FORMER Belgian prime minister Mark Eyskens famously said in 1991 that the EU is “an economic giant, a political dwarf and a military worm”. Fast forward more than three decades, and a significant number of people still agree with this rather undiplomatic characterisation.

To be sure, the European Union has achieved some significant progress in its goal – under European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – to become a genuinely geopolitical player on the world stage. This is especially so in regard to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022.

However, the limits to this ambition have been exposed more recently in the Middle East since the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel. While the EU, and individual member states such as Germany and France, have tried to influence events in that geography, only the United States has been shown to have any substantive power there, so far.