I see that Daniel Drezner really, really likes Sebastian Mallaby's book about the World Bank and its head, James Wolfensohn. I just started it last night, and so far it's as good as Drezner says. As is my wont, I'd like to share a brief passage from it that relates to the current Colemanian brouhaha over Kofi Annan and the UN (btw, I'm willing to admit that I could well be wrong on the politics and/or the merits, especially given McCain's position).

Here's Mallaby:

We veer between contempts for international bodies--the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and likewise the World Bank--and unrealistic pronouncements on what they ought to do: forge peace, banish financial instability, lift every person out of poverty. It has become commonplace to say that our global institutions are not up to the challenge of our unprecedented global interdependence. But the reason for this mismatch lies partly in our shizophrenia. Sometimes we pour scorn on the Bank and other international bodies, and starve them of resources. Sometimes we talk as though they must have superhuman strengthm and we lumber them with impossible objectives.

That graf could have been written by our own inimitable Ms. Nadezhda, no? More concretely:

When President George W. Bush took office, it was the contempt that seemed most threatening. In 2001 and 2002, the Bush Treasury assailed the Bank with a mixture of aggression and plain ignorance, as this book will describe later [Note: I haven't gotten there yet. -p]. In early 2003, the Bank was left out of the planning for Iraqi reconstruction by the Pentagon, even though it had valuable experience from other nation-building exercises. The Pentagon's attitude did not prevent the Treasury from attacking the Bank for doing too little in Iraq; days after Jim Wolfensohn visited Baghdad in the summer of 2003, and days before a World Bank expert was killed by Iraqi insurgents, The Wall Street Journal published an editorial broadside about the Bank's lack of involvement in the country. Throughout this period, the very idea of the international system was called into question; some parts of the administration believed we lived in a unipolar world--that the United States was the international system. The unipolar fantasy is a trap, for it is only in military matters that American power is overwhelming. In the economic realm, the United States is the leading power, but it is not the only power; it depends on foreigners to open up trade, to prime the pump of global growth, and to provide savings that pay for the federal government's spending habits.

Idiots. Thomas Barnett would probably agree that you can't, er, connect "the Gap" to "the Core" unless you, um, actually try to connect them to the Core. Argh.

I'll likely never take the time to offer a comprehensive review once I finish the book, so treasure this brief snippet accordingly.

And now a question for our knowledgeable readers: do the regional combatant commands (e.g. CENTCOM) have liaisons to major international bodies like the World Bank, does the State Department handle those things on the ambassadorial level, are there interagency coordination groups back in Washington, do they employ their own development specialists, etc.? To make this more concrete, how (if at all) would someone in charge of World Bank development projects for Nigeria coordinate with United States European Command, who runs training projects for the Nigerian military (but doesn't talk about it on its website)? I bring this up in light of my growing concern about the militarization of American foreign policy. I thought this passage from Dana Priest's The Mission was particulary illuminating:

Operation Focus Relief said a lot about the times. For decades, the federal government and Washington's inside-the-Beltway brain trust had poured money into studying the Third World and Africa. Even so, no one had gotten very good at mapping out, and then executing, long-term strategies to solve Africa's massive problems. Funds and programs came and went with each new administration and each new majority in Congress. As a result, sixty U.S. soldiers might walk through hip-deep bushy fields with a battalion of underfed Nigerian soldiers, showing them how to conduct an ambush, but no cadre of U.S. economists flew there to train officials in the country's economic ministry. No legion of agronomists camped out in the middle of nowhere to help improve farming techniques. Battalions of teachers did not deploy to repair the educational system. The Peace Corps was marginalized and outdated.

Using the American military to address global problems had become almost a reflex in Washington. But even the best U.S. troops could deal only with the symptoms, not the causes, of incipient problems. Military programs did little to help political systems move from dictatorship to democracy, or economies from government control to the free market.

I echoed my concern in comments to Steve Clemmons, and a smart commenter responded:

Praktike, don't blame the CinCs (sorry, I mean "combatant commanders"); as Congress gutted our foreign service, the task of diplomacy didn't go away, it just devolved to the military. The CinCs are very cognizant of the importance of diplomacy, and they'd like a heck of a lot more civilian support in what they're doing. Our elected officials, Republican and Democrat, have basically abdicated much of their responsibility and forced unwanted responsibilities upon military leaders. (Shades of "The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012.")

To be clear: I don't blame the CinCs (most of whom "get it" and are trapped by the system). I blame Congress. Development alone won't solve the terrorism problem (and as Mallaby says, the World Bank can't exactly wave a magic wand), but boosting failed or failing states is part of a long-term solution. States that work and can find hope for their people are states that will fight terrorism. But we're eating soup with a knife on a global scale here, or using hammers on what look like nails but are actually screws, or whatever. I'm sure there's some cliche that sums it all up.

In any case, this has to change, because we're trying to solve problems too late, with too few resources, and sometimes with the wrong resources. Maybe we have to get more creative about boosting the non-military capabilites of the regional commands, or at a minimum, improve our coordination with, say, the World Bank, which employs thousands of brilliant technocrats. It benefits from having a board that, unlike the United Nations Security Council, isn't set up in such a way that politics routinely interfere with doing good; unlike the UN, it's well-funded and highly driven. Still thinking out loud here ... maybe the State Department should be reorganized to match the regional commands. Why, for instance, do State's geographic divisions not match the Pentagon's? Why doesn't "jointness" extend beyond the military?

Now ... tell me why none of these inchoate thoughts are realistic. Imagine that George Bush is not the current president if that helps my case.

Note: good thinkin', Matt, but the U.S. is not about to give up its veto.

This isn't a life and death matter, but it does illustrate the absurd traps our legislation or regulations often set for our foreign policy when we try to address one issue and end up producing other problems. Somewhere there ought to be an administrative proceeding for the State Department or other agencies to administer exemptions from blanket prohibitions. The problem has received increasing attention in the area of visas and foreign students, where our more stringent recent policies are being applied in a fashion that undermines all too frequently the strong economic, political and cultural interests America has in openness.

For a society that prides itself especially on openness to ideas and freedom of speech, this episode is postively perverse. It was described originally in the Christian Science Monitor by Farzaneh Milani, a native of Iranian who is director of Studies in Women and Gender at the University of Virginia.

Shirin Ebadi - a human rights lawyer and one of Iran's first women judges - is however, forbidden to publish her memoirs in the United States because of a trade embargo against three countries: Sudan, Cuba and Iran. Coming from a land that has no exact equivalent for the term "to sue," the 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate is suing the American government. Challenging the regulations imposed by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, Ebadi calls the ban "a critical missed opportunity both for Americans to learn more about my country and its people from a variety of Iranian voices, and for a better understanding to be achieved between our two countries."

Ebadi has a point. Only a tiny percentage of the tens of thousands of new titles made available to the American reading public every year are translated works. Furthermore, with no official relations with the Iranian government, with new prohibitions on direct access to the people, with travel and tourism virtually stopped, it is hard for Americans to see Iran beyond the headlines. Misunderstandings and misperceptions are rampant.

In spite of its long history of cooperation and friendship with the U.S., which was interrupted by the 1979 revolution, especially the hostage crisis, Iran is represented as an intractable enemy. Its dominant image now is that of a country-turned-jailer; a country taking Americans, no less diplomats and emissaries, hostage.
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For well over a century, women have been a moderating, modernizing force in Iran with Shirin Ebadi as one of its most articulate and successful representatives. Her voice, like Sheherazade's, is a beacon of hope and temperance. It should not be silenced. It ought to be heard.

Our friend the Brooding Persian would agree with the importance of women to Iran's ancient past and future, with a somewhat different take in his recent post "Warrior Woman."

And the past generally helps put present in perspective. I mean, who can really be surprised by the existence of warrior women knowing what woman in Iran have done and continue to do every day. It must be in the genes!

As I have said before,... Iranian women are poised to take the helm of this nation in a dazzling sort of way. They are the one consistently belligerent group incessantly challenging boundaries and refusing to be cowered.

The Persian's post is full of great links to materials about Iranian women both past and present. I was especially taken by his recommendation of the author of a forthcoming book dealing with gender and modernity in Iran, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards : Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity, by Afsaneh Najmabadi.

The issue of identity and modernity, and the gender dimension of identity , is a recurring theme in a number of publications about Iran. Another book to be published early in 2005 is reviewed in Beirut's Daily Star. Portrait Photographs from Isfahan : Faces in Transition, 1920-1950 is a collection of several hundred photographs from the period, assembled by Iranian artist, academic and activist Parisa Damandan.

[The book] focuses on a tight but tumultuous time frame, when Iran was undergoing rapid social, political and economic transformation. Damandan, who was born in Isfahan and remembers her own early experiments with having her picture taken by a professional photographer, returned to her hometown to find evidence of the old studios and commercial practices that once flourished in the ancient city.

The book resulting from her research reveals as much about how photographers worked in the first half of the 20th century as it does about how people in those times saw themselves, how they constructed their identities before the camera and, in turn, how the identity of a nation took shape, fell apart and reformed against a backdrop of industrialization, modernity, political change and looming revolution and upheaval.
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[In addition to telling the story of individual photographers] Damandan adds the story of a city, a country and a people. The book is full of surprises - cross-dressing women, Isfahan's community of Russian prostitutes and the flood of Polish refugees who took up temporary residence in Iran during World War II. And it captures telling evidence of changing times - women casting off and taking up the veil, the significance of gymnasiums as a social space in men's lives, family configurations, gender roles at social events and the growth of industry (textile factories, workers on strike) that is evident both on the landscape and in the photographs themselves.

In addition to Damandan's narrative, "Portrait Photographs from Isfahan" includes essays by Iranian writer Reza Sheikh (who looks at the relationship between portraiture and democracy) and Dutch writer Josephine van Bennekom (who explores the differences between and encounters among Iranian and European portraiture).
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As an interesting aside, the Persian has also been concerned about the problem of Iranian writings being blocked from publication in the US. In this case, the focus was on poetry.