| Robert Zoellick | |
|---|---|
| President of the World Bank Group | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office July 1, 2007 |
|
| Nominated by | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Paul Wolfowitz |
| Deputy Secretary of State of the United States | |
| In office February 22, 2005 – July 7, 2006 |
|
| President | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Richard Armitage |
| Succeeded by | John Negroponte |
| Trade Representative of the United States | |
| In office January 20, 2001 – February 22, 2005 |
|
| President | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Charlene Barshefsky |
| Succeeded by | Rob Portman |
| Undersecretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs of the United States | |
| In office May 20, 1991 – August 23, 1992 |
|
| President | George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Richard McCormack |
| Succeeded by | Joan Spero |
| Counselor of the Department of State of the United States | |
| In office March 2, 1989 – August 23, 1992 |
|
| President | George H. W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Max Kampelman |
| Succeeded by | Tim Wirth |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Robert Bruce Zoellick July 25, 1953 Naperville, Illinois, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Sherry Zoellick |
| Alma mater | Swarthmore College Harvard University |
| Religion | Lutheranism[1] |
Robert Bruce Zoellick /ˈzɛlɪk/ (German: [ˈtsœlɪk]; born July 25, 1953) is the eleventh president of the World Bank, a position he has held since July 1, 2007.[2] He was previously a managing director of Goldman Sachs,[3] United States Deputy Secretary of State (resigning on July 7, 2006) and U.S. Trade Representative, from February 7, 2001 until February 22, 2005.
President George W. Bush nominated Zoellick on May 30, 2007 to replace Paul Wolfowitz as President of the World Bank.[4] On June 25, 2007, Zoellick was approved by the World Bank's executive board.[2][5]
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Zoellick was born in Naperville, Illinois, the son of Gladys and William T. Zoellick.[6] His family is of German origin[7] and he was raised Lutheran.[1] He graduated in 1971 from Naperville Central High School, graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1975 from Swarthmore College as a history major, and received his J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1981.[8][9][10]
Upon graduation from Harvard Law School Zoellick served as a law clerk for Judge Patricia Wald on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Zoellick served in various positions at the Department of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988. He held positions including Counselor to Secretary James Baker, Executive Secretary of the Department, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Policy.
During George H. W. Bush's presidency, Zoellick served with Baker, by then Secretary of State, as Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, as well as Counselor to the Department (Under Secretary rank). In August 1992, Zoellick was appointed White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President.[8] Zoellick was also appointed Bush's personal representative for the G7 Economic Summits in 1991 and 1992.
After leaving government service, Zoellick served from 1993 to 1997 as an Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae.[11][12] Afterwards, Zoellick was appointed as the John M. Olin Professor of National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy (1997–98); Research Scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government; and Senior International Advisor to Goldman Sachs.[9][12]
Zoellick signed the January 26, 1998 letter[13] to President Bill Clinton from Project for a New American Century (PNAC) that advocated war against Iraq.
During 1999 Zoellick was, for a short period, the head of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).[14]
Also during 1999, Zoellick served on a panel that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues.[15]
In the 2000 presidential election campaign, Zoellick served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush as part of a group, led by Condoleezza Rice, that called itself The Vulcans. James Baker designated him as his second-in-command—"a sort of chief operating officer or chief of staff"—in the 36-day battle over recounting the vote in Florida.[16]
Zoellick was named U.S. Trade Representative in Bush's first term; he was a member of the Executive Office, with the rank of Ambassador. According to the U.S. Trade Representative website, Zoellick completed negotiations to bring China and Taiwan into the World Trade Organization (WTO); developed a strategy to launch new global trade negotiations at the WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar; shepherded Congressional action on the Jordan Free Trade Agreement and the Vietnam Trade Agreement; and worked with Congress to pass the Trade Act of 2002, which included new Trade Promotion Authority.[9] He also heavily promoted the Central American Free Trade Agreement over the objections of labor, environmental, and human rights groups.[17]
Zoellick played a key role in the U.S.-WTO dispute against the European Union over genetically modified foods. The move sought to require that the European Union comply with international obligations to use science-based methods in continuing its moratorium on the approval of new genetically modified crops within the E.U.[18]
On January 7, 2005, Bush nominated Zoellick to be Deputy Secretary of State.[19] Zoellick assumed the office on February 22, 2005. The New York Times reported on May 25, 2006 that Zoellick could soon announce his departure. Zoellick agreed to serve as Deputy Secretary of State for not less than one year. He was seen as a major architect of the Bush administration’s policies regarding China.
On September 21, 2005, Zoellick created a major stir on both sides of the Pacific by giving a remarkably candid speech to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. In the speech, he not only introduced the notion of China as a "responsible stakeholder" in the international community but sought to allay fears in the US of ceding dominance to China.[20]
In addition, Zoellick chartered a new direction in the Darfur peace process.[21] During a trip to a Darfur refugee camp in 2005, he wore a bracelet with the motto, "Not on our watch." Zoellick was seen by many as the administration's strongest voice on Darfur. His resignation catalyzed groups, such as the Genocide Intervention Network, to praise his record on human rights issues.[22]
Zoellick officially took office as President of the World Bank on July 1, 2007. His five-year term is set to expire in 2012.
In a major speech at the National Press Club in Washington on October 10, 2007, Zoellick formulated what he described as "six strategic themes in support of the goal of an inclusive and sustainable globalization" which he proposed should guide the future work of the World Bank:
First, the World Bank Group faces the challenge of helping to overcome poverty and spur sustainable growth in the poorest countries, especially in Africa... Second, we need to address the special problems of states coming out of conflict or seeking to avoid the breakdown of the state... Third, the World Bank Group needs a more differentiated business model for the middle income countries... Fourth, the World Bank Group will need to play a more active role in fostering regional and global public goods that transcend national boundaries and benefit multiple countries and citizens... Fifth, one of the most notable challenges of our time is how to support those seeking to advance development and opportunities in the Arab World... Finally, while the World Bank Group has some of the attributes of a financial and development business, its calling is much broader. It is a unique and special institution of knowledge and learning. It collects and supplies valuable data. Yet this is not a university – rather it is a “brain trust” of applied experience that will help us to address the five other strategic themes.[23]
During Zoellick's time at the World Bank, the institution's capital stock has been expanded [24] and lending volumes increased to help member countries deal with the global financial and economic crisis;[25] assistance has been stepped-up to deal with the famine in the Horn of Africa;[26] a major increase in resources has been achieved for the institution's soft loan facility, the International Development Association (IDA), which lends to the poorest countries; [27] and a reform has been carried out to the World Bank's shareholding, Executive Board and voting structure, to increase the influence of developing and emerging economies in the World Bank's governance.[28]
United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former U.S. First Lady and former U.S. Senator from New York, has frequently been mentioned as a possible successor to President Zoellick at the end of his term in mid-2012. Clinton has publicly expressed the desire to hold no further political office (specifically ruling out another four years as U.S. Secretary of State in a possible second Obama term). Anonymous sources cited by Huffington Post claimed that Clinton had been in discussions with the White House about leaving her present position to assume leadership of the World Bank. The White House declined to comment and a spokesman for Clinton was quoted by Huffington Post as denying that Clinton wanted the job or had held conversations with the White House about it.[29]
Zoellick has served as a board member for a number of private and public organizations, including Alliance Capital, Said Holdings, and the Precursor Group; as a member of the advisory boards of Enron[30] and Viventures, a venture fund; and a director of the Aspen Institute's Strategy Group.
He has also served on the boards of the German Marshall Fund and the European Institute and on the World Wildlife Fund Advisory Council. He was a member of Secretary William Cohen's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 1992, he received the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his eminent achievements in the course of German reunification. In 2002, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Saint Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana.
In 2005 Tom Barry, the policy director of the International Relations Center, wrote that Zoellick "regards free trade philosophy and free trade agreements as instruments of U.S. national interests. When the principles of free trade affect U.S. short-term interests or even the interests of political constituencies, Zoellick is more a mercantilist and unilateralist than free trader or multilateralist."[31]
Gavan McCormack has written that Zoellick used his perch as U.S. trade representative to advocate for Wall Street's policy goals abroad, as during a 2004 intervention in a key privatization issue in Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's re-election campaign. McCormack has written, "The office of the U.S. Trade Representative has played an active part in drafting the Japan Post privatization law. An October 2004 letter from Robert Zoellick to Japan’s Finance Minister Takenaka Heizo, tabled in the Diet on August 2, 2005, included a handwritten note from Zoellick commending Takenaka. Challenged to explain this apparent U.S. government intervention in a domestic matter, Koizumi merely expressed his satisfaction that Takenaka had been befriended by such an important figure… It is hard to overestimate the scale of the opportunity offered to U.S. and global finance capital by the privatization of the Postal Savings System."[32]
In a January 2000 Foreign Affairs essay entitled "Campaign 2000: A Republican Foreign Policy," he was one of the first of those now associated with Bush's foreign policy to invoke the notion of "evil," writing: "[T]here is still evil in the world—people who hate America and the ideas for which it stands. Today, we face enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, along with the missiles to deliver them. The United States must remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat its enemies. People driven by enmity or by a need to dominate will not respond to reason or goodwill. They will manipulate civilized rules for uncivilized ends."[33] The same essay praises the "idealism" of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Two years earlier, Zoellick was one of the signatories (who also included Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John R. Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Bill Kristol) of a January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton drafted by the Project for the New American Century calling for "removing Saddam [Hussein]'s regime from power."[13]
While in the position of Deputy Secretary of State, Zoellick visited Sudan four times. He supported expanding a United Nations force in the Darfur region to replace African Union soldiers. He was involved in negotiating a peace accord between the government of Sudan and the Sudan Liberation Army, signed in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006.
Zoellick is considered an influential advocate of US-German relations. Fluent in German, he possesses considerable knowledge of Germany, the country of his family background.
In the lead-up to the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit and in the immediate wake of the U.S. elections and subsequent Fed QE2 monetary-policy move, Zoellick published a noted[34] call for the return of some form of gold standard in a post-Bretton Woods II world.[35] The reaction of economists to this suggestion was largely negative, dismissing a renewed gold standard as unrealistic.[36]
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Max Kampelman |
Counselor of the Department of State of the United States 1989–1992 |
Succeeded by Tim Wirth |
| Preceded by Richard McCormack |
Undersecretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs of the United States 1991–1992 |
Succeeded by Joan Spero |
| Preceded by Charlene Barshefsky |
Trade Representative of the United States 2001–2005 |
Succeeded by Rob Portman |
| Preceded by Richard Armitage |
Deputy Secretary of State of the United States 2005–2006 |
Succeeded by John Negroponte |
| Business positions | ||
| Preceded by Paul Wolfowitz |
President of the World Bank Group 2007–present |
Incumbent |
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