The gossip surrounding the general meeting of the IMF [International Monetary Fund] in September 2011 went through several phases of panic before the consensual outcome became clear.
Greece is to be allowed a significant default on debts that have long been evidently unsustainable. Thereafter Greece must remain within the euro area, under the discipline of firm agreements with its partners in that deeply flawed venture.
Greece has already displayed a tendency to militancy at the mere announcement of the more obvious measures of austerity. When it becomes clear that the country will be under strict regulation for decades, there is a serious risk that minorities with different political principles - and none - will take whatever sort of militant action [or withdrawal of conformity with the state] seems open to them. Changing the mix of parties in the parliament cannot change a thing: only the dissolution of the Greek state could enable the population to try to escape their collective obligations: and the cost of ultimate anarchy would certainly be greater for the individual than will the draconian measures imposed by any government that maintains law and order.
This situation is very challenging to the basic concept of democracy; which has implicitly been a requirement for any state's membership of the European Union [and thus of the eurozone]. If the Greeks refuse to support any party that was willing to form a government that conformed with the new requirements of the eurozone, will the EU and the USA support an authoritarian government? The odious rule of the Colonels is well within living memory.
The resolution of the monetary and debt problems that have been facing the Greeks risks the future of Greek democracy: watch this space!
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