There are various narratives for what is happening to Greece as another deadline looms -- the April 24 gathering of finance ministers in Riga -- and European officials show no sign of compromise. The most common is that this is a game of brinkmanship, with the Germans and their allies pushing for "reforms" that the Syriza government in Greece doesn't want to adopt. Most of the media seems more partial to the European officials than to Greece. But even among those who are more neutral or sympathetic to Greece, it is still a story about hardline European officials threatening to use their control over funding to the Greek government and banking system in order to bring Greece to its knees. But this narrative misses the elephant on the middle of the negotiating table. While the Greek government cannot do anything to replace its negotiating partners with people more to their liking, the European officials on the other side seem to believe they can do exactly that. And it is becoming increasingly clear that this is their current strategy. The idea is to do enough damage to the Greek economy during the negotiating process so as to undermine support for the current government, and ultimately replace it. The destabilization actually began before the January 25 election, when officials from the then-ruling New Democracy Party announced that if Syriza won the election, Greece would leave the euro and people would not be able to get money from their bank accounts. In a nasty breach of protocol, they were supported by important European officials. As I have noted previously, the European Central Bank (ECB) not only trained their guns on the new government but started firing on February 4, just nine days after the election. That is when they cut off the main line of credit to the Greek government even though they had weeks to make this decision. This was followed by limits on the amount that Greek banks could lend to the government -- limits that the ECB did not impose on the previous government. This was originally published by Al Jazeera America on April 22, 2015. To view of the rest of the article, click here. -- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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