USA, IMF and World Bank's cooperation on security issues (2001-2002)

This article examines the counter-terrorism cooperation between the USA, the IMF and the World Bank, and analyses how the first G.W. Bush administration used these institutions to maintain American national security. In 2001, the Fund and the Bank were rapidly involved in the global fight against terrorism and became an effective tool for monitoring and helping the implementation of international standards on anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). The IMF and the Bank focused on those tasks, which corresponded with their essential missions and available resources (assessment, technical assistance and research). This activity of the Fund and the Bank completely met both the international security needs and the American national interests. Another significant point of the cooperation between the USA and the UN international financial institutions was the financial assistance to the countries, which were particularly important for conducting the American war on the terrorism in Afghanistan. The credit to Pakistan approved by the IMF in September 2001, soon after the dramatic change of the US-Pakistan relations, was taken as an evidence of high politicization of the IMF and World Bank in favour of the USA. Nevertheless, the analysis of the Fund and Bank's interactions with Pakistan and Central Asian countries did not reveal a notable correlation between the national cooperation with the Coalition forces and loan granting. From 2001 to 2002, the IMF was acting in its usual way providing new credits only to those countries, which had received similar loans earlier in the 1990s. The World Bank's programs demonstrated a more noticeable change: from 2001 to 2002 its overall assistance to Pakistan and Central Asian countries had doubled. Such an increase did not exclude the possibility of correlation between the military and political situation in the region and Bank's loan granting, but it can also be explained by the general financial policy of the World Bank. In fact, the main economic tool used by the USA to support these countries was the channel of official bilateral assistance that provided urgent and flexible financing. But for all that, in 2001 the Bush administration used the approval of the IMF's credit to Pakistan as a diplomatic instrument for convincing its potential partners of the benefits of joining the international counter-terrorism coalition led by the USA.

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