The Greek defence minister has thrown his toys out of the pram. “Daddy!” he screamed, “if you don’t give me another chocolate, I’ll ask Mummy!”
For Daddy, read Angie, the sex-defying father figure of the EU.
For another chocolate, read the billions Greece owes but neither wants nor is able to repay. Daddy Angie, in his/her turn, puts on a stern face and refuses to proffer another sweet, meaning more lenient terms of non-repayment.
For Mummy, read the USA, Russia or China on which Greece is counting as an alternative source of chocolates, which in this case means money. Lots of it.
This strategy of playing both ends against the middle is familiar to all of us who still remember being children. “Daddy, but Mummy always lets me watch TV after midnight…”, “Mummy, Daddy said he would take me to the zoo if you don’t.”
And, if the parents are getting a divorce, “Mummy, if you don’t buy me an I-Phone, I’ll go live with Daddy.”
We all tried that sort of thing in our tender years, but it’s something we usually outgrow when we grow up. However, the whole thing about the EU is that all countries in it – or at least in the eurozone – are perpetually infantilised.
Daddy Angie is the only adult in the EU family. Being a clever parent, she sometimes lets the children have illusions about their status, but underneath it all both parties know the pecking order in the family.
Children sometimes threaten to leave home – I know I did when I was about five. They won’t even try though and, if they do, they’ll be pulled back in by the scruff of the neck.
Well, this simile has now been milked for all it’s worth. What the Greek defence minister actually said was that his country wants a deal. “But if there is no deal, and if we see that Germany remains rigid and wants to blow apart Europe, then we have the obligation to go to plan B.”
Well, you see, Germany doesn’t want to blow Europe apart. She wants to keep it glued together as her own fiefdom, a Fourth Reich, different from the Third in its reliance on the euro rather than panzers as the adhesive.
As the good minister knows this, his turn of phrase is merely another not-so-veiled threat: if you don’t forgive us our debts, we’ll leave the eurozone and possibly the EU.
Rather than being your adjuncts, we’ll become a vassal of the USA, Russia or China, whichever country opens her chequebook the fastest.
The threat is empty at every level.
It would be extremely powerful if the EU were an economic project. But it isn’t. It’s overwhelmingly, nay purely, political.
A sound economy is no more the aim of the Fourth Reich than a faster Tiger tank was the aim of the Third. Both are but a means to a political end.
Of course it makes no economic sense to keep Greece and a few other countries one could mention in the single currency or indeed the single European state. An army marches as fast as its slowest soldier, which is why some less civilised armies used to shoot stragglers out of hand.
The EU isn’t civilised either, but then neither is it an army. It’s a political organisation that can accept any deprivation, any social unrest, even any war, provided it isn’t too cataclysmic. What it can’t accept is disintegration.
That’s why, much as I hate to play Cassandra, I predict that Greece won’t go anywhere. Angie will talk tough for a while but in the end she’ll do what it takes to keep the aborted foetus of the EU on its life support.
Of the three saviours mentioned by the minister, none will be too eager to jump up and whip the trusted chequebook out.
America has pursued a staunch pro-EU policy since before that contrivance got its name. Why would it change now and abet the possible demise of ‘Europe’, especially since this will cost an awful lot of money?
China, for which the EU is a major trade partner, wouldn’t want to upset the applecart either. Her strategic interests wouldn’t come into play either, for China has none around the Mediterranean.
Russia would of course love to thumb its nose at the EU by harnessing a Trojan horse at its outskirts. Putin may just present this to the public as a counteroffensive in the war waged on his country by America and the EU. (That is how Putin’s propaganda treats his own aggression against the Ukraine.)
But the price of such a symbolic gesture would be too high. At the moment Russia can’t even afford to keep her minuscule client states, such as Transnistria, afloat.
The Russian economy is in dire straits, and the straits will become even direr if Putin doesn’t pull out of the Ukraine, which he won’t.
He could of course squeeze his housetrained ‘oligarchs’, such as London’s own Abramovich or Mandelson’s best friend Deripaska, for a few billion as a one-off subsidy. Those chaps won’t have an option but to cough up – if they forget that they only have a leasehold on their fortunes, Putin has enough polonium left to remind them.
But they know, and Putin certainly knows, that this would be a gift that’ll keep on giving. A quasi-communist Greece will become Russia’s long-term sponger state, much as Cuba was for more than 50 years.
Unless I miss my guess, that isn’t the kind of commitment Russia is prepared to accept at a time when the shelves of her supermarkets are developing huge gaps.
All in all, Greece isn’t going anywhere. Angie will find a way – she always does. The toys will go back into the pram, the baby will shut up, and Daddy will have to tighten his belt.
European politics is so much fun, don’t you agree? We must all be proud to belong to the EU.
Meanwhile, many observers, me included, are drawing obvious parallels between the current Angie-Vlad negotiations and Munich 1938. At times I wonder if Moscow 1939 would be a better analogy.
You know, when Russia and Germany signed a pact dividing Europe between them and starting the bloodiest war in world history. This just may be on the cards, but I’ve made enough predictions for one day.