What would a possible move by the NATO secretary general to head the World Bank mean?

Elena Panina (Елена Панина)
Director of the RUSSTRAT Institute

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg's term of office may be extended until 2024, and then he has a good chance of becoming president of the World Bank, RIA Novosti reported citing the German Welt am Sonntag.

It seems that Stoltenberg's services to the collective West are very great indeed. After all, he was previously only planning to move to the position of head of the Norwegian Central Bank. — But what does this news mean if you look at it from a purely Russian domestic perspective?

● Until recently, the Russian political class, with few exceptions, relied on the following definition: the US and NATO are our geopolitical adversaries, while the WB and IMF are some neutral, "supra-polar" financial and economic institutions, cooperation with which is necessary for the full-scale economic development of the country, and the signals coming from them are important benchmarks for assessing the effectiveness of government action.

— Any other views on the activities of the WB and the IMF were considered inadequate and marginal. Surprisingly, this perception of the World Bank is still present today.

At the end of 2022, the Russian media reported with satisfaction that the WB had "held a series of meetings with the Russian Federation" and had awarded our country the status of "one of the leaders in the digitalization of public administration." It was reported that a major success was achieved: Russia's digitalization rating (GovTech Maturity Index) was upgraded, Russia was moved by the World Bank from a "B" rating to an "A" rating.

● But the WB may soon be led by current NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who leads an organization that is no longer waging a hybrid, but a very real war against Russia. And also, if Seymour Hersch's investigations into Norway's role in the Nord Stream bombings are to be trusted, he may well have been involved in the attack on a critical piece of international energy infrastructure. Because as NATO's general secretary, he could not have been unaware of his own country's army's actions.

If the NATO Secretary General, which is in fact at war with Russia, moves to the chair of the WB, it is impossible to recognize this body as a "politically neutral" organization.

● Objectively speaking, the WB has never been neutral. Structures such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have always expressed the interests of globalist financial circles and have worked to suppress the economic sovereignty of countries outside the Western bloc.

Today, however, their actions are openly hostile to Russia. In a situation when the collective West is trying to find and confiscate frozen Russian assets in euros and dollars, it is the WB that is becoming one of the most important sources of information about the actions of our financial institutions.

There is every reason to believe that the World Bank's position on this issue will become even tougher with the arrival of Stoltenberg.

Russia needs to reconsider the parameters of interaction with the WB. By sending reports there, we will only be helping the collective West to harm our economy.

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Source: Елена Панина. Translation: DeepL.com IMG: © AP Photo / Olivier Matthys
AWIP: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2023/02/13/what-would-a-possible-move