The recent increase in tensions between the Greek government
and Germany is not accidental. Only today, a minister announced that they might
seize the assets of the German institute in athens against the money Germany
owes greece from war reparations and the famous coercive loans (private lawsuits). Actually it
seems that Greece does have a legal point on the coercive loan but very little
on the war reparations claim. In any case, Syriza's point is not to get any
money out of Germany but to invoke the European public's sympathy towards
greece and to force Germany into a mistake.
Syriza
knows that Germany can crash Greece both financially and out of the Euro. And
they are provoking Germany in making this move. The basic logic is that
Greece’s weakness is its strength.
Germany’s strategy is to slowly starve the Greek government
of cash and thus cause the greeks to turn against Syriza. Syriza knows this
which is why they are provoking Germany.
Syriza has managed through some very clever communication
tactics and Finance Minister who is a communication war machine to focus all
the anti-european anti-german movements in Europe behind them. This has not
gone unnoticed in governments around Europe who fear that a showdown between
Germany and Greece would spell trouble for their own administrations. It would
be devastating for Greece but they don’t care much about this anyway.
Syriza on the other hand do see that they are on an exit
path because the economy is in tatters. They also have huge internal party problems
and know that there is no way they can survive. They thus see an early crash
course as the only possible way out. Money is running out with or without
Chinese help on the t-bills.
