The key bit begins a little after 5:00.
bq. “I believe we find ourselves in a situation equivalent to the one the US found itself in with Russia, back during the days of the Cold War. Both sides had nuclear weapons in their hands and both sides threatened to push the button and activate. When you have a Cold War, neither side will back down, so now we don’t expect Mrs. Merkel or Mr. Cameron to back down either. We are quite sure that when the time comes, logic will prevail, and they will not activate their nuclear weapons.”
Of course, that Tsipras is saying this, doesn’t mean that he might not back down himself if and when it comes to a direct confrontation. Even so, that he is thinking and arguing in this way is at least strongly suggestive. Surveys suggest that Tsipras’s party is likely to top the polls. I wonder if “Jacob Funk Kirkegaard”:http://www.piie.com/realtime/?p=2889 “still”:http://tmc.org/blog/2012/01/26/fred-bergsten-and-jacob-kierkegaard-need-to-read-thomas-schelling/ “thinks”:http://tmc.org/blog/2012/02/15/brinkmanship-and-the-euro-still-a-bad-idea/ “that”:http://tmc.org/blog/2012/05/18/greece-brinkmanship-and-the-euro-again/ Thomas Schelling-style nuclear crisis bargaining is a wonderful new way of making policy, now that the shoe, quite plausibly, looks to be on the other foot?