Two European bigwigs berated China at the virtual summit. They demanded Beijing intervene on their behalf over Ukraine.
The EU foreign minister, Josef Borell, later described the virtual meeting as a dialogue of the deaf, blaming the Chinese for not listening.
The European ambassadors, in pro-consul mode, rudely attacking Imran Khan a week earlier, were thus singing from the same hymn book.
Western Europe must still believe it calls the shots in Eurasia. The calendar in Brussels is stuck at 2002 (or even 1922).
View from the bottom
Away from the upper middle classes and ruling caste, one should feel for the bewildered people near the Atlantic and North Sea.
Emerging bleary eyed from two years of rolling lockdowns, the citizens are being bombarded 24/7 by wall to wall coverage of a conflict on the eastern edges of their continent. They are visibly drained by the emotional images and permanent messaging.
When they do "look up," they see dark menacing clouds gathering.
A recent survey shows that almost three-quarters of Britons are expected to eat into their savings all of this year as expenses rise. They have hardly saved a bean since the start of the pandemic.
The European mainland sees similar stress in most households. Energy, food, travel costs, you name it, the only way is up.
France goes to the polls, with a victory for radicals on the cards if sufficient people do not turn out for the corporate-confected former Rothschild banker Emmanuel Macron.
A full half of French voters are supporting either the Far Right or the real Left, apparently on bread and butter issues.
Remind yourself that for two decades, anything from a third to half of Western Europeans were fearful of the "Polish plumber," allegedly intent on migrating west to work better for lower wages.
The less than latent xenophobia of even mainstream European politics, expressed against North Africans or Eastern Europeans, has been a permanent feature of de-industrialized Western Europe.
And we are supposed to believe that these same voters are keen for millions of Ukrainian "plumbers" to come and live next door?
Taking back control
Brexit was as much about ending immigration from east of the River Elbe as about sovereignty.
European diplomats liked to taunt their British cousins, with good reason, about the follies of Brexit and the absurdity of a return to imperial glory. They giggled at the mention of Global Britain.
Brexit and the obvious lack of a British strategic roadmap made European bureaucrats seem like sages.
The grown-ups in the room were the well-briefed EU negotiators while the British were supposedly amateurs (armed with hope expressed in bluster, with a page of bullet point slogans rather than reams of detailed reports).
While there may be some truth in that description, today the European leadership looks as befuddled as Boris Johnson on a bad hair day.
The supposedly efficient and uber-realist Germans are hacking away at their own limbs, crippling their economic machinery.
Would any industrialist willingly double their energy bill to become uncompetitive?
German politicians seem to think this is eminently sensible.
Europe obtains a full 40 per cent of its natural gas from Russia. The German industrial complex is hooked for over half.
The same people who laughed at Britain voluntarily exiting the world’s largest free trade area are themselves following the Brexit playbook, disengaging from the rest of Eurasia.
Mainstream media has blasted any possibility of a reasoned discourse, as if this is the first ever war in over 30 years.
Purchasing LNG energy from American multi-nationals is ludicrous from a European perspective.
It will take two years to construct LNG port terminals. It costs twice as much. The next neo-Trumpian president can cut off energy supplies whenever, to bring Europe to heel.
The way forward
The global South expected some even-handedness. If Europe wishes to sanction Russians, then logically, they should sanction Americans for all the invasions, bombings, and human rights abuses in Muslim states since the 1990s.
If applicable to Putin's daughter, how about the same for the offspring of Bush and Obama? And tangentially Hunter Biden?
Its governing political caste has gone into a mental lockdown, retreating from this world, unable to comprehend the consequences of its loss of strategic autonomy and sovereignty.
If we reach back far enough, then we can categorize the defiance of France's Charles de Gaulle in the 1960s as merely a blip. Britain and Western Europe had already capitulated to America after World War II on currency and trade.
What Europe's hand-picked leaders are forgetting is that America is no longer what it was two generations ago. The eastern half of Eurasia is soon to become the centre of the world's economy.
Later this decade, could Europeans come to a statesmanlike consensus on how Eurasia should live together for the next thirty years, based on collective security, economic cooperation, peaceful co-existence, and mutual respect?
If Europe's current political Brahmins do not change course, expect woolly jumpers to be the number one Christmas present this winter and the next.
Europe needs the return of the Gilets Jaunes, and dare I say, a Bastille.
Farid Erkizia Bakht is a political analyst @liquid_borders