The clock has struck midnight in Vienna and Athens. In Vienna, exasperated negotiators pacing the halls of the Palais Coburg watch as yet another deadline on the Iran nuclear talks ticks by. In Athens, Greek lawmakers on Syntagma Square wring their hands and take down an extra glass of ouzo as yet another proposal spelling the fate of the Hellenic Republic gets shipped off to Brussels.
Negotiations of this magnitude take time. But history is still made outside the conference room. The geopolitical reality is that the United States and Iran will eventually come to a rapprochement and Greece will crack the eurozone. How we get there is perhaps less interesting than what comes after.
The region has already internalized the expectation of a U.S.-Iranian understanding. Saudi Arabia is spending its petrodollars and putting Gulf militaries to use to try to roll back Iranian influence. Israel will selectively work with the Saudis toward the same objective. Turkey will deepen its own military footprint in the region, starting with its former stomping grounds in northern Syria. And so long as the threat of the Islamic State has the United States chained to the region, Washington will carry the burden of trying to balance each of these relationships without getting sucked into the region's many historical vendettas.
Europe is meanwhile reacquainting itself with a dark past. Impossible debt levels are fuelling the narrative of a nation state humiliated and stripped of its dignity by other nation states, a familiar and frightening narrative to the Continent. Even if a faction of Syriza caves and pushes through a deal (possibly with the help of the opposition if Syriza fragments), Germany's willingness to distribute funds in a bailout program will still rest on a flimsy Greek commitment to implement reforms in an increasingly hostile political climate.
Time can certainly be bought, but a Grexit will not be avoided indefinitely. Greece will be one of several sparks in the Balkan tinderbox that will have to be watched as Russia searches for leverage against the West in Europe's growing crisis. Germany, the recipient of the blame for troubles following a Grexit, will be treated with suspicion and its leadership questioned by remaining members of the eurozone. Other countries in the periphery that have tamed, but have far from healed, their economic ailments will come under the microscope as Euroskeptics expose a splintering union, all while feeding off a growing migrant crisis fueled by nearby Mideast crises.
The geopolitical reality speaks much more loudly than the headlines on deadlines.
