A telephone number for Henry Kissinger

When the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) enters op-ed pieces, an anecdote invariably pops up: In 1973, Henry Kissinger, then US secretary of state, supposedly complained that "Europe" did not exist as there was no single telephone number to call.

This story is apocryphal. Actually Kissinger complained because the first experiment in foreign policy co-ordination, the so-called European Policy Co-operation (EPC) did NOT work. Rather than speaking to one partner on the phone,...