P.S. the You Tube title is misleading. He does indeed explain why he's no Putin fan, but that's only one question in the entire interview.
Since the audio is terrible, I spent a couple of hours transcribing it, in case you want to read instead of strain to hear. (If you're interested at all.) I'm posting it "below the fold". (Click "read more")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQHLtbN6DxEInterview with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis Published October 15, 2015
Welcome to Moscow. Is this your first time here?
No, it's not, but it's almost as if it was. The first time I was here, Breshnev was in power in the Soviet Union. It was 1976.
How was it?
It was fantastic. I loved it. It was a family holiday. I was about 16. But I remember every day of it. It was spectacular. For me, the Soviet Union was a very large entity, and we took an epic trip. We started in Odessa. We went to Odessa by boat, and then from there, we took a train to Moscow. It's not like today: you get in the airplane, you disembark, you're here. It was like a kind of odyssey getting into Moscow, so it was very impressive.
So probably you are impressed by this building which some people call Stalin's Acropolis.
It's as if my last visit was yesterday being in this building. It's a splendid building, and I hope it finds the use that it deserves.
When I was in Greece last summer, I noticed that many people who support Syriza are also big fans of Vladimir Putin. One woman told me, “Finally we have as strong a leader as you have.” But according to your recent interviews, you are not in Putin's fan club....
No.
...Is it so? And why?
Well, firstly, I don't believe in strong leaders. I believe in strong democracies. The whole point about democracy is that every citizen has exactly the same say. One person, one vote. And countries that need strong leadership are countries that are in trouble. So, if our countries were in a healthy state of affairs, we wouldn't need this kind of feel that there must be a strong man that pushes everything into order. This is a sign that something is the matter with our democracies. More generally speaking, the path that this country – this magnificent country – a central part of western civilization, as far as I'm concerned – is taking for a very long time now is a path that leaves a lot of room for concern.
Okay. So we're in trouble, and Greece is in trouble?
I think the whole world is in trouble. There's no doubt about that. And our troubles are interconnected. So we live in a highly interconnected world. For instance, the experiences that you are having – financial difficulty – are completely connected to the great financial collapse of 2008 by the United States, which is what occasioned the Greek crisis in a sense. Now you have a fall in the price of oil which is undermining Russian finances, and that's because the China bubble is bursting - commodity prices coming down. The China bubble was built as an attempt by the Chinese to respond to the crisis of 2008, so we're all in it together.
Is that what Karl Marx predicted, or is something new happening for the whole world and nobody knows what to do with it?
Well, Marx was the first theorist of globalization in the Communist Manifesto. He's actually waxing lyrical about globalization. He's talking about how market prices are breaking down the walls – the Great Wall of China – destroys prejudices and allows for people to get closer together and to get rid of superstition. But at the same time, capitalism is a very contradictory system. At the same time, you produce a lot of wealth and a lot of poverty. Poverty that has been unheard of. And the crises that 2008 occasioned are very difficult to contain. So we are still in the same world that Marx described, except we haven't worked out what to do about the absolute need to stabilize our economies and our societies in a way that we can share prosperity instead of being in conflict with one another.
A new Greek parliament started work, and you choose not to stand in the election, saying that you will focus on creating a European network that will restore democracy in Europe. What do you exactly mean? How are you going to do that?
Well, the reason why I didn't stand, is because this time around, unlike last January, there's no political party whose manifesto I can support. So, the point was not to be in parliament. The point is to leave parliament in order to do something that one agrees with. The one lesson I learned last year in my involvement in government, in negotiations at the European Union level is that once you are inside this club that is Europe, national solutions are impossible. National parliaments are impotent. Whatever the Greek parliament decides now cannot be implemented, because Greece is just like a small part of the bigger whole. And the trouble with Europe is that, unlike in a federation like Russia or the United States or Australia, where you may have given up on the sovereignty of small entities, there is a sovereignty at the larger level. There's no such thing in Europe. There's no government of Europe. We have a common economy, a common currency , and no government. This is a recipe for disaster. So we need European-wide solutions so as to reinvigorate our national parliaments as well. This is why I'm concentrating on European-wide solutions.
Okay. And how could you produce it? As a private person, not in parliament, not in government.
I travel a lot in Europe, and the one message I get from almost everyone – people on the street, intellectuals, politicians - is that they also feel this need, the need to create a Europe-wide, a pan-European forum for exchanging ideas about what to do with Europe. So, as a private person, you can do nothing, but as a mass of people who get together and forge this network, everything is possible. That's the beauty of politics – power of the many.
Many people in Europe, and also here in Russia, think that Vladimir Putin is on a kind of crusade to undermine the European system of values and ...
No. That's rubbish. As I said before, I'm not a fan of Vladimir Putin, but on the other hand, I think the press that he has received in the west is pathetically wrong. We need to be realistic and sensible.
So, you don't consider him dangerous?
I personally don't think that Russia poses a danger for the world order. My criticisms of Putin have to do with his effects on the Russian people, and his tendency toward authoritarianism. So, my concern is for the Russians, not for the rest of the world. Russia never really was an imperialist power since the Tsar was gone. And that need in the west to create a demon and to demonize whoever – be it Saddam Hussein, and then it was Qaddafi – they got rid of him. There is a great deal of a vacuum ever since the Soviet Union went, to the west – especially the United States – to justify military spending, to justify a kind of cold war atmosphere. And it was a huge mistake on the part of the west to push Putin into this corner, because, firstly, it does ___?__ for us in the Mediterranean, in Europe, to have these conflicts happening with ISIS, with Islamic fundamentalism in Libya, the post-modern middle ages that is threatening us. These are threats that Russia, the United States, Europe should be handling together and cooperating in this regard. And at the same time, I very much fear that's not very good for Russian democrats to have unfair attacks on Putin which give him legitimacy to increase the degree of authoritarianism in Russia.
How do you feel about the Russian intervention in Syria?
Well, look, the Middle East is a very difficult place to understand, to manage, to find ways of civilizing. The reason why the Middle East is such a mess is 100% due to colonialism. If you look at the way that the British, the French, and then after that, the Americans carved out countries out of what was more or less a homogeneous lot after the Ottoman Empire, and how they used the strategy of divide and rule in order to maintain western control, all the way to the Gulf War and beyond, the invasion of Iraq by the United States was a catastrophe for Iraq. It destabilized Iraq, and that destabilization spread elsewhere. So you have a situation now where effectively there are no good people left in power anywhere, and there are no good people with power. And for us in the west, or here in Russia, to decide who do you go with and who do you leave behind is a major nightmare. I just believe we should simply agree on that which we should NOT be doing. So, for instance, I don't believe in bombing as a way out. Whether it's the Americans bombing, whether it's the British bombing, or the Russians bombing, I don't believe the crisis can be helped if we bomb them out of the water or out of their houses. So, it is about time there was cooperation in this part of the world to do something very simple: harm minimization to begin with.
You once said that Angela Merkel has no vision. Putin has a vision. What do you think?
I think that Angela Merkel doesn't have a vision for Europe. Indeed, she's the consummate politician in the sense that she knows what she needs to do in order to survive next month, next year, and two years time. In that sense, I think Putin is very similar and very close to Angela Merkel in that he's an extremely successful operator. He has extended his reign far beyond what anybody had imagined. He manages to exploit the weaknesses of his opponents. Brilliantly. I think he's a model for any politician who puts his own survival or her own survival above everyone else. I think that Putin and Merkel – maybe the reason why they communicate so well is because they are quite similar.
Going back to the time when you negotiated with Angela Merkel, could you imagine for a second that you area chancellor who has to negotiate with the present government, what would you do?
What I was saying to my counterpart – you know how the protocol is: ministers with ministers, prime ministers with prime ministers – what I said to him, and I said to many of my other colleagues in Europe – is that we were an opportunity for them, and they should have used us instead of abused us, instead of attack us. We were the left, they were the right, they didn't like us for that. We were saying things they didn't want to hear. But, nevertheless, we [the Syriza party] had an advantage. Actually, two advantages. The first advantage we had was that we carried the Greek people with us. So, if we agreed on something, willingly, and it was an honorable agreement between us and them, we would be able to implement it because we had the people with us. The previous government didn't. Secondly, we were not corrupt. We hadn't received a single Euro from any of the oligarchs. And therefore, if we agreed with Germany, with Brussels and Frankfurt, to implement reforms that hit the vested interests, we would do it. The previous regime wouldn't be able to do it. And we were also flexible. As long as they would propose to us or accept from us a final compromise on a program that makes sense, we would be able to go along with that, even if it wasn't exactly what we had promised our people. But, it didn't happen. So, to answer your question: In their place, I would have taken this offer. They chose to crush us as a show of strength. Any government that says no to the program of the Troika [European Commission, European Central Bank, and IMF] gets crushed. I think this was very short-sighted on their part. I think they will suffer in the long run as a result.
The Greek people said yes to the [Syriza] party - to you, to your ideas, and you left the government anyway. Why, actually? Why did you leave the government?
Because I had promised to the people who voted for me that I would never sign an agreement which I didn't believe in. And what do I mean by “not believe in”? Since 2010, finance ministers and prime ministers, after the crisis had begun, would always agree to do things they knew could not be done. And the cost of the failure to do that which they had agreed was terrible. For Greece and for the rest of Europe. And we were elected on the very simple platform that we were not going to extend the crisis into the future pretending we solved it. And if somebody puts a gun to my head and says, “Sign it,” I'll say, “Shoot”. Even if this means leaving the government. So I was simply not prepared to break my promise.
Why is it so hard to make reforms for the country? We have the same problem.
That's an excellent question. Look, when you have an oligarchy, it's very difficult to go against it. It's doubly difficult to go against it if the Troika of lenders that are in association with the oligarchy – the oligarchy's greatest friends are the Troika of lenders, the two of them are helping each other – so when we were trying to negotiate with the Troika, the local oligarchs, through their media, were attacking us mercilessly – in support of the Troika. They were the cheerleaders for the Troika. And then the Troika was stopping us from introducing reforms that seriously attacked – tax evasion, for instance. So when you have the Troika of the exterior with the Troika of the interior creating an alliance against the public interest, life's hard.
At the beginning of this year you declared that Greece will never ask money from Russia. But, why not?
Two reasons. Firstly, because Russia is not rich enough to plug the big black holes we created in Greece as a result of a very bad monetary union. Let me give you an example. How did they defeat us? By closing down the banks. The banks have a hundred twenty-hundred thirty billion euros worth of deposits in them. Russia would not provide us with that amount of money. Russia is going through a financial crisis in its own right. And it wouldn't be right for the Russian citizens to support OUR banking system when we are one with the European monetary union. So, that's one reason.
Secondly, while this negotiation was going on with Europe and the International Monetary Fund, let's say that Vladimir Putin, or his government, were to give me – let's say five billion for one of the pipelines. It would go straight through, down the drain. Why? Because we owe the IMF nineteen billion, and we would have to put it in our account for the IMF to take it. This is money that can never be repaid to our creditors. So, money from the Russian people or Russian companies would come to the Greek people, and the Greek people would never benefit from it. So, unless Greek debt gets managed differently, and restructured, there's no sense in us getting money from anyone.
Did they offer money?
No, they offered no money, and we didn't ask for any money. There were discussions about trade exchanges, as there should be between friendly countries, and possible collaboration on questions of pipelines and energy and so on and so forth, but the fact of the matter is that until and unless we settled the inter-European family feud between us and Brussels and Frankfort, it made no sense to have any such dealings.
Many ethnic Greeks live in eastern Ukraine, and suddenly they found themselves in the middle of a battlefield. Which side should Greece take in this?
The side of peace. The side of peace. But let me answer personally speaking. I disdain, I loathe, I hate borders. I think borders are a very silly idea. If you think back to the nineteenth century, eighteenth century, we didn't have them. I mean, countries had borders, but there was no barbed wire. People didn't have passports. People traveled. Russians would come to Greece. Greeks would come to Russia. There were no passports. That was a much better arrangement. The idea that we're going to build walls separating countries and have...
Well, in Russia it was very hard to go wherever it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Because there was feudalism. But there were not national passports. A monied Russian – of course it was a question of having money. And not being bonded. So, the peasants could not go anywhere. They couldn't come to Moscow. (Laughs) But they were not national borders, they were borders between social classes primarily. But when Lord Byron came to Greece, he didn't have a passport.
Just to answer this question: I don't think we should be putting up new borders. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the collapse of Yugoslavia, the new border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, all that is a move in the wrong direction as far as I'm concerned. We should be getting closer together, not having more walls separating us.
In this case, if Putin invites you to go to Crimea, would you go?
I would have to think about it. I have no problem going to Crimea. I would have a problem if Vladimir Putin invited me, because then I would have to wonder why he invited me. (Laughs)
No comments:
Post a Comment