OPINION - Impotent and utterly irrelevant, Europe has been shown up on Israel-Gaza

Diplomacy is full of quips so brutal they can haunt generations of diplomats. For the Foreign Office, the words that still sting are those of Dean Acheson, that harsh Cold War US Secretary of State, who unforgettably said — and this was in 1962 — “Great Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role.” And for the European Commission, the assessment that still haunts them was from Mark Eyskens, the Belgian one-time prime and foreign minister — practically a neighbour — who said, “Europe was an economic giant, a political dwarf and a military worm.” He said that in 1991. And, unfortunately, that’s exactly what Europe looks like over Gaza.