In May last year, I wrote in these pages that the ghost of the Concert of Europe should be neither romanticised nor dismissed. It's harder to ignore sixteen months later.

Take a look at the world this week. A war which began in late February with the US-Israel strikes on Iran has expanded to Lebanon and the Strait of Hormuz and drawn in Gulf states. The Houthis and Saudi Arabia have clashed in Yemen, triggering a US security warning over the region recently. In Europe, Russia's war in Ukraine is ongoing, with drones, sabotage and violations of airspace, and senior European officials warning of deliberately ambiguous attacks on NATO territory that are big enough to cause some fear but not enough to trigger the defence clause.

Each fire is handled through ad hoc measures: emergency calls, borrowed mediators, statements after the fact. And they all are connected. British intelligence reportedly believes that the Kremlin may see Washington's focus on Iran as distracting. When things........

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