The European Union named new leadership on Saturday. Yet the latest EU summit in Brussels was just another beauty contest with layers of geopolitical cosmetics, lacking any promise of a new beginning. After months of institutional paralysis, European leaders still find ways to rationalize why the EU is not ready to act. In the past year, national and European-level elections and then the summer break have left the EU in an extended freeze.

But Eurocratic excuses don’t stop the Earth from spinning. Wherever we look, we see…