the past five years, the passionate, personal, and polemical story of Andrew Bacevich has emerged WASHINGTON how Bacevich, as an Army officer visiting Berlin in as one of the most prolific and RULES: 1990, embarked on an educational journey that led eloquent critics of American for- America’s Path to him to discover the ideological roots of America’s Permanent War. eign policy. In several influential path to permanent war. At times Washington Rules books and essays, Bacevich, a By Andrew J. Bacevich. articulates a sophisticated critique of the United Henry Holt. professor of international rela- 286 pp. $25 States’ global ambitions. But with this book, Bace- tions and history at Boston Uni- vich is dancing along another line. He now has at 98 Wilson Quarterly ■ Autumn 2010 CURRENT BOOKS least one foot in the murky territory of conspiracy Clinton’s secretary of defense, William Cohen, con- theory. served the rules, and his secretary of state, Made- The first indicator is Bacevich’s obsessive use of leine Albright, midwifed them into the 21st century. dogma and quasi-religious language. The country President George W. Bush’s defense team, Donald is run not by presidents and senators, but by some- Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, applied them in thing bigger, the “Washington rules.” These rules Afghanistan and Iraq. start with the “credo”: All presidents from Harry S. For Bacevich, there is an obvious “chain of Truman to Barack Obama have faithfully adhered events” that paved the way to 9/11: the overthrow of to a “catechism” of American statecraft founded on Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953; America’s four assertions: (1) The world must be organized “deference” to Israel after the 1960s; U.S. dealings and “shaped.” (2) America, and only America, has with Saddam Hussein in the 1980s; Washington’s the vision, the will, and the wisdom to lead and support for jihadis in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan; enforce this global order. (3) America has articu- and the Gulf War in 1990–91. If George W. Bush lated the principles that govern the international had acknowledged the order, and these principles are, not surprisingly, connection between American ones. (4) The world, despite occasional these policies and the fall complaints, wants the United States to lead. of the Twin Towers, For Andrew Bacevich, The other half of the Washington rules consists Washington’s sacred there is an obvious of the “sacred trinity”: the convictions that the dogma would have been chain of events that paved United States must maintain a global military pres- called into question, so the way to 9/11. ence, that it must configure its forces to project he deliberately ignored it. power globally, and that it must counter anticipated Instead, under the Bush threats around the world with interventions. The administration, the stan- credo and the trinity—terms Bacevich uses dard of debate fell to a level “hitherto achieved only throughout the book—promise prosperity and by slightly mad German warlords.” peace but, in effect, usher in the opposite: insol- Bacevich carefully acknowledges that the vency and perpetual war. Washington “elite” is not all-knowing and often just Washington Rules imposes a grand and simpli- doesn’t get it. Yet, especially when he discusses fying scheme on a vast set of complex facts. Consid- recent examples, he unearths willful deceit. General er Bacevich’s explanation of the Washington rules’ David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency doctrine, for origins: the cloak-and-dagger world of Cold War instance, is dismissed as “counterfeit coin,” a strat- spies and the hidden Air Force command centers egy that only gives the appearance of purpose to where cigar-chomping four-star generals devised military activity, and in truth is a recipe for more strategies for nuclear overkill. The most important and more wars in the various broken quarters of masterminds were Allen Dulles, the first and most the world. Bacevich dismisses the threat of Islamic influential director of the CIA, and Curtis LeMay, terrorism in a nonchalant way, shrugs off the the first and most influential commander of the geopolitical relevance of the Middle East and Cen- Strategic Air Command, the agency that was in tral Asia, and disregards mad dictators eager to get charge of nuclear war. These two “semiwarriors,” their hands on nuclear weapons. Osama bin Laden, as Bacevich calls them with a curl of his lip, “left Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong Il are ridiculed as an indelible mark on our age.” He describes how not more than “a motley collection of B-list foes”; the Washington rules and America’s global foot- North Korea, Syria, and Cuba are derided as “pyg- print survived the defeat in Vietnam as well as the mies.” America and its allies seem to have no A-list demise of the Soviet Union, aided by legions of enemies. Consequently, there is no need for Bace- semiwarriors on the left and the right, apparently vich to suggest alternative policies beyond just “get- uninfluenced by partisan politics. President Bill ting out.” Autumn 2010 ■ Wilson Quarterly 99 CURRENT BOOKS This book is a pity. U.S. foreign policy in the Mid- poorer Americans are more likely to spend dle East and Central Asia, driven by ideology and every penny of their current paycheck before now hope, is indeed producing more and more the next one comes. They rely on their income questionable outcomes. An authoritative and con- tax “refunds” (an inaccurate term because poor structive critique by an outsider with an insider’s Americans receive back far more than was knowledge would be highly welcome. Washington withheld from their paychecks) to pull them Rules offers a few illuminating glimpses, but no bal- out of the financial sinkhole. anced view. Bacevich ends up doing a great service To get by between paychecks or to absorb to his reviled semiwarriors by handing them a straw unexpected expenses (e.g., a broken-down man they will manage to shoot down with ease. vehicle), they often need to borrow money. Thomas Rid is a visiting scholar at the University of Konstanz in Because of their meager incomes and cyclical Germany and was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson spending, they can’t get the sort of credit that Center in 2009. His most recent book, Understanding Counterin- surgency, was published earlier this year. is available to America’s middle class. That’s where Poverty, Inc., comes in. In Rivlin’s telling, that’s also where the problem starts. Poor Man’s Bank From any one or two poor Americans, there Reviewed by Jeremy Lott is not a lot of money to be made. But poor peo- ple’s numbers add up to a market that is The poor we may always extremely lucrative for lenders willing to take have with us, but must they BROKE,USA: some added risks—Rivlin estimates revenues From Pawnshops always get a raw deal? That’s to Poverty,Inc.— of roughly $100 billion a year, a figure that has the question award-winning How the Working seen a meteoric rise over the last two decades journalist Gary Rivlin poses Poor Became Big as mom-and-pop operations have given in Broke, USA.