The World Bank is one of the cornerstones of the liberal international order that America built after World War II.
The bank can be one of the the explanation why this American-led system finds so few friends in developing countries today.
Consider Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukrainians bravely fight for his or her homeland. But Washington doesn’t see the conflict in terms of rival nations and opposing nationalisms – one aggressive, the other defensive.
Our leaders as an alternative think of the conflict as a war for the liberal international order. And so they expect the international community to support Ukraine.
When developing countries like India and Brazil show reluctance or aversion to it, Washington is appalled. But have a look at what liberal international institutions like the World Bank mean to those countries.
Ajay Banga, an Indian businessman who became a naturalized US citizen in 2007, is the Biden administration’s nominee for the next president of the World Bank.
Nonetheless, Banga, who has experience in every thing from launching fast food franchises in India to serving as CEO of Mastercard, is being criticized by development experts for not having enough experience in climate policy.
Before being nominated to the World Bank, Banga was co-chair of the Partnership for Central America, which Vice President Kamala Harris launched as a public-private partnership in 2021.
![Ajay Banga.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/02/NYPICHPDPICT000007165732.jpg?w=1024)
And he was an obedient green CEO, all the time concerned about warmer weather. “At any time, hectares of forests are on fire. Trillions of tons of glacial ice are melting. Temperatures are rising,” a Financial Times profile quotes him writing in Mastercard in 2020.
Nonetheless, in the field of international development, insiders demand more. One anonymous expert complained in the same FT profile: “The US administration is sending out messages that it’s going to be a climate person.” As a substitute, Banga is a financier.
Controversy doesn’t threaten Bangui’s nomination. Reasonably, it signals the highest priority that the technocrats of the liberal order attach to climate change.
The anonymous snipers in Banga usually are not intended to stop him, but to strengthen the ideological pecking order – the business side of development must give solution to the green politics of development experts.
The World Bank, founded in 1944, has all the time been an arm of US policy, with particularly close ties to US foreign policy.
Former presidents include one of the masterminds behind the Vietnam War, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and the architect of the Iraq War, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
What we call the liberal international order looks very very like plain imperialism to the nations we once called the Third World.
Before the bank launched into a mission to avoid wasting the planet from warming, it was already seen by developing countries as a dangerous patron. Each time a bank offers loans to recipients who usually are not creditworthy, recipients are inclined to tackle an excessive amount of debt.
The World Bank is perpetuating the kind of bad decisions that led to the 2008 financial crisis at home and abroad on a world scale.
What’s a poor country to do when easy money is obtainable to divert development from traditional industries to green programs favored by Western and Western-educated elites?
For billions of people in Latin America, Asia and Africa, a liberal international order means succumbing to American ideological obsessions in exchange for loans that may actually result in catastrophic misinvestments and crippling debt.
![A 20 ruble coin lies on 1000 ruble bills.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/02/world-bank-elites-climate-policy-0006.jpg?w=1024)
Even when the worst isn’t yet to return, the beneficiaries of our generosity are outraged by the inherent inequality in the relationship. Our generosity—serving our elite goals—only fuels anti-Americanism.
The developing world is entitled to almost as much industrial growth as the West has dropped at its pinnacle of prosperity.
Climate isn’t a crisis like famine or political uncertainty. Economic disruption underlies these larger, immediate threats. But Western money insists that green ideology takes precedence.
We in the West enjoy a lot wealth and security that we will afford to fret about the weather forecast. The rest of the world doesn’t have that luxury. Nonetheless, the liberal international order reflects our concerns relatively than the needs of other nations.
The way the World Bank works, is it any wonder that India or Brazil would decide to wait out the call to arms on behalf of the international system?
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.