There is a second dimension to this policy that runs into a buzz saw of European assumptions and beliefs: the security question. Poverty is one driver of migration to Europe, but what has turned a policy problem into an international crisis is the intersection of poverty and insecurity. It is the brutal war in Syria that has displaced millions of people from their homes and sent them streaming into refugee encampments from Amman to Budapest. It was the breakdown of order in post-intervention Libya that made the Libyan coast a point of embarkation for desperate refugees from Libya and farther south.

The humanitarian question of refugees and asylum seekers cannot be separated from the bankruptcy of Western security policy in Syria and Libya, and the bankruptcy of Western policy cannot be separated from the long-standing difficulties that many European states have in taking a responsible attitude toward questions of military security.

The utter failure of Western policy in both Libya and Syria has to be seen for what it is: not just a political blunder but a humanitarian crime. The feckless mix of intervention and indifference in Libya and the equally feckless failure to intervene in Syria have helped to trigger the flows of migrants that are overwhelming Europe’s institutions.