Chaos or kudos? Tsipras's tactics leave Greeks a costly legacy

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has shown himself to be anything but a predictable negotiator.

From suggesting tourists help catch tax-dodgers to e- mailing the wrong draft hours before Monday's emergency summit, Tsipras and his government used tactics that have proved alien to the more orderly world of the euro region: adversarial, ideological and, on occasion, chaotic. At home, the strategy excited a hurt nation that saw the brinkmanship as bravery. In Brussels and Berlin, it infuriated potential allies.

Whether it worked is a different question: For all his political nerve, Greeks will endure more austerity if the bailout money arrives or not. The measure of his success is instead whether this week's progress toward an agreement could have been made months ago, before the economy sank back into recession, depositors yanked 30 billion euros ($34 billion) from banks and jobs started to vanish.

"Quite a lot has been lost, and quite little gained," said Kevin Featherstone, a professor of contemporary Greek studies at the London School of Economics. If it "was a delaying tactic, that would only make sense if the deal got better," he said.

More aid may be now within reach, but euro-area creditors consider the latest Greek budget measures a basis for further work rather than a done deal.

Wasted capital

The government argues it managed to protect pensions for those on low incomes at the expense of increasing contributions for workers and employers and getting rid of early retirement. It said it convinced creditors to accept less ambitious fiscal targets for the next couple of years.

Creditors, though, said they agreed to the revisions only because the economy had deteriorated so...