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 a200m (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?

It would seem the obvious course of action for a leftwing - arguably far left - movement. It might also have obviated the need to inflict yet more pain on Greece's long-suffering consumers and workers in the form of the higher VAT and increased social security contributions that also form part of the package. Until now, however, the Tsipras government's only move in the direction of more modest defence spending has been to put the brakes on a a500m programme for the modernisation of naval support jets.