Last Sunday, July 5, the citizens of Greece went to the polls to vote on referendum.  Our understanding, admittedly imperfect, is that they were asked in essence a question to which the possible responses were "yes" or "no."  The question was, should Greece accept the reform package recommended by the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund as a condition for further financial assistance to Greece?   The government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras urged their countrymen to vote "No."

Many in the rest of Europe hoped - and according to numerous reports expected - the result would be a close vote in favor of the reforms.  Indeed, in the days before the vote the President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said it would be suicide for the Greeks to vote "No."  But that is what they did, resoundingly, with 61 percent in the no column and only 39 percent voting yes.
 
President Juncker did not respond immediately to the vote.  As he explained in his speech today, he did not comment on Sunday or Monday because he believed his first statement on the issue should be to the European Parliament.  Bland (and reasonable) as that sentiment may seem, the Commission President introduced it with a barb.  "I have read in the German press that 'Juncker has disappeared,'" he said.  "I would warn you not to rejoice too soon."

For us the key substantive points of Mr. Juncker's remarks were these:

He does not want to see Greece leave the euro zone.  Indeed, he is against it, ("gegen Grexit.").

Last Sunday's referendum is hard to interpret because there was an essentially false quality to it.  As he put it, "The question which was voted on has not been on the table for a long time now, and everyone in the negotiation process knows it."  And,

Although, "In Europe there are no simple answers......we will once again return to the table, as we always do in Europe, and we must try to find a solution."

We were reluctant to wade into this topic.  We have not written about it before.  There are formidable complexities, and it is hard to know even whether it is moving fast or in fact rather slowly.  (We think it is moving very, very quickly, but that could still prove to be an illusion.)  The only thing that is clear, even to the novice, is that the issue is extremely important, with implications for many countries and many initiatives.

Mr. Juncker spoke to the European Parliament today.  Prime Minister Tsirpras of Greece will address Parliament tomorrow.

There was a Eurozone summit earlier today in Brussels, the product of which was an ultimatum.  Greece has until Thursday to come up with a new plan.  Failing that, there will an emergency meeting of all 28 EU members on Sunday, July 13, to decide on next steps, which we assume means Greece's exit from the eurozone.

There will be plenty of reporting on all of those developments.  We'll check in again once more of them have unfolded.  We will also save for a later date consideration of what these developments say about the EU writ large and about the special role of Germany.

The Geopolitics of Grexit.  Here we would simply like to highlight two articles that illustrate different elements of the problem.   James Stavridis, the Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, addressed the geostrategic implications of Greece leaving the eurozone in a recent Foreign Policy article.

"A Greece that goes crashing out of the eurozone," he wrote, "will be an angry, disaffected, and battered nation - but one that will continue to hold membership in the European Union and NATO, both consensus-driven organizations."  His focus was on the potential for Greece to play the spoiler on difficult issues, such as sanctions against Russia.   The logic of that seems plain on its face, but it is worth noting as well that as a former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Admiral Stavridis more than has a feel for the institutions he was writing about. 

Questions Distilled.  It is easy enough to agree with Jean-Claude Juncker when he says, "In Europe there are no simple answers."  Indeed, one is tempted to go from agreement to applause when Mr. Juncker explains, "Europe means constantly striving to find compromise solutions ... ."  And yet, at the end of the day, decisions generally have to be distilled to a binary form: war or peace, yes or no; TPA, yes or no; Greece in the eurozone or out, yes or no.

That still leaves the issue of how one frames those questions.   Austan Goolsbee, the former Obama Administration economist, spoke recently to Jim Tankersley of the Washington Post about the challenges facing Greece and her EU partners.  In that conversation, he made a fairly straightforward argument about the options available for dealing with economically different regions that use the same currency.  He also seemed to be saying that it matters what your objectives are.   If you are the EU and you either want to keep Greece in the eurozone and/or make it difficult for her to leave, you will come up with one set of options.  On the other hand, if you view the departure as inevitable, your goal will be to make the departure from the eurozone less painful and more successful.  It is all a matter of how the question is distilled.