Mustela nivalis

Whatever else one might say about Marxists, there’s one thing they ain’t, and that’s stupid – they are clever in a streetwise sort of way. By calling a referendum at this stage, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has suddenly won the initiative back, or at least as much as he possibly could for Greece. In the last five years, Greece was at the mercy of its creditors. It still is, but now, after the referendum, they, the creditors, cannot do anything without a massive loss of PR face. Not to mention risking actual material/financial loss.

What we saw last week was basically a declaration of war. Tsipras declared war on his creditors and called for a plebiscite to have it confirmed. Of course the Greek government won’t be giving its armed forces any marching orders. Greece is too small to be a serious threat to anything larger than Cyprus. However, as a country, not coughing up money you owe to foreigners is a kind of war declaration. By doing what he did, Tsipras reminds me of something Churchill said about Hitler once (before the war, I think):

“One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.”

The Greeks are now, belatedly, and only partly, trying to do what Iceland did in 2008: default on the foreign creditors. Iceland had an easier time doing this because a) they were not in the EU (although at the time still had ambitions to join), thus they had their own currency which they devalued, b), they don’t have a long-term history of devaluations, economic turmoil and military dictatorship, which the Greeks do and from which they had hoped to be saved once they joined the EU and the euro. So stiffing foreign creditors, nationalising banks and throwing bankers into prison was the natural thing to do for the Vikings’ descendants – but not for the Greeks.

Because the Icelanders acted swiftly, they are now basically out of the woods (nationalising the banks was not the right, libertarian thing to do, but that’s a different story). Because the Greeks were tied into the EU and euro, acting like the Nordic country seemed unthinkable. However, five years and a lot of impoverishment later it has finally sunk in, and so the Greek Marxists have learnt from the Iceland episode that, tankwise and militarily, Brussels is not Moscow. They learnt that they can tell the creditors to go and procreate somewhere else, and not suffer any worse consequenses than they already are and will anyway. All the Greeks needed to do was to vote someone into office with few if any personal links to the Brussels cabal. Who would consequently have the audacity to play Leonidas to the (so perceived) EU “Persians”.

Now, after the referendum, Tsipras has the EU/IMF/ECB-Troika by the balls. As “Bionic Mosquito” wrote yesterday on LRC: “If Eurozone leaders back down, expect similar popular revolts in other member states.  Alternatively, if they kick Greece out of the club, expect markets to force the issue toward the next sickly patient.”

So the Eurozone leaders are going to do neither. I expect at some point the Greek branch of the ECB will simply re-calibrate its printing machines and, before the paper runs out, start printing crisp new drachmas. Even then the Eurozone ruling class will still not acknowledge what is happening – a de facto secession from the euro zone. They will simply call it an “illegal parallel currency” or some such thing and then … do nothing. Because that is all they now can do to “minimise” the damage to their overarching project, the United States of Europe. All they can do now is slow down the disintegration, by doing nothing. They’ve done all the deck chair shuffling they possibly could. The compliant media will allow them to continue the waiting game for as long as they possibly can. Even the Greeks might play along, by calling the new money not drachmas but “temporary emergency notes” or something like that.

It’s not the first time I’ve said this, and I’m certainly not the only one to say this, but it bears repeating: We are seeing a mirror image, in slow motion, of the collapse of the Soviet Union 25 years ago. Slower mainly because Keynesianism is a softer version of the economic madness commonly known as socialism. But still, note the similarities: While “events” unfold, the nomenclature become increasingly ossified, literally petrified. All around the empire new parties are forming that all want either independence or at least radical reforms. Often, they want even more socialism/Keynesianism, or a different flavour, than what they are already getting – that too, was seen a quarter century ago. And, another parallel: whether they want more or less socialism, these “eurosceptical” parties are being viciously opposed by their local branches of the ruling class. Unless, like in Greece, they become part of it.

Yet another parallel development is that more or less serious reform attempts can be quickly overtaken by said “events”. Remember the tragicomical scene a couple of weeks ago when David Cameron in an EU summit meeting tried to make the case for reform of the EU prior to “his” referendum? The others at the table, totally preoccupied by Greece, were probably only thinking “Why doesn’t he STFU? What’s he on about anyway? Can’t he see there’s a war on?” I wonder: will people in the UK in two years time still feel the need for a referendum?

In the pre-Gorbachev Soviet empire, a problem like Greece today would have been solved with tanks. The reasons that has not happened and is unlikely to happen are that a), the EU has about as many divisions as the Pope and b), the Mediterranean migration wave, plus ISIS and an increasingly Islamic Turkey mean the Europeans need the Greeks firmly on their side militarily, if not financially.

Speaking of which, we’re hearing precious little from our Dear Leader in Washington regarding the Euro/Greek crisis. I guess they’ve figured out over there that they best keep quiet (or only non-committal – Obama rang Tsipras and other EU leaders this afternoon, I heard, only to tell them that he hoped for a swift solution, but realising that it would be “complicated”). There is a strong anti-US streak in many if not all eurosceptic movements. The Greeks in particular have long been averse to America. And they have figured out that “Brussels” is in cahoots with “Washington”. It is in the US interest to keep the euro zone ticking over, thus to keep Greece inside. But, being good Keynesians, they are as clueless as the eurocrats as to how to accomplish this. As clueless, that is, as Gorbachev was about how to keep the Soviet Union together.