Berlin has been pushing Athens around for long enough. Alexis Tsipras has more leverage than he’s using – he just needs a strategy.
BY APRIL 10, 2015
The newly elected Greek government’s demands for debt relief and policy freedom from its eurozone creditors are both just and necessary. But Syriza doesn’t seem to have thought through how to achieve its objectives. Athens has tactics, policies, positions, poses, postures, arguments, claims, hopes, fears, and words aplenty — but seemingly no well-considered plan. With perhaps only weeks until it runs out of cash, Alexis Tsipras’s administration needs to get a grip and focus on how to get what it wants.
Athens has scraped together the 460 million euros due to the IMF on April 9. But with other big bond payments due over the next three months, as well as wages, pensions, and other expenses to cover, the prospect of default will soon return. A chorus of commentators argue that Greece has no choice but to comply with its creditors’ demands and count on eurozone authorities’ (supposed) wisdom and goodwill to pull it through. But that isn’t true. Athens can obtain debt relief while remaining in the euro — but only if it plays its cards right.
