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 Greece’s payment to
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) came and went, Greece didn’t 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, it’s really not necessary if
you look at the revealed preferences of those whom the Syriza government
is polite and diplomatic enough to call its European partners. Take
partner-in-chief German Chancellor Angela Merkel: If there’s one thing
she doesn’t want to be remembered as, it’s the politician who destroyed
the eurozone.
Of course, we don’t know if a Greek exit would do that, but there’s 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 won’t 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
Obama’s 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. Bush’s 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
Greece’s 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.
Europe is the United States’ most important ally in the world, and
Washington doesn’t want to lose even a small piece of it, even little
Greece. Everybody knows that if Greece leaves the euro and needs to
borrow hard currency for its balance of payments, it will get some from
Russia and maybe even China. Greece could leave NATO. Greece could
participate in Russia’s proposed gas pipeline project, which would make
Europe more dependent on Russia — something that American officials
warned against, drawing a sharp rebuke from Greece’s energy minister,
who rightfully told them it was none of their business.
It would be nice to think that the worst features of U.S. foreign
policy have changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but they
have not. The Cold War never really ended,
at least insofar as the U.S. is still a global empire and wants every
government to put Washington’s interests ahead of those expressed by its
own voters. The current hostilities with Russia add a sense of déjà vu,
but they are mainly an added excuse for what would be U.S. policy in
any case.
Source: Al Jazeera