There's more to reforming the IMF and World Bank than causing capital chaos

They chained themselves together on Pennsylvania Avenue. They bared their chests to deliver their message. They braved tear gas, pepper spray and beatings and did not cringe. They were cowards.

The 10,000 activists of various stripes who flooded Washington, D.C., last weekend to protest the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were wasting their time. Egregiously.

Though direct action has proven a powerful political tool in the past — notably for the labor and civil rights movements — it is not the most effective way to challenge the wrongs allegedly committed by the World Bank and the IMF. The Washington protests were incorrectly targeted and offered no real solutions to the problems protesters perceived. They were simply the easiest way for socially and environmentally aware Americans to clear their consciences by "making a difference" without really risking anything.

The World Bank and the IMF are the wrong targets for protesters' action if only because of the mechanics of their relationships with developing countries. The IMF and the World Bank are not, as they have been portrayed, "Big Brother" organizations that impose their will on small, defenseless nations. Rather, they are voluntary associations in which those nations are frequently members. Among other things, they provide loans to countries that are in debt or in need of domestic development in exchange for compliance with the organization's standards of economic health and the use of loan money. Developing nations are the customers and the IMF and World Bank are the suppliers of financial aid.

What activists see as the problem with the bank and the IMF, of course, is that they are the only game in town. Though involvement with each is voluntary, they say, developing nations have no real choice in the matter. To enjoy the perks of membership, a nation must submit to IMF and World Bank policies. These policies, activists argue, adversely affect labor and the environment. Therefore, the IMF and the World Bank must go.

But what will take their place? In econo-speak, protesters are attacking the supply side of the relationship when they should be attacking the demand side. First, it is safe to say that the IMF and World Bank are not simply going to dissolve over a few thousand angry Americans in turtle suits and ninja costumes. Second, if developing nations do not receive the aid they need to remain solvent and functional from these international organizations, from whom will they receive it? Once you have answered that question, you have solved the problem of purported IMF and World Bank oppression of struggling nations.

Like the U.S. legislature, the IMF and the World Bank are not things to be intimidated or crushed — they are institutions to be lobbied. Suggest alternative policies. Develop grassroots support for those policies among member nations of the IMF. Use your privileged position as American citizens to put pressure on the World Bank — in which the United States is a dominant presence — to adopt those policies.

Political change, especially on the scale of behemoth international organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank, requires extraordinary commitment from activists. It is easy to fly to Washington for the weekend and foment some chaos. It is not so easy to attack problems in detail, to raise the financial and human capital to analyze them or to find solutions and put those solutions into practice. Unfortunately, the not-so-easy route is the one that will probably be most effective in dealing with the World Bank and the IMF. What does it say about us as Americans if we are too cowardly, lazy or shortsighted to take that route? Melissa Waage is a politics major from Johnson City, Tenn. She can be reached at mrwaage@princeton.edu.