3-MIN READ3-MINAnthony RowleyPublished: 4:30pm, 11 Apr 2026Can the collective wisdom or clout of the almost 200 countries that make up the membership of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) prevail against the United States and Israel, whose rash actions of declaring war on Iran have effectively declared economic war on the whole world?We may get the answers to this critical question when the two so-called Bretton Woods institutions begin their annual meetings in Washington on April 13. The week-long gatherings provide an opportunity for rational discussion and maybe even collective action amid the Middle East crisis.To be clear, neither the World Bank nor the IMF can replace the United Nations, though they were founded originally under the aegis of the institution. Their job is to provide economic policy advice and development finance rather than to broker settlements between warring powers.
However, by providing an umbrella at their annual meetings for peer-to-peer or leader-to-leader dialogue among nations with very different polities and cultures, they do offer an opportunity for very diverse nations to better appreciate the consequences of their unilateral actions on the broader global economy.
Running the world is a job for consensus-building, and while we do not yet have anything approaching world governance, the fact is that we are “all in it together” when it comes to global interdependence. The foreign policies of major powers reverberate internationally and should not be undertaken unilaterally.
This has perhaps never been so apparent, as the impact of the US-Israel war on Iran becomes clearer every day, despite an announced ceasefire. From a geopolitical, economic, financial and logistical standpoint, their combined assault looks more like the work of bungling amateurs than competent professionals.
