Grexit will be just the start of a whole new Sophocles-inspired tragedy. Once one nation breaks with the single currency, the monetary union itself is totally exposed. The (Neoliberal) Goddess of the Market will be eagerly looking for the next victim -- Spain, Italy, Ireland. The democracy Trojan horse now lies, in silence, in the home of austerity. The battle is about to begin.

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Reprinted from Sputnik

This past week, relentless scare tactics -- deployed by Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Eurogroup chairman, or European Commission (EC) president and certified opportunist Jean-Claude Juncker -- asserted that voting "No" would mean a Grexit. Now, the real possibility of a Grexit is threatening to destroy the euro.

The utmost fear of these cosmically mediocre politicians is that other European democracies -- starting with Spain in the fall -- would start forcefully saying "No" to the austerity obsession.

The mere fact that this is already happening is the ultimate indictment of the troika, whose one size fits all recipe always translates into recession, unemployment and widespread poverty. Their notion of Europe is dead and buried.

Everything is unsustainable

Now it's the real Thermopylae moment. Do or die. There's no roadmap, yet, on how Greece may survive in the eurozone without shattering its already hurt and ailing society. That would imply the end of deeply anti-European policies.

This Tuesday's summit involving Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande reveals the last-minute desperation of the cosmically mediocre politicos. Merkel now runs a real risk of passing into history as the one who provoked Grexit. And Grexit -- as painful as it may be -- remains a solution.

The Greek people benefited from less than 10% of the 240 billion euro bailout. Essentially German and French commercial banks were bailed out -- as Greece was forced to take "emergency loans" to pay them. And to get these loans Athens was forced to impose austerity and cringe under neoliberalism run amok.

All evidence suggests the eurozone will continue to play hardball. Even though the IMF itself admits some debt relief is inevitable. Even though Merkel herself, in a bit of NSA spying released by Wikileaks, admitted (way back in October 2011) that Greece's debt was "unsustainable."

Greek government debt is still a whopping 320 billion euros, 78% of it owed to the troika. And still the troika is tempted to turn on the screw even more -- now using the tactic of empty ATMs leading to regime change. Yet this may all backfire and precipitate -- what else -- Grexit.

And Grexit will be just the start of a whole new Sophocles-inspired tragedy. Once one nation breaks with the single currency, the monetary union itself is totally exposed. The (Neoliberal) Goddess of the Market will be eagerly looking for the next victim -- Spain, Italy, Ireland.

The democracy Trojan horse now lies, in silence, in the home of austerity. The battle is about to begin.

Authors Bio:

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst. He writes for RT, Sputnik and TomDispatch, and is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for Asia Times Online. Born in Brazil, he's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of "Globalistan" (2007), "Red Zone Blues" (2007), "Obama does Globalistan" (2009) and "Empire of Chaos" (2014), all published by Nimble Books. His latest book is "2030", also by Nimble Books, out in December 2015.