Abstract

McNamara: The Sequel

The author claims that Robert McNamara oversaw the plunder and destruction of Third World economies and political systems during his tenure as head of the World Bank. Apparently to McNamara's mortification, Errol Morris, whose film, "The Fog of War," I discussed in my last column here, passes over his subject's thirteen-year stint running the World Bank, whither he was dispatched by LBJ, Medal of Freedom in hand. McNamara brandishes his bank years as his moral redemption, and all too often his claim is accepted by those who have no knowledge of the actual, ghastly record. When McNamara took over the bank, "development" loans (which were already outstripped by repayments) stood at $953 million and when he left, at $12.4 billion, which, discounting inflation, amounted to slightly more than a sixfold increase. Corruption seethed. Most aid vanished into the hands of local elites, who very often used the money to steal the resources-pasture, forest, water--of the very poor whom the bank was professedly seeking to help. It was the malign parable of "modernization" written across the face of the Third World, with one catastrophe after another prompted by the destruction of traditional rural subsistence economies. McNamara threw money at Pinochet's Chile after Allende's overthrow and at the military dictators of Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, the Philippines and Indonesia. The darker the dictatorship, the more lavishly McNamara rewarded it.