A Balkan map for the road to Damascus?

It is two years since the EU imposed an arms embargo and other sanctions on Syria “to achieve a change of policy by the Syrian leadership withoutfurther delay”. Since then, over 80,000 people have been killed, over a million have sought refuge in neighbouring countries and over four million are internally displaced. And in that time, the EU has issued well over 100 statements and applied 21 further sets of sanctions, without any visible impact. If the highest wisdom of a state is masterly inactivity, this is the opposite: impotent hyperactivity!