You get what you pay for.

Nature fills a vacuum.

What goes up, comes down.

Pride comes before a fall.

And so on.

Thus:

Since the calamities of the Balkan wars, the average European planner has assumed that there are two worlds of military operations: NATO and EU missions on the one hand, with every hi-tech gadget one might desire, and under-resourced UN forces on the other. This is, in the phrase of the British UN expert Michael Pugh, “peacekeeping apartheid”.

But this division of labour no longer works. European forces are unable to keep up with US technology yet lack the growing sense of purpose of the emerging powers.

After the prolonged political pain of Afghanistan, NATO is unlikely to sign up for new long-range operations any time soon (as India and China note from their ring-side seats). The EU’s refusal to intervene in the Democratic Republic of Congo during last year’s crisis suggests that it is having second thoughts about even limited power projection.

The UN had a far, far worse year in the Congo, failing to stop a huge humanitarian disaster – French and UK diplomats have launched a process in the Security Council to address the peacekeepers’ failings. They have no shortage of problems to tackle.

But as they sit down to talk these through with their Chinese and Indian counterparts, they should look to the long term.

In one or two decades, these emerging powers will be essential to keeping order worldwide. It is far from certain that Europe will be.

Now what was it we kept being told? That the EU was a multiplier of British influence?