Joshka Fischer writes: One can only feel sorry for Greece. For more than five years, the “troika” (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) has made it the object of a failed experiment with austerity that has exacerbated the country’s economic crisis. And now Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government seems hell-bent on plunging Greece into the abyss.
It never had to be this way. By the time Tsipras’s leftist Syriza party came to power in January, a new, more growth-oriented compromise had become possible. Even hardcore German proponents of austerity – and certainly Chancellor Angela Merkel – had begun to reconsider their position, owing to their policy prescriptions’ undeniable adverse consequences for the euro and the stability of the European Union.
The Tsipras government, with some justification, could have presented itself as Europe’s best partner for implementing a far-reaching program of reform and modernization in Greece.
But Tsipras squandered Greece’s opportunity, because he and other Syriza leaders were unable to see beyond the horizon of their party’s origins in radical opposition activism.
Of course, it is precisely the acceptance of necessity that marks the difference between government and opposition. An opposition party may voice aspirations, make promises, and even dream a little; but a government party cannot remain in some imaginary world or theoretical system.
Indeed, Tsipras seems to have forgotten the Marxist tradition’s emphasis on the dialectical unity of theory and practice. If you want to negotiate a change of tack with your creditors, you are unlikely to succeed if you destroy your own credibility and rant and rave about those whose money you need to avoid default.
But Syriza’s inability to escape its radical bubble does not explain why it formed a coalition with the far-right Independent Greeks, when it could have governed with one of the centrist pro-European parties.
Within Europe’s monetary union, a consensus has been established that everything possible must be done to keep Greece inside. But Greece’s government needs to understand that other eurozone members will not be willing to accommodate its demands if it means delegitimizing their own painful reforms.
A disorderly Greek exit from the euro – currently the greatest danger – can be averted only if both sides operate on the assumption that the upcoming negotiations are not about who wins and who loses.
But others in Europe need to abandon their illusions as well. The Greek crisis cannot be used either to weaken European conservatives and change the balance of power within the EU, or to remove the Greek left from office.
The current crisis and the negotiations to resolve it are about only one thing: Greece’s future within Europe and the future of the joint European project.
