Yanis Varoufakis has resigned. He possibly could have managed his relationships with creditors better. But his biggest error was probably to frame the standoff between Greece and the rest of Europe in the language of game theory – “the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent, rational decision-makers”.

It is not hard to see that this framing does not apply. More appropriate is the language of war – “a state of armed conflict between societies...generally characterised by extreme collective aggression, destruction and usually high mortality.”

Game theory is about ‘rational’ people trying to outsmart each other. War is about putting up with any level of destruction to impose their ideology over others. War is about one thing and one thing alone – power.

Greece is now at war with the rest of Europe. It is a war based on wide differences in culture and ideology and the defence of ruling political interests. The weapons in this war are the weapons of international finance.

The Greek government initially hoped that it had a powerful weapon in the market disorder that would result from the threat of Grexit. Varoufakis and Alexis Tsipras seem to have misjudged the power of that weapon.

Greece also hoped that calling a referendum would serve as the ultimate weapon – the nuclear option if you like. It didn’t work. In response to the nuclear option, Europe embarked on what Paul Mason in The Guardian called the financial carpet-bombing of Greece – pulling the plug on the existing agreement, refusing to negotiate and starving the country of cash until it (or rather its people) squeaked.

Hostilities escalated with the technocrats of the Troika – Christine Lagarde, Jean Claude Juncker and Mario Draghi – acting as the generals deploying unconventional weapons of mass destruction. Observing the devastation they have wrought, all three seem recently to have turned into reluctant generals.

Europe’s leaders have taken the stance that they would like to see new ‘adult’ negotiators. Translating that to the language of war, they are taking the stance always taken by colonial and occupying powers – we do not want a government of resistance, we want a ‘responsible’ government that can ‘normalise’ relations. Just like Nazi Germany preferred Petain to de Gaulle and Moscow preferred Husák to Dubcek.

The weapons in this war are the weapons of international finance

The European powers also fear that success for the Greek rebels would encourage rebels in other countries. Just like, for instance, the British felt that they had to protect themselves from copycat uprisings in other British colonies following the Indian Rebellion of 1857.

This is a war that Greece cannot win. The firepower lined up against it is too overwhelming. When hostilities started, Tsipras did a European tour to try to tease apart the forces aligned against him. His main hopes were France and Italy. Other countries were too small to break ranks from the Orwellian technocratic groupthink.

The Spanish government was powerless and protecting its own political interests. Germany was a non-starter and Britain is not in the eurozone and would not be drawn into tilting the balance of power, a role it had been adept at playing for centuries.

But the allied ranks held firm. Italy has no history of ever standing up to power. France has been the only one to wobble. Hollande is clearly uncomfortable with the shape the conflict has taken. But France has not broken ranks – yet.

All European countries have suffered from occupation or suppression at some stage in their history. For some the experience is still within living memory. It is utterly depressing that they cannot empathise with the suppression or, at best, the Finlandisation, of Greece. Of course, the issue is being framed as being for the long-term good of Greece and Europe – an example of Hegel’s Cunning of Reason that “makes even the vilest crimes instruments of progress”.

The result of the Greek referendum solves nothing. What we have is asymmetric warfare – a situation where the relative power of the two sides differs significantly. In such a situation the weaker power adopts guerrilla tactics. If Syriza survives, resistance will be explicit. If other parties form a government, the resistance will be subtler – but it will be there.

Alternatively, the European powers will impose a subservient government led by a technocrat – the political equivalent of the British installing a Governor General to impose direct rule from London.

Some will object violently to the framing of this ‘partnership’ as a war between different cultures and ideologies. What else do we call a period where the strategy of the European powers destroyed the lives of millions of people across the continent and turned millions more against the European project? A period that has caused the fracture of societies and has led directly to the death by suicide of approximately 5,000 Greek citizens and many others across other countries like Spain – a total number that is around three times the number of Palestinians killed during the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2014.

The European project has failed and Europe is at war again. This week I travel to Madrid. There I will make a pilgrimage to view once again what is arguably the greatest artwork of the 20th Century – Picasso’s Guernica; a powerful expression of the horrors of war. And I will weep – for Greece and for Europe.