In the contention over the U.S. peace plan for Ukraine, the Europeans are in their accustomed role — carping from the sidelines. Not only can the European powers no longer dictate the fate of far-flung parts of the world, they can’t even dictate the end of a war involving a European country whose fate they deem crucial to their own future.

We’re a long way from the British controlling about a quarter of the globe’s territory in the early 20th century; a long way from British and French diplomats drawing the lines in 1916 to divide up the Ottoman Empire; a long way from Napoleon sitting with Tsar Alexander in Tilsit in 1807 and rearranging the map of Europe.

France was once so diplomatically central that there are dozens of Treaties of Paris, whether in 1259 (between King Louis IX of Fran

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