[MGSA-L] Greece alone and broke, again

[June Samaras]

Doom and gloom - with a brief classical reference -  from Victor Davis Hanson
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Greece alone and broke, again | | The Bulletin

http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120624/NEWS0107/206240303/#.T-eY7aRl-WI.email

Greece alone and broke, again
Published: June 24. 2012 4:00AM PST

The recent indecisive Greek elections could be summed up by two
general themes: Greeks want to stay in, and expect help from, the
eurozone. But they still do not want to take the necessary medicine to
stop borrowing billions of euros from northern Europeans, who want a
radical Greek reform of the tax code, deregulation of labor laws,
fiscal discipline, massive cuts in bureaucracy, and greater
transparency — all unlikely given Greek history and contemporary
culture.

So what lies in the future for Greece as it is slowly eased out of the
eurozone and its civilization goes into reverse?

In theory, with the ability to devalue the drachma and be freed of
enormous debts, the Greeks could return to business as it was
practiced in the 1970s. In those sleepy days before the massive
transfers of northern European money, I lived in a Greece that was a
Balkan backwater without advanced surgery, autobahns, suspension
bridges, sleek subways or a modern airport. In that era of genteel
poverty, Greek divorce, abortion, drug use and crime were rare. Now,
all are commonplace. Rural Greece outside Athens was more Middle
Eastern than European.

Yet the problem with returning to the nostalgia of a world long gone
is just not the creeping return of Third World-like poverty, but
rather the psychological shock of Greeks losing the European lifestyle
that is now considered an accustomed birthright. For Greeks not to
live like those in Munich or Amsterdam would be far more cataclysmic
in political terms than it would be had they never gotten hooked on
Mercedeses, iPhones and lattes in the first place.

Over the past three years, exasperated Greeks have rioted and
blame-gamed rather than embraced self-critique and genuine efforts to
open up and air out their fossilized economy. Greeks scapegoated the
European Union, Germans, Americans, Wall Street, their own leaders,
foreigners, immigrants — anything and anyone other than Greeks
themselves, who clearly lived in a manner that was not commensurate
with their productivity.

So when the charade of the Greek euro ends and there are no more
bogeymen to blame, expect even more political upheaval and furor, not
calm introspection and reform. Do not rule out a return to some sort
of autocracy, whether left-wing in the style of Hugo Chavez or, more
likely, a nationalist Hellenic strongman in the mold of Vladimir
Putin. After all, democracy does not mark the end of history, but more
often is a cyclical respite for prosperous peoples who can afford the
niceties of parliamentary government and liberal tolerance. Right now,
Greece is neither a prosperous nor a tolerant place.

The recriminations over the euro may also poison the notion of
European citizenship itself. Even if Greece stays in the European
Union, relations with fellow EU members will never be the same — sort
of like the spendthrift brother-in-law who welches on family loans and
at tense holiday dinners sulks off by himself. After all, would
Germany ever loan Greece money again after being conned for billions
of euros while being insulted for its largesse?

History was never kind to the loud and proud but vulnerable Greeks,
who have suffered centuries of invasions, occupations, civil wars,
coups and famines. The year 2012 may be terrible, but familiarly
terrible in the sense of 1922, 1941, 1946 and 1967 — or for that
matter, 1460 or 338 B.C. The Greeks live in a tough region at the
junction of Islam and Christianity, where Africa, Asia and Europe
collide in the eastern Mediterranean. Tripoli, Cairo and Istanbul are
far closer to Greek soil than are Paris, Berlin and London. Ottomanism
— the historical bane of the isolated Greeks — is on the rise in
Turkey, fanning ancient grievances over Cyprus, oil and gas rights in
shared waters, and poorly demarcated air and sea boundaries.

The European Union’s rapid-response military force is a joke. With
looming cutbacks and a new orientation in the Pacific, a directionless
and underfunded NATO soon may be too. Polls show that an indebted
America is still unpopular in Greece; and Greece, to the extent it
registers with Americans, is not a favorite of the United States.

Without much foreign exchange, the modern Greek military will die on
the vine. Will cash-strapped Greeks prefer keeping up their stockpile
of imported smart bombs at the cost of doing without Siemens CT
scanners or Bayer’s ciprofloxacin?

Take away the veneer of European membership, and Greece is a tiny,
broke, isolated and terribly vulnerable nation — once again. Given its
neighborhood and its inner demons, the current insolvency is the very
beginning, not the end, of Greece’s problems.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover
Institution, Stanford University.

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June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com