Yanis Varoufakis at a meeting with Wolfgang Schäuble, February, 2015.Wikicommons/Jörg Rüger.All rights reserved. Yanis Varoufakis is the architect of the
current negotiating strategy of Greece. As he usually says when he tries to
explain things: “It is very simple”. Greece’s negotiating strategy is based on
the dogma that when push comes to shove, the other side will retreat. Why?
Because the other side, meaning Europe, has a lot to lose. His estimate is
around 1 trillion euros.
During the past five months, Varoufakis did
not seem to adhere to popular win-win prescriptions of negotiation theory that
call for mutual accommodation of interests. Although Greece’s and Europe’s
interests are almost completely aligned, he always disagreed with the ways in
which European partners suggested that Greece could escape the difficult
economic debt crisis it found itself in, in early 2010. Instead of austerity
measures that were imposed, he always favored a more “European” solution that
required central management of EU debt and EU investment funds.
Europe was not, and still is not, ready for
the level of consolidation that the Greek Finance Minister suggested. On the
other hand, Varoufakis was not ready to compromise his ideas either. He
insisted on lecturing other EU member state Finance Ministers that the vision
of a unified Europe could only be accomplished though his ideas. This tactic was
all the more paradoxical, if you take into account that back home, in Greece,
the divisive rhetoric of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was focused on national
resistance against Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schäuble. The ugliest moments of this rhetoric were the many insinuations
about Germany’s Nazi past, which have only fueled the division between Greece
and Germany.
Varoufakis is definitely not a person who
seeks compromise. He wants all or nothing. He immersed himself in the
nationalist rhetoric of national pride. He talked about his commitment to the
Greek electorate vote. He tried to convince Europe that he would never back
down. He even tried using the I-am-crazy card. All of this was declared with
one objective in mind: to show that Greeks really mean what they say. They
prefer to go bankrupt, even return to the drachma, than accept austerity
measures.
Of course Greek voters do not want to leave
the euro. They were never informed of the difference between austerity and fiscal
stimulus policies measures. They were never offered an alternative viable
economic programme by the current Greek government. Instead, they were falsely
led to believe that the source of Greek woes was Germany and Angela Merkel,
even though the IMF and Europe simply stepped in to help Greece after its debt
crisis. Therefore, in the eyes of the Greek voters, Europe imposed poverty on
Greece and it was up to Europe to alleviate their pain.
Much can be said about the mistakes of
Europe and the IMF on the terms of the economic bailout. But Varoufakis did not
want to change some of the terms; he wanted to change the whole structure of
Europe. He further knew that he could not negotiate his way through such
changes. What he needed was a strong shock.
There was only only one shock that Greece
could inflict, the economic shock of Greece defaulting on its loans. This was
planned right from the beginning. Varoufakis had already decided that Greece is
economically done for. He thus never hesitated to engage in a negotiation that
completely undermined any prospect of the economy growing out of the difficult
situation it was in. He kept driving the economy into a brick wall. Indeed,
last Tuesday, Greece failed to make its IMF payment, making it one of the few
countries in the world that have ever failed to do so. It has often been said
that Yanis Varoufakis was playing a chicken game. Well, he was. He brought
Greece to the brink of disaster, thinking that Europe would be forced to
retreat or accept disintegration.
We are now a few moments before the final
collision. Greek banks are closed and there is a clear mandate of the Greek
people, through last Sunday's referendum, that they will not back down. Varoufakis
is still hoping that Europe will retreat instead, even though the Prime
Minister removed him from the driving seat. Varoufakis’s dogma is still intact:
The more bankrupt Greece is, the greater its negotiating power. No real change
of negotiating strategy, just a change of driver. If a collision finally
occurs, Varoufakis will not be first in the receiving line.
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