Robert Zoellick
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Robert Zoellick, has emerged as the frontrunner to be the next president of the World Bank.
Robert Bruce Zoellick (born July 25, 1953) was a United States Deputy Secretary of State, resigning on July 7, 2006. Before this position, he served as United States Trade Representative, from February 7, 2001 until February 22, 2005.
He announced his resignation on June 19, 2006 to join the investment bank Goldman Sachs as a managing director and chairman of the company's International Advisors department.[1]
Robert Zoellick also serves or has served as a board member for a number of private and public organizations: Alliance Capital, Said Holdings, and the Precursor Group; and as a member of the advisory boards of Enron and Viventures, a venture fund; and a director of the Aspen Institute's Strategy Group.
He has also served on the German Marshall Fund of the United States, and the World Wildlife Advisory Council, and is a member of Secretary William Sebastian Cohen's Defense Policy Board.[1][2]
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
Background
Zoellick was raised in Naperville, Illinois, and has German ancestors. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1975 from Swarthmore College and received his J.D. from the Harvard Law School and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 1981.[3][4]
Career
Government service (1985-1992)
Zoellick served in various positions at the Department of the Treasury from 1985 to 1988, 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 Secretary of State James Baker as Under Secretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, as well as Counselor to the Department (Under Secretary rank). In August 1992, Ambassador Zoellick was appointed White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Assistant to the President.[5] Zoellick was also appointed the President's personal representative for the G-7 Economic Summits in 1991 and 1992.
Business and academia, 1993-2001
After leaving government service, Ambassador Zoellick was appointed an Executive Vice President at Fannie Mae (1993–1997).[6][7] Zoellick served as the John M. Olin Professor of National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy (1997–1998), Research Scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and Senior International Advisor to Goldman Sachs.[8][9]
During the 2000 U.S. 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.
US Trade Representative, 2001-2005
Named U.S. Trade Representative at the beginning of President George W. Bush's first term, Zoellick was a member of the Executive Office, with the rank of Ambassador. According to the U.S. Trade Representative web site, 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 at Doha, 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.[10] He also heavily promoted the Central American Free Trade Agreement over the objections of labor, environmental, and human rights groups. [11]
Deputy Secretary of State, 2005-2006
On January 7, 2005, President George W. Bush nominated Zoellick to be Deputy Secretary of State. [12] Zoellick assumed the office on February 22, 2005. The New York Times reported on May 25, 2006 that Zoellick, dissatisfied with his perceived inferiority at the State Department, could soon announce his departure. Zoellick, who has served for six years in the Bush Administration, agreed to serve as Deputy Secretary of State for not less than one year. He is seen as a major architect of the Bush Administration's policies regarding the People's Republic of China, and also the approach to a Darfur peace plan.[2]
During a trip to a Darfurian refugee camp in 2005, Zoellick 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 call for an equally capable anti-genocide champion within the administration.[13] Michael Gerson, President Bush's former influential advisor and speechwriter, has been suggested by some to fill the position of special envoy to Darfur.
Zoellick's desire to return to the private sector was widely known for months.[citation needed]
Views
Tom Barry, the policy director of the International Relations Center, has written 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."[14]
Gavan McCormack has written that Zoellick used his perch at USTR to advocate for Wall Street's policy goals abroad, as during a 2004 intervention in a key privatization issue in Japanese Prime Minister's Junichiro Koizumi's re-election campaign. Writes McCormack, "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 2 August 2005, included a handwritten note from Zoellick commending Takenaka for the splendid job he was doing. Challenged to explain this apparent U.S. government intervention in a sensitive 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."[15]
While not usually considered a neoconservative, Zoellick has strong affinities with them. 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 George W. 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." The same essay praises the "idealism" of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Two years earlier, Zoellick was one of the signatories (along with Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, Zalmay Khalilzad, John R. Bolton, Richard Armitage, William Kristol, and others) of a Jan. 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton drafted by the Project for a New American Century calling for "removing Saddam's regime from power."[16]
A central focus of Zoellick since taking the position of Deputy Secretary of State has been Sudan, which he has visited four times. He supports expanding a United Nations force in the Darfur region to replace the African Union soldiers who are struggling to keep the peace there. He was involved in negotiating a peace accord between the government of Sudan and main Darfur rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army, signed in Abuja, Nigeria in May 2006.
References
- ^ Reuters (2006). Goldman says Zoellick to be vice chairman, intl. Retrieved June 20, 2006.
- ^ Times Online (2006). Zoellick quits State Department for Goldman. Retrieved June 20, 2006.
