Tough snub

"Hard pressed on my right. My centre is giving way. Impossible to manoeuvre. Situation excellent. I attack."

Ferdinand Foch, the pugnacious general credited with stabilising the collapsing French front in 1914, would find much to gratify him in today's Brussels. At the very moment when the Lisbon Treaty was meant, at long last, to be introducing a new dawn of unity and effectiveness in European foreign policy, exactly the reverse seems to be happening.

It is not just the obvious set-backs - the Copenhagen summit debacle, the appointment of two virtual unknowns to the new post-Lisbon leadership roles. Even more worrisome has been the sense of collapsing discipline and cohesion, exemplified by wholly pointless French campaign to undermine Catherine Ashton, and the egregious Spanish effort to ingratiate themselves with the Chinese by hinting at a lifting of the European arms embargo.

And now, to top it all off, the Obama Snub. For such indeed it was - behind all the diplomatic talk of misunderstandings, two unpalatable messages were being conveyed to Europeans.

First, this US Administration is out of patience with a European approach to summit diplomacy which has everything to do with the vanity and domestic political profile of the summiteers, and nothing to do with the efficient conduct of business. The ineptitude of Europe's inflated collective leadership, with everyone crowding into camera shot, was brutally exposed at Copenhagen - and now the US is affirming that it will do what it can to avoid further dealings with it, as long as Europe's national leaders resist the streamlining that Lisbon was meant to bring about.

Second, even an agenda focused on a limited number of topics of particular concern to the US - like Iran - (for this was how the Spanish tried to reshape their summit in an unavailing final effort to save it) is no use if the European side has nothing new or interesting to say about them. An effective EU/US strategic dialogue will take place only when Europeans know their own minds - which will first require them to engage each other in serious discussion of the tough issues such as policy towards Russia, or Afghanistan, and to thrash out their differences as Europeans within the EU, rather than studiously avoiding such questions as at present.

Can Europe's national leaders take these messages to heart? If so, then the gloom that today envelopes Brussels may turn out to be the dark hour before the dawn.

Later this year Europe's new diplomatic service will begin to take shape: Van Rompuy and Ashton, the struggling generals of Europe's common foreign policy, will actually have troops to command. They should draw their inspiration from the rugged Foch, and treat today's disappointments and reverses as preparing the ground for successful counter-attack.