What Mr. Tsipras has fundamentally disregarded is Greece’s extreme weakness. On the one hand, it is weak like any small country, with limited capacity to affect the rules of international life. But it has the additional weakness of a poorly functioning economy and a crushing debt.
Syriza’s response to this has been schizophrenic. It likes to highlight the country’s vulnerability by castigating powerful offstage villains — domestic oligarchs, international bankers and Germany, too. (Once upon a time, the United States topped that list, but it is mentioned less these days.)
But at the same time, the party evokes the potential strength of unfettered people power; the leap to genuine sovereignty to be made by leading a worldwide revolution against austerity. And, failing that, in a phrase heard more and more the past few months in Athens, there is talk of a kind of collective suicide, like those Greeks who blew themselves up rather than surrendering to Turkish forces two centuries ago.
This rhetoric didn’t appear out of thin air. It bears the marks of the milieu that formed Mr. Tsipras as he grew up in the years after Greece’s seven-year military dictatorship ended in 1974. A student culture flourished in the following decades that placed a premium on activism, and saw a revolutionary potential in every high school occupation.