As the crisis in the European economies steams on towards it ultimate arrival at the buffers, one wonders more and more at the shocking incompetence of the politicians who have brought us to this dire situation.
Following the second world war, there was a drive to find a mechanism that would make a further major European conflict impossible. The political solution was to create a 'United States of Europe' through a gradual incorporation of more and more European nations into a single political entity. While the Soviet Union endured, this project was limited to the western and southern European states and remained a largely economic entity, with political edges. Since the freeing of the Eastern Europeans from Soviet tyrrany, things have changed dramatically.
Beginning with the reunification of Germany, a process that brought huge pain to the former West Germans, eastern European states have been welcomed into the rapidly expanded European Union. Most of these were hitherto poor nations which had no prospect of competing with their new western friends and so a mechanism had to be found that would resolve this problem. Lo and behold, the Euro became the answer.
If everyone used the same currency under a single set of fiscal and monetary rules then everyone would benefit, was the theory, as well as this approach bringing the ultimate aim of a unified European state much closer. In effect, however, all that was happening was that the newer entrants were replacing Soviet tyrrany with tyrrany of a different sort; some of the other participants in the Euro debacle were also surrendering their own financial autonomy in the hope of receiving a huge boost in their economic performance.
That this was all 'pie in the sky' should have been apparent to anyone with half a brain cell. That an economic union was driven by purely political motives was, itself, daft and never likely to succeed. Trying to force many countries with disparate cultures, histories, economies and aspirations together under one financial regime was idiotic and always doomed to failure. Worst of all, the political kudos involved in this project, and the loss of face involved in its failure, have made it all but impossible for the politicians to consider anything but its continuation, whatever the ultimate costs to their elecorates.
With Greece now tottering on the brink of total financial ruin and threatening to drag the rest of Europe down with it, David Cameron seems to have finally come out with something meaningful; apparently he is urging the leaders of the Euro-zone economies to pull their fingers out and take quick, final and decisive action. He has not, though, expressed a clear view as to what that action should be and it seems unlikely that anyone will take much notice of him anyway. Maintaining the Euro has already cost its member states, and others, a vast amount of money and it's set to cost them vastly more over the next few years, whatever solution is found to the current malaise.The real question is "when will the peoples of the stronger countries finally cry 'Enough !' ?"
That the Euro can, and will, survive, is a certainty. That it will survive in its current form and with its current membership is impossible. Greece will leave or the rules under which the Euro is managed will be changed to accommodate countries at different stages of development; in effect, there will be a Greek Euro separate from the German Euro. Given that the introduction of special rules for Greece would almost certainly precipitate similar and unmanageable demands from other countries such as Portugal, Spain and Ireland, departure has to be the answer even though a Greek exit could easily lead to others leaving the shared currency.
Economically, there is no alternative to Greece leaving the Euro and, probably, several other countries too. Politically, there is huge pressure to maintain the currency bloc at all cost. If the politicians don't 'give', the tensions created by these divergent forces could very easily lead to a total negation of the original intention of the founders of the European Union, that is, the prevention of another pan-European war.
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