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The Roskill Lecture, February 2012

On Wednesday 22 February, Mr Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group, visited Churchill College to give the fourteenth Roskill Lecture, on "Modernizing Multilateralism: Learning from Military History". Watch the lecture here.

Robert Zoellick giving the 2012 Roskill Lecture. Image courtesy of Graham Wiltshire.

Mr Zoellick became the 11th president of the World Bank Group on July 1, 2007. Prior to joining the bank, Mr Zoellick served as Vice Chairman, International of the Goldman Sachs Group. From 1985-1993, Mr Zoellick served at the Treasury and State Departments, and he served in President Bush’s Cabinet as the 13th U.S. Trade Representative from 2001 to 2005 and as Deputy Secretary of State from 2005 to 2006.

He said, "As the international economy struggles to recover from the greatest blows since the 1930s, developing countries are compensating for the stumbling industrialized world. Over the past five years, developing countries have provided two-thirds of global growth.

"As the world moves toward multiple poles of growth, multilateral institutions will need to play a role in connecting developed and developing countries to work cooperatively. The solution is not to abandon multilateral institutions, with all their imperfections. The duty of leadership is to 'modernize multilateralism' for vastly different circumstances."

See Varsity magazine for a report on the lecture. The complete text of the lecture can be found at the World Bank.