Nice editorial, as usual, from Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post. One of my favorite columnists goes after the World Bank and its infamous president, Paul Wolfowitz.

Noting that the West has not taken advantage of a certain measure of consensus on international aid following 9/11, after which aid shot up dramatically for several years, Mallaby correctly notes that the West’s backsliding has given China an opportunity, particularly in Africa:

The West’s financial retreat is a policy retreat, too, because an alternative patron of poor nations is emerging in the form of China. So long as Western governments dominated the aid business, African governments had reason to listen to their advice on fighting corruption and building institutions. But as Western aid budgets tighten, more African leaders will turn to China for cash and technical assistance.

The evidence is clear that this is indeed happening, and China, which is one of the world’s pre-eminent realists, is not pressuring African nations to reform. No strings attached to Chinese business deals aside from mutual commercial benefits.

I am not a hard-nosed realist, but the experience of the Iraq War and the way that U.S. neoconservatives have warped the notion of international idealism, makes me hesitate before criticizing Chinese foreign policy. Ten years ago, I would not have hesitated. A shame, that.

Speaking of things that are a shame, Mallaby’s critique of Wolfowitz’s performance at the World Bank suggests that the WB chief might have hit his high point career-wise as dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (my alma mater). Certainly since that point, his work with the U.S. Defense Department and the WB have not gone so well. Maybe he should have tried his hand at being a career academic.