Negotiations between Greece and its official creditors – the European Commission, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank – are currently in renewed deadlock.
Yet, only a few days ago, in the Euro summit on Monday, June 22, all indications were that Europe’s political beasts and the “criminal IMF” were ready to accept thelatest capitulation on the part of the Greek leftist government, which, since coming to power in late January, has spent a lot of time doing nothing more than “yelling, kicking and screaming” against austerity and the bailout program (and treating senior-level EU officials with disdain in public as part of its well-orchestrated populist theatrics) while at the same time seeking to assure Greece’s euro partners that it is committed to keeping the country in the euro area and that it would fulfill all its obligations to the creditors.
If there has ever been a more lame strategy of negotiations and a greater self-defeating course of public diplomacy in recent history is really quite hard to say, but the incompetence of the Syriza-led government is beyond questioning.