An accusation made against the European power elites in recent weeks has been their helplessness in global relations. The argument is that the Continent that gave us the worldly political philosophy of Niccolo Machiavelli in the Renaissance, the state-making diplomacy of Klemens von Metternich in the bloody aftermath of the Napoleonic wars and the military nous of Carl von Clausewitz, is a dullard that cannot plot more than a single move ahead of the geo-political chessboard.

It is levelled that European leaders depend not on deep and mindful planning but, instead, are overinvested in superficial surface relationships that prove vapid and illusory in the face of the kind of hard power wielded with cruel intent by President Trump.