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>You say Syriza had no chance. Sure- because they are incompetent. A skilled negotiator would have at the very least stood a chance to minimise the damage. Wit

>You say Syriza had no chance. Sure- because they are incompetent. A skilled negotiator would have at the very least stood a chance to minimise the damage. With what leverage??? A skilled negotiator with no cards to play is no better than an unskilled negotiator with no cards to play. The ECB had the capability and willingness to turn off the Greek economy at will (and actually did, for a few days, as a shot across the bows by cutting ELA). They simply had nothing to counter that trump card so they folded. You can't run a country which has no functioning payments system. I've heard every idea for any approach they could have taken to deal with the debt crisis and they're all either illegal under EU law or would require the consent of an intransigent EU. Leaving the Eurozone wasn't an option. Default wasn't an option. The only choice was "economic cataclysm" or "bend to the whims of the Troika". >they managed to fuck up the fuckup even worse. It's hard to argue that they fucked up when their hands were so tightly bound and there was a gun to their heads.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
It is important to understand that a negotiation is not the same as a trade. You don't always have to give something tangible to get something back. Very often, negotiations proceed on points of emotion, or morality, alone. An appeal to justice, mercy, friendship etc, is often just as effective as a promise of a big material reward. For example, the EU did not want to be seen as ruthlessly crushing the Greeks for no reason at all and would have probably taken any reasonable demand seriously. Unfortunately, Varoufakis' grandstanding gave them a jolly good reason to antagonise us without guilt, or at the very least removed any possibility that any demands of ours could be presented to the other member states' electorates as reasoned, or just. In any case, one does not go to the negotiating table after having systematically disparaged the other side as villains, like Syriza did, and expect a positive result. See where Brexit negotiations are now, after years of British politicians blaming the EU for everything. Like I say above, there was (and is) goodwill in the EU about Greece. Many people have expressed their dismay at the treatment of the country by the Troika. What's more important, as others have said, the IMF was very strongly for debt relief. And like you say yourself, we had already suffered under austerity for a few years and it was clear it was not doing anything for growth or our prospects to repay our debt. There was a case to be made in our favour. For sure, there was not a whole lot to go on. But that's why I say "a skilled negotiator" was needed. Tsipras and Varoufakis were nothing of the sort.
- crdoconnor 8y ago
  >It is important to understand that a negotiation is not the same as a trade. You don't always have to give something tangible to get something back. Very often, negotiations proceed on points of emotion, or morality, alone. An appeal to justice, mercy, friendship etc, is often just as effective. No. It was not effective in the past and it would not be effective in the future. In fact the last 7 years of Greece's relationship to the Troika served as ample example of just how ineffective it was. >In any case, one does not go to the negotiating table after having systematically disparaged the other side as villains Well, when 7 years of treating them as friends achieves nothing... why not try something new, right? PASOK got annihilated in the polls for a reason and that reason is that they tried it your way and failed.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> It's hard to argue that they fucked up when their hands were so tightly bound and there was a gun to their heads. Tsipras and Varoufakis line was that they had "all the cards", remember? Remember how, if they saw us getting ready to jump, our European partners would lose their nerve and come begging us not to leave the Eurozone and the Union? At least that was Varoufakis position- even after the whole thing imploded. He kept saying, long after, that Greece should just give the EU the finger, default on its debts and let the EU sort out the ensuing mess. Consider the incompetence of those people, for a second. They went into an extremely delicate situation like bulls in a china store, pretending -and maybe even believing- that they were on top of things. They certainly didn't act as if they accepted that "their hands were bound", or "there was a gun to their heads".
- crdoconnor 8y ago
  >Tsipras and Varoufakis line was that they had "all the cards", remember? Nope. Very much do not remember this nor do I think they ever said it. They did act as if they would achieve more than they did, but I think that was just putting a brave face on, tbh.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

It is important to understand that a negotiation is not the same as a trade. You don't always have to give something tangible to get something back. Very often, negotiations proceed on points of emotion, or morality, alone. An appeal to justice, mercy, friendship etc, is often just as effective as a promise of a big material reward. For example, the EU did not want to be seen as ruthlessly crushing the Greeks for no reason at all and would have probably taken any reasonable demand seriously. Unfortunately, Varoufakis' grandstanding gave them a jolly good reason to antagonise us without guilt, or at the very least removed any possibility that any demands of ours could be presented to the other member states' electorates as reasoned, or just. In any case, one does not go to the negotiating table after having systematically disparaged the other side as villains, like Syriza did, and expect a positive result. See where Brexit negotiations are now, after years of British politicians blaming the EU for everything. Like I say above, there was (and is) goodwill in the EU about Greece. Many people have expressed their dismay at the treatment of the country by the Troika. What's more important, as others have said, the IMF was very strongly for debt relief. And like you say yourself, we had already suffered under austerity for a few years and it was clear it was not doing anything for growth or our prospects to repay our debt. There was a case to be made in our favour. For sure, there was not a whole lot to go on. But that's why I say "a skilled negotiator" was needed. Tsipras and Varoufakis were nothing of the sort.

crdoconnor 8y ago
>It is important to understand that a negotiation is not the same as a trade. You don't always have to give something tangible to get something back. Very often, negotiations proceed on points of emotion, or morality, alone. An appeal to justice, mercy, friendship etc, is often just as effective. No. It was not effective in the past and it would not be effective in the future. In fact the last 7 years of Greece's relationship to the Troika served as ample example of just how ineffective it was. >In any case, one does not go to the negotiating table after having systematically disparaged the other side as villains Well, when 7 years of treating them as friends achieves nothing... why not try something new, right? PASOK got annihilated in the polls for a reason and that reason is that they tried it your way and failed.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> It's hard to argue that they fucked up when their hands were so tightly bound and there was a gun to their heads. Tsipras and Varoufakis line was that they had "all the cards", remember? Remember how, if they saw us getting ready to jump, our European partners would lose their nerve and come begging us not to leave the Eurozone and the Union? At least that was Varoufakis position- even after the whole thing imploded. He kept saying, long after, that Greece should just give the EU the finger, default on its debts and let the EU sort out the ensuing mess. Consider the incompetence of those people, for a second. They went into an extremely delicate situation like bulls in a china store, pretending -and maybe even believing- that they were on top of things. They certainly didn't act as if they accepted that "their hands were bound", or "there was a gun to their heads".

crdoconnor 8y ago
>Tsipras and Varoufakis line was that they had "all the cards", remember? Nope. Very much do not remember this nor do I think they ever said it. They did act as if they would achieve more than they did, but I think that was just putting a brave face on, tbh.