Success Quote by James Wolfensohn

Wolfensohn’s line is a business-minded reframing of peacemaking: treat war less like a moral eruption and more like a predictable systems failure. The rhetoric is blunt, almost procedural - “first thing,” “best way” - as if conflict can be managed with the same discipline as a budget or a balance sheet. That’s not accidental. As a World Bank president steeped in development metrics and political bargaining, he’s selling an upstream intervention model: if you want fewer emergencies, stop financing only the ambulances.

The intent is also tactical. By anchoring “conflict” to “poverty,” he yanks security out of the generals’ exclusive domain and into the portfolios of economists, aid agencies, and finance ministers. It’s a power move in policy language, converting an emotionally charged topic into an investable problem. The subtext: the wealthy world prefers to talk about instability as an exotic foreign pathology, but it often grows out of conditions the global economy helps create or maintain. Poverty becomes both a humanitarian concern and a liability in the risk ledger.

Still, the statement’s simplicity is doing double duty. It clarifies a neglected truth - deprivation fuels grievance, weakens states, and makes recruitment cheap - while smoothing over messier drivers: identity politics, authoritarian repression, resource extraction, geopolitical meddling. Wolfensohn isn’t claiming poverty is the only cause; he’s asserting it’s the most actionable lever for institutions that can’t broker ceasefires but can bankroll schools, health systems, and jobs. In that sense, it’s less idealism than a mandate: development isn’t charity, it’s conflict prevention by another name.