It’s been a week now since the guns fell silent between Greece and its creditors and a 4 month armistice was agreed – so what are we to make of the outcome? Yes it’s true that Tsipiris, Varoufakis and Co. were not able to deliver on one of their two main election pillars – debt forgiveness – but does that necessarily make it the complete capitulation that some have said? Would an honourable defeat be a more accurate appraisal? Or could it be that the agreement was simply a crucial exercise in buying time and space?
These are certainly valid questions but unfortunately valid questions don’t always elicit easy answers. For the position we take on this temporary agreement is in many ways determined by how we viewed the bargaining power of Syriza relative to the European establishment from the outset. In other words; hows we perceived that power differential helps determine what range of outcomes we would have considered possible.
So for example if you thought that in the negotiations Syriza held the trump card and all that was required was calling the Eurogroup’s bluff and threatening the nuclear option (Grexit) then you would see the agreement as a relative failure largely attributable to a leadership that lost its nerve. Thus all that was required was different players made of tougher stuff.
If on the other hand you believed that Syriza was negotiating from a much weaker position given that they were seemingly less prepared (and more scared) of Grexit than their interlocutors, then you could rationalise the agreement as best that could have been bargained for whilst providing the necessary breathing room to prepare a potential Grexit strategy.
