When we get all worked up (pr not) about British blunders and hypocrisy, we tend to lose sight of where they fit in to the greater scheme of things.

Pointing to others’ even viler behaviour does not legitimise or make right one’s own.

But it just is the case that some horrors are bigger and worse than others. And that different systems and political cultures are … different.

Some find it easier to contemplate and launch outlandish behaviour. And safety mechanisms for stopping Bad Policies once they start kick in at different points.

So, is there anything in modern UK practice to compare to the French performance in Rwanda:

Drawing on documents recently released from the Paris archive of Mitterrand, the commission clearly describes the motive for French policy in Rwanda … The RPF was a part of an “Anglophone plot”, involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking “Tutsi-land”. Once Rwanda was “lost” to Anglophone influence, French credibility in Africa would never recover…

… The French created a secret command of the Rwandan Army through what he called a “légion présidentielle”. This was a group of elite operatives that was answerable only to Mitterrand and which drew up battle plans and military strategy, and built a psychological warfare capability with operatives trained in the manipulation of public opinion.

My own work has shown that not all French military operatives left Rwanda when the UN peacekeepers arrived in 1993. When the genocide began six months later there were senior French officers attached to key units in the Rwandan Army – the para-commando and reconnaissance battalions, and the Presidential Guard. It was French-trained soldiers from these units who, early in the morning of April 7, had orders to eliminate members of Rwanda’s political opposition – and to kill anyone with a Tutsi identity card …

The French Senate discovered how policy towards Rwanda had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand … It may be that a true reckoning of France’s responsibility will never be possible.

What do other EU governments including ours do now to get to the bottom of this calamity?

Rien.

A creepy Euro-etiquette forbids us even to talk about the issue publicly in any way that counts. Especially when the French hold the EU Presidency.

The French of course insist that to open all this up is intolerable – their motives and actions were ‘pure’.

Not perhaps quite the whole story?