[Peace-discuss] Fwd: "Rising Greek Political Star, Foe of Austerity, Puts Europe on Edge"?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
> Date: May 19, 2012 7:52:06 AM CDT
>
> (In this article the gray lady advises its ruling class readers that  
> Syriza is no threat to capitalist property relations.)
>
> NY Times May 18, 2012
> Rising Greek Political Star, Foe of Austerity, Puts Europe on Edge
> By RACHEL DONADIO and LIZ ALDERMAN
>
> ATHENS — At 37, and looking not a bit his years, Alexis Tsipras is  
> clearly enjoying his moment. He vaulted to prominence less than two  
> weeks ago, when his previously obscure left-wing party placed second  
> in national elections with the promise of repudiating the loan  
> agreement Greece’s previous leaders signed in February.
>
> Since then, he has engaged in a high-stakes game of chicken with  
> Europe’s leaders. While they have scrambled to put together  
> contingency plans in case Greece exits the euro zone, Mr. Tsipras  
> has calmly stated his case and let the rest of Europe sweat about  
> the possibly disastrous ramifications if it does.
>
> “It’s true,” he said Friday, with a smile and a glint in his eye,  
> during an interview in his small office in the Greek Parliament. “I  
> like to play poker.”
>
> While Mr. Tsipras clearly has much of Europe on the run, he hardly  
> seems to be breaking a sweat. “Our goal isn’t to blackmail or to  
> terrorize, our goal is to shake them,” Mr. Tsipras said coolly of  
> the foreign lenders whose austerity-for-loans deal he wants upended.
>
> “We want to convince them,” he said. “They need to change the  
> policies in Greece and change the policies in Europe, otherwise  
> Europe will be at very large risk.”
>
> In Mr. Tsipras’s view — which neatly dovetails with the rising anti- 
> austerity tide across Europe — Greece’s problem is a European  
> problem that needs a European solution. He insisted that he wants  
> Greece to stay in the euro, just not under the terms of its current  
> bailout. “The euro zone is a chain with 17 links,” he said,  
> referring to its members. “Greece is one of these links. If one of  
> these links breaks, the link is destroyed, but the chain falls  
> apart, too.”
>
> Poker references aside, Mr. Tsipras insisted that it was really the  
> financial markets driving much of the crisis, not him or Greece.
>
> “They don’t have any moral scruples, and if they push Greece out,  
> they’ll just move on to the next country,” he said. The next  
> countries in the firing line, he added, happen to be Italy and Spain  
> — both too big to fail.
>
> While other political parties in Greece are now also calling to  
> renegotiate the loan deal, it is Mr. Tsipras, an untested leftist  
> who could well become Greece’s next prime minister in elections on  
> June 17, who has positioned himself in a showdown with Greece’s  
> lenders.
>
> In the interview, he said he would not veer from pledges to  
> repudiate terms of Greece’s bailout that forced wrenching hardship  
> on average Greeks, a stance that may lead Greece’s lenders to  
> withhold further aid and set off a default.
>
> But as far as he is concerned, negotiations over Greece’s debt deal  
> “have already begun,” he said, largely because European leaders are  
> already showing signs of being more lenient on austerity. “The red  
> lines from before no longer apply,” he said.
>
> But while Mr. Tsipras has sometimes been portrayed in the European  
> news media as a wild-eyed radical — he even seems at times to  
> delight in that caricature — he is a cool strategist playing a game  
> of brinkmanship with the rest of Europe, and particularly Chancellor  
> Angela Merkel of Germany. In the past, German and other European  
> leaders have made last-minute maneuvers to keep Greece in the euro,  
> precisely because of fears that an exit would carry too high a cost,  
> from bank collapses across Europe to destabilization of the global  
> financial system.
>
> Mr. Tsipras seems to be betting that they will blink again, but  
> whether they will is far from clear.
>
> Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform in  
> London, said, “The Europeans may blink, but this time they might not  
> blink enough.” He said that European leaders might propose a “mini- 
> Marshall Plan” to stoke growth in Greece, but that what was needed  
> were political changes to promote closer bonds among euro zone  
> countries. “People are fed up,” Mr. Tilford added. “They would  
> prefer that Greece stay within the euro zone, but they won’t take  
> the political steps to make Greek membership sustainable.”
>
> Indeed, on Friday, Ms. Merkel may have upped the ante even further,  
> suggesting to the Greek president, Karolos Papoulias, that Greece  
> ponder holding a referendum, in parallel with general elections in  
> June, so Greek voters are clear what is at stake, the Greek  
> government spokesman said. (Though a Merkel spokesman denied the  
> remark, Mr. Tsipras released a statement later Friday accusing Ms.  
> Merkel of treating Greece like a “protectorate.”)
>
> In some ways, Mr. Tsipras’s arguments are not so different from  
> those of some of the leaders gathered at the Group of 8 summit at  
> Camp David on Friday. As growth has slowed, an anti-austerity  
> backlash has swept Europe, forcing Ms. Merkel to soften her stance.  
> Leaders, especially President François Hollande of France, were  
> expected to press Ms. Merkel at the meeting to give Europe more  
> breathing room for growth.
>
> Mr. Tsipras agreed. “The message we’re giving to the G-8 is that we  
> have to press Mrs. Merkel to follow the example of America, where  
> the debt crisis wasn’t tackled with austerity measures but with an  
> expansionist approach,” he said.
>
> He added that Europe needed a more federal system, like the United  
> States. He likened Greece to debt-ridden California, only that the  
> United States would never allow California to exit, and has the  
> federal structures to keep the union together.
>
> Mr. Tsipras’s strategy of calling Europe’s bluff has been a winner  
> at home as well. Some polls place his Syriza party first and others  
> second in the campaigning for a second round of elections, which  
> were called after he and other political leaders failed to form a  
> government after May 6 elections.
>
> An engineer by training, Mr. Tsipras said he had also studied  
> economics and learned in the trenches with his “comrades” on the  
> economic committee of Synaspismos, a proto-Communist strain within  
> Syriza in which he came of age.
>
> Lean, affable, yet somewhat inscrutable, Mr. Tsipras says he does  
> not like wearing ties because they remind him of his days in the  
> navy, where he did his mandatory military service. In recent  
> speeches, he has said that the “terrorists” in suits and ties who  
> are deciding Greece’s fate are worse than the anarchists in hoods.  
> Some compare him to Andreas Papandreou, the founder of the Socialist  
> Party and a gifted populist.
>
> Mr. Tsipras may be riding the tide of anti-austerity, but it remains  
> to be seen if he has what it takes to steer the ship. Pressed to  
> present an alternative to the current loan agreement — or his plans  
> for restoring Greece to growth while keeping it in the euro zone —  
> he offered few, if any, specifics.
>
> His party seeks a three-year suspension of loan payments until the  
> Greek economy can recover, a reversal of the terms of the loan  
> agreement that call for slashing wages, scaling back public  
> employees and undoing collective bargaining agreements. It has also  
> called for nationalizing banks in order to control their lending  
> policies as part of a recapitalization now under way as part of the  
> debt deal.
>
> Critics say that under the guise of change, Syriza may offer little  
> more than the status quo — or more state control in a country with a  
> dysfunctional state. Indeed, business owners are particularly  
> worried that Syriza’s plans for more state control would stifle  
> growth further, transforming Greece into a kind of Bulgaria.
>
> Mr. Tsipras said: “The healthy businesses here have nothing to fear  
> from a government that’s going to try to stop this poison. Healthy  
> businesses understand that austerity curbs consumption.”
>
> Although he conceded that the Greek state had “significant  
> dysfunctionalities and a need for deep structural changes,” he did  
> not offer specifics beyond faulting the Socialists and center-right  
> New Democracy for building up a jobs-for-votes system that helped  
> Greece’s public debt balloon.
>
> Instead, he kept repeating the mantra that he hoped would help him  
> consolidate power in just over a month, in the form of a stark  
> warning to Greece’s European partners: Pushing Greece out would be  
> “cutting the branch that we’re all sitting on.”
>
> Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting.
>
> ________________________________________________

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