By Kostas Vaxevanis
The creditors endanger European stability, the prestige of the European Union, their political future and over a trillion euros to not subside in the Greek proposal, costing several million euros more than what they would really want? They put at risk all that just to bring Greeks to senses? Is that at stake? To teach the bloody-Greeks a lesson? Is there anyone who still believes that for real?
The game at this moment (to use the expression of Donald Tusk) is no solution and no agreement that would conceal solution. What happens is the decision to be done with SYRIZA in power, this bad example in Europe that can become threatening and launch developments that they do not want. That can create political storm in the South and doubts about what’s all about this Europe that is manufactured with so much diligence by banks and media groups.
What matters in not whether SYRIZA has the power or the will to rebut the European pattern they have created, but the likelihood of what happened with SYRIZA will occur elsewhere, meaning that a party that is a child of wrath and dispute will come to power.
From the first moment SYRIZA came to power, they have no solution in their minds. He who wants a real solution does not provoke a government that is allergic to unfair steps, requiring for milk and bread to be taxed by increasing VAT but not the casinos and the slot-machines. He does not propose the exemption of large income taxes as opposed to the shameful measures proposed for the majority of citizens. He who wants to provoke does that.
What is important is also the way the creditors do that. They let a negotiation evolve which initially gives hope for a positive development, and then they pull the rug underneath the feet of whatever hope has emerged, leaving the Greek side along with the Greek people hanging over the void, by the emptiness of the outcome.
They do not negotiate for something they believe. They use whatever psychological means to exhaust the Greek side in order to make it unreliable and weak. They let a window of hope appear, they lead Alexis Trispras and the negotiating group away from their absurdity, they show intent to find a common ground for understanding so no one loses, and when this hope is transferred to Greece by leaks and press reports, they eliminate it by showing a completely different face. They use leaks and confusion instead of the sincere intention and solution.
No, this is not a negotiation, it is a plan taken out of the drawers of some psychologists of the shock doctrine. They create two eventualities. Either the government to collapse as powerless to handle the situation and even the personalities of the players-opponents to be deconstructed, or to be forced to sign a painful agreement that will de facto lead to it’s fall, after the people’s rage, sooner or later.
SYRIZA made a big mistake before the elections that carried on during the negotiating process. Faced with the need to eliminate the accusation of anti-Europeanism that systematically and in advance the creditors and the domestic troika had ascribed to him, he created an axiomatic pro-Europeanism that ultimately accommodated his apology that he is with Europe «at all costs». This was not correct either in political or, much more, in negotiating terms. It was not correct in political terms because SYRIZA has no reason to bear with a Europe that has nothing to do with the Europe that they advertise but they have handed it over to banks and elites. Instead he wants to change it. It was not correct in negotiating terms because it weakened the negotiating power, stating to the opponents that they may use any means since Greece will put up with it in order to remain in Europe.
This way they maximized the effectiveness of the creditors as well as the fear of the Greeks who believed that every possibility, which according to the media placed Greece outside the Eurozone, was a bad version.
SYRIZA sawed off the branch on which he sat, producing an axiomatic effect for a rule that more than any other had to be proven first. Namely that Europe and the creditors were good. Thus entrapping himself in a European apology while probably the best option was the European dispute. Especially if he wanted the outcome to be staying in Europe.
So we got to the point that the creditors play the final card to be done with SYRIZA, or rather with Tsipras, who is the political figure which will be either tamed or pushed in the gap that they diligently created before him. What will he decide?
Alexis Tsipras must make the decision to stop this game, even if he believes that he fights the battle as he should fight it. This battle is molded in a specific framework and cannot break the shell of the artificial dilemmas that have been created. He must implement what he mainly believes, that he came from the people for the sole purpose to serve the people. This is required both by his political morality and the proper tactics. To remove the rug before they pull it underneath his feet. Before they deconstruct him and make him appear as an ineffective, who by his ineffectiveness justifies those who treacherously passed by and did not make it.
He must return to Greece and inform the people about what has happened in the background. About the pressures, the obstacles to trip, the weird retractions and the intentions he is facing for so many months. It is required that he tells everything with honesty. He must describe what Europe is the one he met, and ask the people that support him if they want it. This is not only democratic substance but also effective tactic. Transferring the game from the negotiating tactics and the accounting traps into the field of truth, real economy and politics is the best solution.
Alexis Tsipras must come face to face with two things. First that the goal is the same and not some agreement. And second that he does not apologize to Schäuble, but to History.
