There's one thing worse that either military intervention or no intervention: incompetent military intervention. I am confident the EU won't disappoint.

I distribute. You re-distribute. He gives your hard-earned money to lazy scroungers. -- JakeS

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.

In the event of a war in Europe, the entities which are able to put boots on the ground will be, at best, acting in their own national interest (and more probably in the narrow special interests of a certain slice of their oligarchy). In terms of pertinence, the European interest is located somewhere slightly below the interests of the people being intervened in. The latter can, at least, shoot back.

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?

In practice, given that the same countries who were going to be intervening had been the loudest cheerleaders for starting the civil war they were intervening into in the first place, yes.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.