Germany is bluffing on Greece
By Mark Weisbrot
Source: Aljazeera America
June 12, 2015
You can ignore all the
talk of a Grexit, the bluff and bluster of right-wing German ideologues such as Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble who would celebrate it, and repetitive, stubbornly dire warnings that time is running out. Did you notice that the much-hyped June 5 deadline for the Greeces payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came and went, Greece didnt pay and nobody fell off a cliff? Trust me, this is not a cliffhanger.
Although there have been numerous
references to game theory in the ongoing commentary, its really not necessary if you look at the revealed preferences of those who the Syriza government is polite and diplomatic enough to call its European partners. Take partner-in-chief German Chancellor Angela Merkel: If theres one thing she doesnt want to be remembered as, its the politician who destroyed the eurozone.
Of course, we dont know if a Greek exit would do that, but theres a chance that it could. Even if the European Central Bank would be able to contain the resulting financial crisis, it is possible that Greece would, after an initial shock, ultimately do much better outside the euro, which might convince others to
want to leave. Whatever the probability of that scenario, Merkel is, like most successful politicians, a risk-averse creature who wont roll those dice.
And there is an elephant in the room that she is not going to ignore: the United States. There are scattered press reports that Barack Obamas administration has put pressure on Merkel to reach an agreement with Greece, but the importance of that has been vastly understated. Unless it is a request that could get a German government voted out of office such as George W. Bushs bid for support of his invasion of Iraq in 2003 something that is strategically important to Washington is extremely likely to find agreement in Berlin. And in this case, Merkel and Obama are basically on the same page.
The politics of empire are much more important than any economic concerns here. For the same reasons that the United States intervened in Greeces civil war (1946 to 49) and supported the brutal military dictatorship (1967 to 74) with all the murder, torture and repression that these involved Washington does not want to have an independent government in Greece.
Full article:
https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/germany-is-bluffing-on-greece/