Unless the Bush administration's intention is to speed up efforts to shut down and replace the World Bank altogether, it is hard to imagine a worse selection for World Bank chief than Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz brings no apparent development experience to the job, but does offer a record of unabashed militarism and unilateralism that represents exactly the wrong direction for the World Bank.

Militarism and wasteful spending on weaponry is a huge problem in the developing world. The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz, who is emblematic of misplaced priorities in the United States -- sends exactly the wrong message to poor developing countries that should spend far less money on military operations and instead invest to advance genuine national security interests, such as healthcare, education and providing for basic survival.

For decades, the World Bank has veered out of control, pushing mega-development projects that have displaced millions of people, failed to improve national well-being and thrown countries into a downward debt spiral. The Bank has simultaneously pushed market fundamentalist policies -- including blind support for privatization, deregulation, and marketization and commodification of social services and public goods -- that have impoverished hundreds of millions.

Periodically, the Bank acknowledges its past failures and promises to start anew -- only to repeat the mistakes of the previous era, yet again.

If the Bank is going to continue to exist, it does need a new start, but not the kind that Paul Wolfowitz's nomination portends.

What the Bank does need to do is listen to the demands that have come from social movements in developing countries and been echoed by allied groups in the rich countries: cancel the debts owed by the poorest nations, without harmful economic conditions; end support for the market fundamentalist policies known as structural adjustment, which include such policies as water privatization, removing labor protestions and user fees for healthcare; end it support for environmentally harmful projects, such as those in oil, mining, gas development and those involving large dams; and open up its operations and become more transparent.

The only good news about this nomination is that it is likely to provoke fierce opposition, and a genuine debate about whether there should be a World Bank, and if so, what its function should be.

--- Essential Action is a Washington, D.C.-based public interest organization that works on international development-related issues.