You have to hand it to Putin. He and his cronies may be autocratic and corrupt, but he is achieving two things that Russian Tsars sought to achieve, and is doing so simultaneously – in Syria. By supporting Assad, brutally and without concern for the massive destruction and death, Putin has achieved a permanent warm water port in the Mediterranean. Russia sought this for centuries.

Secondly, by encouraging the massive movement of Syrian refugees in the direction of Europe, Putin is upending the decades of EU expansion and looks like contributing to its political instability, and even its possible collapse. Why? Because the EU developed an imperial posture of constant expansion, far too far and far too fast, including countries that arguably had been within the Russian sphere of influence within living memory. When the EU began to include countries like Serbia, Roumania and Bulgaria and the three Baltic countries, when it toyed with Ukrainian membership, and when NATO talked about the ring of rocket installations at the Russian border, this was all too much for the Russians. Their paranoia about their borders cannot be exaggerated, nor their resentment at the collapse of their own empire (make Russia great again). Think Napoleon, Hitler and earlier invaders. Now we have Brexit and a wave of very right wing governments popping up in Eastern Europe, driven by what seems to people as a wave of unwelcome and destabilising moslem immigration. From the Russian point of view the cost of the Syrian bombers must be well worth the price.

What has this to do with Epicureanism? Well, as an Epicurean I would not have provoked the Russian bear, but tried to woo it and be inclusive. I would not have so obviously taken advantage of its weakness since the fall of Communism. Brussels has been really ill-advised.