There are a lot of questions humankind is searching an answer to for many years, but still with no results. “How come someone is rich and someone is poor?” is one of them. There can be a general explanation for this, when it comes to people – someone works harder, others have a better background, some simply were in the right place at the right time. It is way harder to explain why some countries are wealthier than others. But the scheme of interaction between them is very similar to how rich and poor people interact. Loaning money is part and parcel of these relations.
Generally speaking, wealth plays the role of world judge nowadays: it determines the strongest, correlates relations between two parties; it became the factor of natural selection, like physical power was centuries ago.
Forgiving the debts will totally dismiss that factor and interfere in the natural state of things. What can one offer to affect somebody’s position in a society, or, on a global scale, country’s position in the world, instead of money? There were attempts to find the way to change money’s importance, but we all know they failed – history is the fairest judge.
Of course, for less lucky market payers there always were and will be so to say “discount programs” – credits on favorable terms like lower interest rates, or longer payback periods. Actually, terms become more and more preferential, as the world turns to be more democratic.
With all that said, I think total dismissing of the debts that poor countries owe to rich nations will ruin the normal state of things and natural selection that shows us who is stronger.