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In his book The Millennium Myth, N.T. Wright acknowledges that debt forgiveness willy nilly is not the way to go.

“Some will warn [like DW] that debt cancellation without political change will be a gift to the tyrants and bullies, not to the poor and weak. Steps will have to be taken to make sure that unpayable debts never build up again, and that cancellation benefits the people it is designed to, rather than giving already rich tyrants a further free ride. But the fact that care has to be taken is not a good reason for doing nothing. It is easy to forget that the West German economic renaissance after the Second World War was directly caused by the Allies giving West Germany massive debt relief, allowing that country to recover and to attract new investment. That is exactly what is needed in Rwanda, Mozambique, Honduras, and many, many other countries” (p. 106).

This means that he acknowledges the point I have been making, at least in the abstract. But there are still a couple ground level issues. The devil, as always, is in the details.

First, consider that pregnant phrase — “steps will have to be taken to make sure.” When we in the West are done calculating all the reasons why these problems tend to occur in these countries, the “steps” we will find ourselves having to take will be the steps leading up to the front door of the colonial governor’s mansion. If we don’t take those steps, all debt forgiveness will do is give the whole nation a terrible ride, round two. And if we do take those steps to prevent future economic chaos, we will discover that a lot more is involved than keeping especially horrendous “dictators” out. Which leads to the second point.

The second point is this: note the implicit assumption that Wright makes. He believes that nations like post-war Germany and contemporary Rwanda are simply interchangeable. He believes that we can actually do the same thing to both nations. But we cannot — their cultures and histories are radically different, and the assumptions about economic life are consequently different. You cannot plant the same seed in two radically different climates and expect to get the same result. Kudzu doesn’t grow here in Idaho, and it does in Alabama.

In making this argument, let me emphasize that I am talking about the period of reconstruction for Germany after the war. I am not factoring in the current desire of European socialists to model their economic future on Rwandan principles. With that caveat, picture two very wealthy men — one a German in 1948 and the other a Rwandan in 2008. If these men wanted to keep their money safe from predatory confiscation, was it possible for them to park it, invest it, in their own country? The answer was yes for the German, and is no for the Rwandan. And as long as the answer is no for any country, native capital will always want to flee and that nation will remain in grinding poverty. As soon as someone can become wealthy and remain there, the money will start to stay also and the nation will start to emerge from poverty. So the “steps” we would have to take, if we assumed the responsibility to take them, would have to include bringing a dose of “Thatcherism” in. But Wright has elsewhere denounced Thatcherism as “wicked,” which means that these nations are beyond help. And until people like N.T. Wright learn some of the basics of economics, these poor people will remain beyond help.