26.3.05

Le blog et L'empire

If I'm not mistaken Le Monde is the first major world newspaper to sponsor and host blogs. Check out their community page.

The multilaterism has already worn out according to an editorial from Le Monde last week.

The signs of political overtures to the world in general, and Europe in particular, demonstrated by George W. Bush after his re-election, have quickly reached their limits. To replace James Wolfensohn, the World Bank President who will leave his post on May 31st, the American President nominated the current number two man in the Pentagon, Paul Wolfowitz, as the White House's candidate. In doing so, George Bush, having just returned from his European tour, is moving more towards the unilateralism of his first mandate than the willingness to engage in dialogue displayed at the beginning of his second.

Admittedly, Mr. Wolfowitz immediately acknowledged that he wouldn't do Washington's bidding at the World Bank (whose president is a North American, following a tradition that goes back to the end of World War II). But he has little chance of convincing anyone in the international community, since his personality suggests the exact opposite of American openness and humility. Mr. Wolfowitz is one of the best-known neoconservatives in the American president's entourage and one of the architects of the war in Iraq. The neoconservatives inspired George W. Bush's idea of a crusade of .good versus evil. which then served as the ideological basis of this intervention, and assured that American soldiers would be greeted with flowers.


The same people saying Wolfowitz might surprise some with success at the World Bank are the same people who said Iraqis would welcome American troops with flowers.

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