With the Greek crisis turned up several notches (if not yet to eleven), this Washington Examiner piece by Dan Hannan is well worth a look.

An extract:

Greece has repeatedly won more lenient terms over the past five years — debt forgiveness, extensions and bailouts. Yet, from the EU’s point of view, every such concession simply prompts more hectoring demands. If Greece were able to walk away from a large chunk of its liabilities, why shouldn’t Portugal or Spain or Italy? At that stage, the euro really would be in danger of unraveling.
How has it come to this? In normal times and in a normal country, Syriza would be a joke party on the uttermost fringes of the Left. A coalition of Maoists, Trotskyists, eco-protesters and Occupy types, its fantasy manifesto promises a hike in pensions, a 50 per cent increase in the minimum wage, a massive extension of government healthcare, re-nationalization of key industries and the provision of free electricity for 300,000 households. Oh, and it expects the rest of the world to cancel Greece’s debts while it does all these things.
These, though, are not normal times and Greece is not, for now, a normal country. The euro has been an unmitigated disaster for the Hellenic Republic, inflicting upon it a worse recession than that of 1929-1935. A quarter of all Greeks — half of all young people — are out of work, and GDP has fallen by an almost unbelievable 26 percent since 2008.
In such a climate, Greeks have reached the view that it’s the traditional parties — the corporatist, pro-Brussels parties — that are the real extremists. Sure, Tsipras might have had a Che Guevara poster in his office (his son is named Ernesto after that bloodthirsty revolutionary); but, they reason, how can he be worse than the alternatives?
Other Europeans are making similar calculations. In Spain, Syriza’s sister party Podemos leads in the opinion polls. Podemos offers precisely the same child-like manifesto: debt cancellation, massive state spending, a 35-hour week, yada yada. (The party’s name can be translated as “Yes we can!” I wonder where it got that idea?) Spain, unlike Greece, is not a small economy. A default there really would spell the end for the euro.
The Brussels elites, needless to say, can’t bring themselves to blame the euro. Instead, they blame the voters. “There can be no democratic choice against the European Treaties,” said the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, on Thursday.

Much as I hate to (sort of) defend Juncker, an oleaginous thug of the type that does so well at the top of the EU, what he meant by that is that EU treaties cannot be unilaterally ignored on the back of an election in one member state. Greece signed up for the single currency. If it wants out from the euro or the obligations that come with it (and with the obligations that came with the bailout), it will have to negotiate an exit.

Membership of the euro zone is not compatible with sovereign national democracy. Never has been. Never will be. If Greece wants to regain at least some of its sovereignty back, then it needs to quit the currency union. There is no middle way.

Hannan:

In 2011, elected prime ministers in Italy and Greece were toppled in Brussels-backed civilian coups and replaced by EU functionaries in order to sustain the euro. The EU is not interested in how Greeks have voted. The only question for them is whether Greece can be kept within the monetary union, or whether amputation is the best way to secure the survival of the integrationist project elsewhere. We’ll know soon enough which way they have decided.
Stand back and look at the bigger picture. Rather than admit that the euro was a mistake, the EU has immiserated its Mediterranean members. The result is that the Greeks have just returned a Marxist party in first place and a Nazi party in third place. When the euro was launched, its supporters assured us that it would be an antidote to political extremism. As Sarah Palin might ask, “How’s that workin’ out?”

Well, you can certainly see Russia from Greece.

Gallup:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the early days after the Syriza party’s sweeping victory in Greece, many are watching whether this new government will pivot toward Russia or the EU. Representatives of the Syriza party, including new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, appear friendlier toward Russia’s leadership, as are Greeks in general. More than one in three Greeks (35%) in 2014 approved of Russia’s leadership, while fewer than one in four (23%) approved of the EU’s leadership.

The euro has been very, very good for Vladimir Putin.