VIEWPOINTS : DIGGING OUT OF DEBT : The U.S. is hoping that Third World countries pay us so we can pay Japan and Germany.

When the debts of the less developed countries rose to the top of the world agenda in the summer of 1982, the United States argued that if these nations would adopt sensible economic policies such as our own, they would be able to pay what they owed.

Oh, they might need a few more loans as part of their morning after, but if they got up earlier and worked harder, sincerely worshiped at the shrine of The Market and ungrudgingly accepted its assigned penance of austerity, all would soon be well.

As recently as last summer’s economic summit, former President Ronald Reagan and then-Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III brushed aside Japanese and French suggestions that something be done to reduce the burden that poor people in poor countries had to carry so their governments could make payments in dollars to rich banks in rich countries.

But when the leaders of the free world met last weekend in Paris with debt as a centerpiece topic, the United States urged them all to lean on their banks to forgive a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars in loans improvidently made to LDCs and to their enterprises in the 1970s and early 1980s.

President Bush and Treasury Secretary Nicholas F. Brady and their advisers believe that the American position has changed because a careful policy review indicated that the debtors were sinking rather than swimming and needed a life preserver.

Amused observers outside the United States, however, note an obvious obeisance to the rule that where you stand depends on where you sit. When Americans were the world’s biggest creditors, we thought everybody ought to pay up. Now that we are the world’s biggest debtors, we find virtue in debt reduction.

Third World debt is a crisis not because the borrowers can’t pay, which was predicted for a long, long time. If Brazil, Mexico and Argentina owed West Germany, Japan and Switzerland, the debt dilemma would become a mere problem, easily solved. What makes it so difficult is that they owe us, and we in turn owe West Germany and Japan and Switzerland. These Latin debts are our assets, and to the extent that we write them off, our own net international indebtedness goes up.

The situation that had developed before this year was rather like the unhappy triangle of the 1920s, when the French and the British had to demand payment of German war reparations because the United States was insisting that they repay their war loans. Among the results was hyper-inflation in Germany that now looks to be replicated in Argentina and Brazil.

Once it became generally understood that the Germans simply couldn’t do what they had agreed to do, various Dawes Plans and Young Plans and the like were invented to maintain the pretense that the debts were being both serviced and reduced. The Brady Plan announced March 10 fits into this grand tradition. It is like its predecessors, too, in its inadequacy.

The attractiveness of debt reduction for the United States is that it’s a way to make others bear the costs. Calling for debt reduction, we call also for help from the Japanese and the Germans, for contributions to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that will guarantee the value of the Latin debt that survives the rather small reductions now contemplated.

The markets have understood that debt reduction Brady-style would be good for American banks and would not impair the real American net position with the rest of the world. Stocks of money center banks that have heavy Latin exposure have been star performers for the past four months, and the Treasury has had to worry that our high interest rates make the dollar too buoyant, not that our debt weighs it down.

However motivated, American acceptance of the need for debt reduction represents a small step toward sanity. Just about every debt-issuing agency in this hemisphere, public or private, has put out too much of the stuff. Adding to their total debt, which was the U.S. recommendation until recently, was certainly not going to make the Latin countries more credit-worthy. New money, moreover, helps only for this year and makes things tougher next year, while debt reduction means less interest to pay forever.

But we’re still only partway to reality, because Americans still think that what Washington decides will determine what happens. And the truth is that the time for Baker Plans and Brady Plans has passed.

Slaying the debt dragon now requires a Miyazawa Plan or a Poehl Plan or a Camdessus Plan. We can suggest and influence and ultimately, if we dig in our heels, forbid. But the cup of decision making in these areas has passed from our lips. If we can’t afford to play the game, we can’t insist on making the rules.