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But blackmail is actually an understatement of what the troika is doing to Greece. It has become increasingly clear that it is trying to harm the Greek economy in order to increase pressure on the new Greek government to agree to its demands.

The first sign that this was the European authorities’ strategy came on Feb. 4 — just 10 days after the Syriza government was elected — when the ECB cut off the main source of financing for Greek banks. This move was clearly made in bad faith, since there was no bureaucratic or other reason to do this; it was more than three weeks before the deadline for the decision. Predictably, the cutoff spurred a huge outflow of capital from the Greek banking system, destabilizing the economy and sending financial markets plummeting. More intimidation followed, including a slightly veiled threat that emergency liquidity assistance, Greece’s last credit lifeline from the ECB, could also be cut. The European authorities appeared to be hoping that a shock-and-awe assault on the Greek economy would force the new government to immediately capitulate.

Remaining issues were to be negotiated by April 20, so that the final installment of IMF money — some 7.2 billion euros — could be released. One might assume that the Feb. 20 agreement would allow these negotiations to take place without European officials causing further immediate and unnecessary damage to the Greek economy. One would be wrong: A gun to the head of Syriza was not enough for these “benefactors.” They wanted fingers in a vise too. And they got it. The ECB refused to renew the Greek banks’ access to its main, cheapest source of credit that they had before the Jan. 25 elections. And it refused to lift the cap on the amount that Greek banks could lend to the Greek government — something that it did not do to the previous government. As a result, a serious cash flow problem has struck both the government and the banks. Because of the ECB’s credit squeeze, the government could soon find itself in a situation that the 2012 government faced when it delayed payments to hospitals and other contractors in order to make debt payments, and it could even face default at the end of April.