Spiegel Online International writes that “in the end, only the ECB will be able to save the euro if the crisis continues to escalate.” It’s useful to examine all three of the premises contained in this statement, which was made in the context of a discussion of the current Greek default crisis, the looming Italian default crisis, and the not far behind Portuguese and Spanish default crises.
I’ve disparaged in other posts the Greek people’s response to their economic crisis. However, the decision of their Prime Minister, Giorgios Papandreou, to put the latest EU offer of a bailout to a plebiscite—to let those Greek people speak directly and for themselves on whether they think the bailout, or its terms, are suitable—has led to an interesting set of responses from the other governments of the Union, and from within the Greek government itself.
This isn’t as apocalyptic as it might sound; on the contrary, this is the first in an occasional series I’ll be writing on our foreign and defense policies, with the latter being approached both in its own right and as an arm of our foreign policy.
In this post, I intend to outline what I believe is the environment for these policies as we move through the 21st century. Another post will address the framework of our foreign and defense policies, and future posts will look at necessary structures for each, actions for and by each, and how events of the day might be handled by the new policy(s).