Actually I'm not assuming anything. I'm not presuming that an interventionist doctrine would be a magic wand, and that every intervention would be quick and easy. But I am not prepared to concede that every intervention would be foredoomed to make things worse. And I think the question, distressing and painful as it is, to be an interesting one.

If we have war, then the European project is a failure. But the continent and its people continue to exist, regardless of institutional structure, so the question of the European interest is still pertinent. The EU, or its constituents, had no institutional obligation to intervene in Yugoslavia in 1991. Is that a valid excuse for not doing so? Do you think any such intervention would have made things worse?

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}