Is the fact that Ms. Applebaum/Mrs. Sikorsky should issue such a ringing endorsement of the demonstrably failed successor to the Free Market Delusion, Austerity, be anything like a surprise?
A number of dissenting opinions on the notion of Austerity’s putative success:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/06/11/economic_austerity_how_it_failed_in_one_chart.html
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/06/joseph_stiglitz_austerity_failed_greece_partner/
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/greece-eurozone-austerity-reform-by-joseph-e–stiglitz-2015-02
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/jun/06/how-case-austerity-has-crumbled/
The alliance between the Neo-Cons and the Neo-Liberals is of long standing: Ms. Applebaum is a Neo-Con in all but name. But the fact that her badly cobbled together propaganda realizes itself in this argument : the social/political potency of the idea/practice of ‘national renewal’ as a particular historical/political aspiration across Europe ending in the alliance of Right and Left, as she narrates the story. Need we, as readers, look any further that the Coup Government of Ukraine as an object lesson of this narrative? Right Sector and Svoboda are active participants in that Coup Government. In view of this, should the Greek’s be offered the same tolerance/acceptance that Ms. Applebaum not only accepts but celebrates as worthy of our approbation and material aid in Ukraine?
Please don’t mention the collusion between the banks/investment houses and Greek Oligarchs to hide the reality of the actual condition of Greek indebtedness, it is antithetical to this writer’s ideologically charged essay. The Putin hysteria mongering, Russophobia is a function of The New Cold War rhetoric that the Neo-Cons/R2P zealots have adopted in anticipation of WWIII, and her marriage to Radosław Sikorski Polish politician and journalist.

Political Observer