Paul Wolfowitz

Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Dundes Wolfowitzis a former President of the World Bank, United States Ambassador to Indonesia, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense, and former dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, working on issues of international economic development, Africa and public-private partnerships, and chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth22 December 1943
CountryUnited States of America
We know that to arrive at these goals, there is no greater engine than the industrious and well-educated people of Iraq themselves, ... Along with our coalition partners, we would help Iraqis begin the process of economic and political reconstruction. We would assist the people of Iraq in putting their country on a path towards prosperity and freedom.
Certainly I am also here to learn about the problems of the country today and especially the problems of very severe poverty.
If they continue, then we need to think about what our policy is with respect to a country that harbors terrorists or harbors war criminals, or was in recent times shipping things to Iraq.
When you are in a poor country that is challenged just to meet kind of basic needs, compensating farmers adequately and having a framework for doing that gets to be an expensive proposition.
For any country it is sensitive to have foreign troops on your territory. It would be sensitive in the United States, and I can tell you it is extremely sensitive in Indonesia, ... What is remarkable is that it has caused no problems to date.
It used to be that when a country joined the nuclear club, they suddenly decided that it was just large enough, and they didn't want to help anyone else join. ...Now we have countries joining the nuclear missile club who say 'the more the merrier.' North Korea is out selling its dangerous technology to anyone who wants to spend the money to buy it.
The more Iraqis feel that they are in charge of their own country, the more rapidly we'll get away from this idea that we're there as an occupation force. We came as liberators. That's our mission.
The oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 billion and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years,
In the small country of Burkina Faso, if I remember correctly, it costs 1-1/2 times per capita income to pay the license fees to start a business. That's only about US$500 but for a poor person in Burkina who is trying to start a business it's an impossible barrier.
I think Obama sees everything through one lens. Doing nothing in the face of the slaughter in Syria is not only shameful, it is unrealistic. This approach leaves Syria as a broken country and a breeding ground for extremists for decades.
Jobs are a priority for every country. Doing more to improve regulation and help entrepreneurs is the key to creating jobs - and more growth.
It would be a huge mistake to abandon democracy promotion. Peaceful political change has been enormously successful in the past years in Eastern European countries as well as in countries like South Korea, South Africa, Chile and Indonesia. However, if possible, the use of force is something to avoid except in cases where genocide is threatened, like Bosnia or Libya or with regimes that threaten our security, like the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.
There's a lot of money to pay for this ... the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years...We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.
We certainly hope that U.S. military can be handing this off to other people long before (the end of March) but I think it's right to think of it as goal and not a deadline, ... The real objective, the mission, is to take care of the people who survived this horrible disaster.