Foreign Policy

With over ten thousand employees and tens of billions of dollars in investment in the world's poorest nations, the World Bank is at the nexus of global development and social change. Sebastian Mallaby's new book, The World's Banker, pulls back the curtain on this influential entity and its inner workings. What drives this institution? How does the leadership style of World Bank's president James Wolfensohn effect the current and future direction of the World Bank?

The last several days have been gruesome ones for Russia. On Aug. 24, two airliners crashed, apparently blown up by terrorists laden with explosives. On Tuesday, a female suicide bomber -- most likely one of the "black widows," women who have lost husbands, brothers or sons in Chechnya's war against Russia -- blew herself up at a Moscow subway station, killing nine bystanders.

Neo-conservatives claim that the US and Europe are diverging in their values and interests. Atlanticists claim that on both counts, the US and Europe remain closely aligned. Both schools are wrong.

To understand the most pressing crisis facing the future of the Middle East, place a job advertisement in a local newspaper. In Tehran, an ad seeking a clerk for a Western company prompted more than 1,000 applications. Included among them: a PhD in economics, a medical doctor, dozens of software engineers and hundreds of Iran's top university graduates. In Cairo, a senior accountant told me he was shocked at the highly educated who applied for a low-level position with his company.

John Kerry, tough-talking war hero, cut an impressive figure at last week's convention, maybe impressive enough to threaten the Republicans' time-honored dominance of the manliness issue -- that is, national security. But you can already hear the Republican reply taking shape: O.K., you've shown us your muscles, but where's the beef? What exactly is your strategy for the war on terrorism?

India's failures are legion and impossible to ignore. Poverty and desperation abound. Infant mortality is unacceptably high. Schools and healthcare are substandard -- if available at all. Roads and other infrastructure are primitive or in poor repair. The Indian government seems unable to adequately protect the country's Muslim minority (about 12% of the population) from periodic pogroms, and violence against lower castes erupts regularly. Conflicts with Pakistan over Kashmir continue, made more alarming by the fact that both countries now possess nuclear weapons.

President Bush's May 2003 announcement aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations" had ended in Iraq has been replayed endlessly. What is less well remembered is just what the president claimed the United States had accomplished. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001," he declared.

I. Plehve's Ghost

In 1904 the Romanov dynasty was in trouble. Russia's industrialization had accelerated in the last decades of the 19th century but could not forestall the widening of the economic and military gap between Russia and Europe's other powers. To save the regime, Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve reportedly recommended a "small victorious war." But Russia's rout in the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese war fueled a revolution. The Romanovs, who had reigned for almost 300 years, would soon fall. In 1904 Plehve himself was assassinated by a revolutionary.