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Wolfowitz also brings to the World Bank long and distinguished experience both in international affairs, including in the developing world, and as an academic at Yale and Johns Hopkins universities. He is an effective and convincing communicator, and his time at the Pentagon has given him experience of managing a bureaucracy as sprawling and complex as the bank, with its 10,000 staff.

His role in the Iraq war, where he overestimated the enthusiasm with which Iraqis would greet an American overthrow of Saddam Hussein and underestimated the effort required for post-war reconstruction, has raised some doubts over Wolfowitz’s judgment. But these are hardly a fatal indictment.

What is clear is that he will need to draw on every ounce of talent to make his tenure at the Bank a success.

The outgoing World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, is a figure of immense charisma, energy, and ambition. Yet after a term of office stretching for a decade, these undoubted abilities have produced a record which most informed observers regard as mixed.

Wolfowitz will inherit a vast institution dogged by a bloated cost base and a confused mission which lacks the focus of firm priorities and a clear vision of how to achieve them. Yet the role of the World Bank and its £10 billion annual budget for delivering assistance to poor nations has never been more important — or under greater scrutiny.

In his fascinating study of Wolfensohn’s tenure, The World’s Banker, Sebastian Mallaby spells out the present incumbent’s achievements.

Wolfensohn put the World Bank in the forefront of championing debt relief for the poorest countries and in stepping up efforts against corruption in the Third World — a plague which negates much of the effort to eradicate poverty. He also implemented a more decentralised management regime which has helped to ameliorate the Bank’s deep-rooted problems in this area.

But Wolfowitz will also inherit a Bank riven by conflicting objectives and tasks imposed on it by the rich countries of the Group of Seven economies and their representatives on its board; by the US Administration and Congress, the institution’s chief paymasters; and by the NGOs.

A key challenge for the new man at the helm will be to curb the disruptive role of some of the NGOs. Having been brought into the fold by Wolfensohn, these well-intentioned campaigners have bogged down the Bank as it has sought to satisfy too many contradictory agendas at once.

The central challenge of Wolfowitz’s presidency will be to bring discipline, coherence and focus to the Bank’s work. He will need to cut through the prattling of development theorists to impose practical priorities and lay down a codified framework for how they will be delivered — and when. And he could do worse than to seek efficiency savings to channel resources away from penpushing and into poverty relief.

Inevitably, Wolfowitz will also need to overcome perceptions that he has been installed to act as an instrument of the Bush Administration. But while this may be an initial handicap, his clout in the White House can only help to ensure that the Bank commands vital support from the Administration. A consensus is emerging that a powerful means for Wolfowitz to win hearts and minds would be for him to propose reform of the selection process by which the US largely dictates who should hold his new post. That would be a potent symbol — and a good first move.

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