So to the settling of scores. One year from leaving office Barack Obama has, in an epochal interview with the Atlantic, spelt out what he thinks of his European allies. The terms are not generous.

Much has been made of Obama’s comments about David Cameron having been “distracted” away from the focus Libya deserved, post-intervention; and of his remark about Nicolas Sarkozy wanting to “trumpet” French military action over the skies of Benghazi in 2011. But these are small twists, minute irritants – expect PR officers to smooth them over. The key message was elsewhere, and it was much more powerful. It came when Obama spoke of Europeans as “free riders” of the global order and of American might.

The president describes his European allies as powers unable or unwilling to match fine words with resources; prone to asking the US to act but incapable of committing themselves to the efforts required for a sustainable outcome. The lesson is clear: an era has passed, and Europe must now become an effective autonomous actor on major security issues if it is to survive as a stable, liberal, democratic, rules-based entity.

That is not to say that the US role within Nato, as a security guarantor to Europe, will altogether disappear. Obama has never wanted that and neither, one suspects, would his successor. But a page has been turned and the US can no longer be relied upon to address the chaos that is spilling out of the Arab world, and weakening the central tenets of Europe’s liberal order.

Reaching that point where Europe can assume a wider regional security role, and create the foundations of a genuine European foreign and security policy, is a tall order – but it is a task it can shirk no longer. The first requirement will be diagnostic: evaluating how we ended up in this dismal situation in the first place. Europe’s big three powers are Britain, France and Germany. Each carries a large share of responsibility.

Of course Obama has an agenda here. This is a man who scripted his own narrative by writing his autobiography at the age of 43, so one should not be surprised that he is now burnishing his legacy. But whatever one may now think of his foreign policy record, Obama was clear from day one that the days of US “humanitarian” interventionism were over. Under his watch, the US has acted abroad only when its national security interests are deemed at stake – witness the drone programme. Syria never qualified as a national security issue in Obama’s eyes. Libya just did, but mostly because he was pushed to act by members of his administration and by European and Middle Eastern allies. It’s not the decision to prevent a massacre in Benghazi that he regrets; it’s the lack of “follow-up” from Europeans, who are, after all, just across the Mediterranean from Libya.

The crux here is geography. Europe is on the doorstep of the Arab world; America isn’t. Obama feels no guilt about dropping Libya off his radar screen and watching it turn into a “mess” – but Europeans should. Syria has been a European security issue all along. It is sad that this became obvious only when massive refugee flows started pouring on to the continent, and when terrorism struck.

Much has been said about the failure of the European Union to cope with or react to the migrant crisis. More should be said about why Europe failed to play any role in preventing it from happening in the first place. There just never was a European capacity to weigh in on the Syrian crisis. Europe basically outsourced the problem and the search for a solution to the US, which later, in effect, teamed up with Russia, arguably making things worse.

Europeans never got their act together in framing a policy on Syria. Britain has been inward-looking for years, a malaise recently exacerbated by the referendum debate. France has betrayed its own proud claims to be the nation of the rights of man – la patrie des droits de l’homme – and a pillar of the European project by all but turning against Angela Merkel as she struggled to organise a joint approach to the migrant crisis. Britain and France have left Germany stranded with the problem. They have been unable to show true solidarity, and unwilling to support a wider European resettlement programme, which – as all the NGOs and credible campaigners remind us – is the only rational and humane solution.

But the blame isn’t limited to Britain and France. To borrow from Obama’s vocabulary, Germany also has been “distracted” – for years reluctant to deal with the burning international security issues that have appeared on Europe’s southern doorstep. In 2011, Germany abstained in the UN security council on Libya, standing apart from any notion of common European purpose. In 2013, when Britain and France were ready to act in Syria, Germany made clear it would have nothing to do with the crisis, despite the fact chemical weapons had been used on civilians. Germany turned a blind eye to Syria for too long. Merkel has been a moral force on refugees, and active on Russia, but she has not been a strategic force for Europe when it comes to the problems in the Middle East and North Africa. That omission has cost Europe dear.

Will anything now change? There is a glimmer of hope. Germany has beefed up its policies on European defence in recent times. The EU is preparing a document on its strategic security outlook, to be presented later this year. Britain, it must be hoped, will eventually return from its position of being absent without leave on the European challenges, if and when the looming referendum hurdle is successfully overcome. For without Britain, France and Germany working together, there can be no European leverage on any foreign crisis affecting the continent. Nor can there be any reasonable leverage on other Europeans.

It’s because the big three stuck together that a common stance has been maintained on Russia and Ukraine. The same can be said of Europe’s stance on Iran. The Syrian crisis now needs similar strategic European thinking, not just the sticking plaster measures we see to control migrant flows. It is late in the day, but not too late.

Obama’s warning about European “free riding” may be partly about deflecting criticism against his own inability to stop mass atrocities. He can be criticised for that. But Europeans haven’t done any better. When the president says the “free-riding” must come to an end, Europe must treat that as a wake-up call. And if not now, when?