A Cyprus exit from the euro union, if it comes to that, would have a devastating effect on the country’s citizens, who are among the most indebted in the euro zone. And for European unity and diplomacy, the Cyprus debacle has already been at least a short-term disaster.

But for the broader financial system in Europe, the losses resulting from a Cypriot banking collapse and the country’s return to its former currency would be minimal compared with the havoc that Greece would have created had it not been bailed out.

And that, economists and investors contend, is why Germany and its Dutch stalking horse, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the president of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, were so adamant that depositors — large and small, Cypriot and Russian — contribute 5.8 billion euros ($7.5 billion) toward the 10 billion euro bailout of Cyprus’s largest banks.

Greece may well have been too big to fail last year, but Cyprus, which creates less than one-half percent of the euro zone’s gross domestic product, is certainly not.