Greek Tragedy, Act V
by Roger Cohen, Sept. 19. 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/opinion/greece-crisis-euro-tsipras.html?comments#permid=24127016
I'm glad to see pundits acknowledge the role of the EU and NATO in helping to get Greece through the "Euro Crisis", and, yes, the Greeks deserve much credit for "keeping their cool" and not following the path of, for example, Venezuela, into complete chaos - their democratic institutions held, bravo.
However, I still see even in Mr. Cohen's column, the only slightly disguised "blaming" of Germany, being the economic leader of the EU, for its "humiliating tutelage" of Greece, while at the same time himself listing all the still remaining inadequacies in Greek political culture to successfully deal with the problems of a modern world - bloated, unaccountable public services, bribery, inability to implement a modern taxation system, etc. etc.
What most pundits still don't recognize, is that the Euro was a political tool to move forward with a tighter European Union, much more than it was a economic tool. This is evidenced again by both Mr. Macron's and Mr. Junker's urging for more countries to join the EURO zone, because it is only through these kinds of institutional unifiers that other levels of cooperation and unity can progress.
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