Euro-capital imposes U-turn on Tsipras
Abject capitulation or a Brest-Litovsk moment?
by Kumar David-July 25, 2015
It is the most humiliating surrender of a leftwing government in living memory, but others may say it is a Brest-Litovsk moment when it survived to fight and perhaps to win on another day. If Tsipras was Lenin, I would not hesitate to endorse the surrender - but is he? Was it capitulation or a Brest-Litovsk moment? The 5 June referendum ratified two points: (a) No further austerity and (b) Greece must remain in the Eurozone. The political powers in Europe torpedoed the linkage: Either swallow harsher austerity and surrender national sovereignty, or get out of the Euro and face instant catastrophe; crumbling banks, economic strangulation and social turmoil. Tsipras buckled as he saw the alternative as Armageddon. This has a parallel with the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty of March 1918 when the four month old revolutionary government in Russia capitulated, ceded huge territory, agreed to pay compensation for war time Tsarist acquisition of German property and signed a humiliating treaty with the Central Powers.