The Troika have refused to write down a single euro of unpayably high debt. That is what enabled Tsipras to depict his nation as being victimized by the eurozone’s vicious class war. He made the point that the Troika had put nothing in writing about debt writedowns. His seemingly conciliatory position dared them to back up their promises in writing. He was not going to make the tragic mistake that Russian leader Gorbachev made when he was gullible enough to yield to merely verbal NATO promises that it would not move into the post-Soviet countries of Central Europe and the Baltics. The Troika’s position was “Impose austerity now. We’ll talk about debt writedowns later. But first, you must sell off what remains of your public domain, lower wages by another 20%, and force another 20% of your population to emigrate. Only then, when we’re sure that we can’t get another euro out of you anyway, then we at least be willing to talk about writing down some of your debt – when we see that you really have nothing left to pay!”