Will Greece's Defense Budget Be Slashed To Help To Balance The Books?

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John Hooper, The Guardian: Why has Greece only now included defence cuts in its Brussels proposals?

Athens has been in no hurry to put military spending on the table, but then neither have its creditors, including its main European arms supplier - Germany

Among the measures Alexis Tsipras’s government has used to swell the package it tabled in Brussels on Monday is a €200m (£142m) cut in next year’s defence budget. Estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) for 2014 suggest that would equate to a reduction of around 5% in Greece’s military spending. The proposal raises an intriguing question: why did Tsipras’s Syriza party not offer more swingeing cuts in defence spending at an earlier stage in its tortuous negotiations with Greece’s creditors?

WNU Editor: The perception in Greece is that they need a military to face-up to Turkey .... but I also suspect that there is a real fear that if things do get completely out of control in Greece, the police may not be up to the job to protect the government.