Is Europe headed for a shoot-out?

May 27th, 2010

Make sure you don’t get hit by a stray bullet
It’s called a Mexican standoff. The two heroes face each other, guns drawn. Neither wants to shoot first and wants even less to shoot second, but neither will put down his firearm. We’ve all seen these scenes in movies like “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” and in Quentin Tarantino’s crime gore-fest “Reservoir Dogs,” among other films.

Escalation
Mexican standoffs are an escalation, and a highly unstable one at that, of a “balance of terror”. In fact, neither side of that delicate equation needs to wave its gun about: It’s enough for the other side to know that the weapon exists and could be drawn. The transition from “balance of terror” to “Mexican standoff” is not only a serious escalation; there is often no way back. A balance of terror can continue undisturbed for a long time. It can be perfectly stable, as we saw during the Cold War. But Mexican standoffs must be resolved quickly, before one of the party’s nerves gets the better of him. Once that happens, the road to face-to-face confrontation is short indeed. Now we are talking about Mexican standoffs in international relations. Think “Cuban Missile Crisis”.

Today’s economic Mexican standoffs>
They come with a twist: One of the adversaries standing there panting, gun in hand, is a suicide bomber, who is threatening his rival not with a pistol but with economic destruction.

Greek dominoes
That’s what happened six months ago in the American financial sector. Its leaders obliquely, but clearly, delivered a message to Washington: Save us or we’ll blow ourselves up and take you down with us. Now the very same thing is happening between Greece and Germany’s taxpayers. The latter have, to their chagrin, been forced to bow before the threats of their Mediterranean partner in the EU to blow itself up financially, taking down the entire euro bloc as it goes.

How can this happen?
Many ask how it could happen that a bit player like Greece has its finger on the button that threatens the economic health of an entire continent. The answer is as suicidal states go, Greece may be small, but it isn’t the only one. The problem is that if Greece explodes, it could cause a domino effect. If not for that you can be sure that the euro bloc members would simply leave Greece moaning by the wayside.

Germany is wild
In all the discussions on the state of the Greek nation, there’s one detail that almost nobody mentions, but it’s an important detail. The German public is furious at having to rescue its partners, and with reason. Why should their thrift, industriousness and responsibility finance the good life of the Greeks? But there are two sides to every coin, including the battered euro. There’s no denying that Greece and its people lived beyond their means and accrued debt that they can’t repay without help. Other states, such as Ireland, Portugal and Spain, are in the same boat, albeit to a lesser degree.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 8:04 am and is filed under Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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