The post-mortem on Greece's clash with eurozone finance ministers, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank over terms of its bailout is either a wash (Jim Yardley, "In Greek Crisis, Rare Moment of Consensus") or a loss for Greece (Yves Smith, "ECB and IMF to Greece: No Escaping the Austerity Hairshirt."
Both agree that the can has been kicked down the road and now the Syriza-led government of prime minister Alexis Tsipras has very little room to maneuver, caught as it is between promises to restore pension benefits, collective bargaining rights and undo privatization while it has just signed on the dotted line to implement the troika's structural adjustment which is predicated on cutting pension benefits, rolling back labor laws and fast-tracking privatization.
The collapse of the eurozone, as I had hoped for, does not seem to be in the offing. Neoliberalism remains the dominant paradigm. Despite the planetary crisis of climate change and the spread of war, a forty-year-old paradigm (a decade older than the social-democratic consensus that governed the West following World War Two) shows no sign of giving way to something different. There is no significant rival ideology in the West to neoliberalism. Syriza, a throwback to what would be considered a standard social democratic party of the 1950s and 1960s, had its momentum killed in Brussels.
The only counter to neoliberalism is the epiphenomenon of Wahhabism. One begets the other, a yin and yang thing.
But there is always the problem of overreach. The U.S. overreached in Ukraine. And it can't seem to admit defeat. Next up is Iran, the conclusion of negotiations on its nuclear program and Netanyahu's coronation in Congress.
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