The people of Greece, after a long period of relaxing nirvana, suddenly entered into a phase of mass hysteria that divided them into two camps: those who want to stay in the European Union and the Eurozone at any cost and those who have declared war against Greece’s European partners and fervently support a Grexit and the return to the drachma.
At the peak of this animation, the Speaker of the House (President of the Parliament) Ms. Zoe Konstantopoulou, who rejected as unacceptable the annual report submitted by the head of the Central Bank, Yiannis Stournaras (also Member of the Board of the European Central Bank), established a Parliamentary Committee on Transparency, which concluded that Greece owes nothing to its creditors and that, on the contrary, it should be receiving several billion Euros. And, to cover the “democratic deficit” generated by her predecessors, she banned police officers of the anti-terrorist squad protecting the Parliament to use… the toilets in the underground of the Parliament building.
Greece is the country that, besides democracy, also invented civil war. The first in history was the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). It was the war of (communist) Sparta against (democratic) Athens. It lasted 27 years, unfolded in three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa) and all fighting parties were speaking Greek. By the way, the Athenian Democracy, not the Spartan communists, lost. Other civil wars followed since then.
Under these circumstances, Greek society is, once again, close to a new civil war, which is likely to have similarities to the most recent one (1946-1949).
As all wars always have a winner and a loser, this was also the case of the 1946 Greek civil war. The loser was Greece. At the time all of Western Europe was marching at full speed towards development and growth, Greece moved a half-century backwards. The winners were the western allies. Indeed, after the civil war Greece expatriated to the Soviet Union the hard-core of the Greek communist party, the most belligerent and numerous in Europe, which if it had remained in Western Europe, would have influenced the political course of continent.
The outcome of the civil war was more or less known before it began. In October 1944 in Moscow, in a secret agreement between Churchill and Stalin, Greece was arbitrated 90% to Great Britain and the USA and 10% to Russia. The civil war of 1946, which destroyed Greece, served only the interests of Western Europeans to get rid of the Greek communists.
Today
The SYRIZA government of Greece, ceteris paribus, constitutes for Europe a threat similar to that of the Greek Communists after WWII.
The European Union and the United States of America are both determined to force the present SYRIZA/ANEL government of Greece under Alexis Tsipras out of power.
The Europeans, for practical reasons, consider SYRIZA the lighthouse for all similar neo-communist movements in Europe. Thus Europeans want it down so as to avoid contagion in their own countries. Americans want it down for reasons of principle.
The Greek government passed a law, which would have potentially released a convicted terrorist who killed American diplomats and that was its end as on matters of principle the USA does not forget and does not forgive. On top of this, to further irritate Europeans and Americans, Alexis Tsipras last week signed a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow for the construction of the Turkish Stream pipeline, without the presence of Turkey. The venture will be entirely financed by the Russians and it is highly likely that it will never materialise.
SYRIZA, however, has wide popular support, which is professionally sustained by the newly re-opened state TV network ERT that is acting as the major propaganda tool for the ruling party. To this effect, the Euro-American strategy is likely to be targeted to keep Greece in the European Union and the Eurozone so to avoid any possible turbulence in the economies of Europe and the world and at the same time drive SYRIZA out of power.
The next step would be to sustain a grand coalition government of all pro-Europe parties excluding the Leftist (neo-communist) platform of SYRIZA, the far-right Chrysi Avgi party and the Communist Party proper, and reach a pragmatic deal. The basics of such a deal could be a series of deep structural reforms for Greece, which would secure growth and development with a parallel substantial reduction of the Greek foreign debt to realistic levels.
In the Meantime
The present Greek government and the Eurogroup will eventually sign a sort of revolving interim agreement in the coming days, which will secure payments only for the foreign debt of Greece (for Greece to remain in the Euro without defaulting) and will leave Greece on its own to sort out its domestic problems. This tactic, sooner or later will drive the SYRIZA government out of power without, however excluding social turmoil which could go as far as reaching the dimensions of a civil war.
As to the possibility of a unilateral withdrawal of Greece from the European Union and the Eurozone, at this moment, should be ruled out despite the threats of the Greek government. No Greek politician, starting from the President of the Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, is willing to historically associate himself with the national catastrophe that will be certainly concluded with a spectacular court-martial trial, similar to the Trial of the Six in which senior members of the overthrown administration were tried for high treason, convicted, and executed on 15 November 1922.
http://www.neurope.eu/article/greece-and-the-eu-close-to-a-revolving-interim-deal/