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In international politics there are four or five leopards, snakes of various kinds, a handful of monkeys, and ants all over the jungle floor. The European Union seems intent on sticking out from the crowd - a genial, hydra-headed monster.

The appointments on Thursday night of Herman Van Rompuy, Belgium's prime minister, as the EU's first full-time president, and of Britain's Baroness Catherine Ashton as its foreign policy chief, leave the EU's global role and image in the hands of two personalities with next to no experience of high-level international affairs. They are choices which appear to contradict the arguments that EU leaders have made for years about the importance of projecting Europe's collective influence more effectively around the...