For a reliable metric to assess the progressive decline of the European Union, and particularly its cognitive dissonance with regards to international politics, one should look no further than the recent statements of foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.
The type of relentless Russophobia that Kallas displays has become, sadly, essential to the resume of any official who aspires to a successful career within the EU’s institutions.
Indeed, degrading the relationship between Moscow and Brussels is a top priority for the EU, even as its attention is needed on other important challenges, from the Middle East to Africa and beyond. To tackle them properly requires expertise in international relations, along with a deep understanding of 20th-century history, in which many of today’s crises find their origins.
Guiding a complex institution like the EU, in a world made ever-more complex amid the Great Power competition and a massive number of asymmetrical challenges, also requires a reasonable amount of vision and commonsense. Unfortunately, Kallas seems to lack all of these characteristics.
After the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Tianjin, China, which was followed by a military parade in Beijing celebrating the victory over fascism in World War II – attended by dozens of dignitaries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin – Kallas said it was news to her that China and Russia were among the countries that defeated Germany and Japan (ie, the forces of Nazism and fascism).
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If I was the president of the European Commission, I would have fired her straightaway for unfitness to the role. Should I imagine a new job for her, it would be as a library archivist obliged to dedicate at least three hours a day to 20th-century history books, with compulsory monthly exams.
Any serious EU journalist should regularly ask their leaders how, under their watch, such a disgraceful choice was made.
Immense suffering
For the record, the Soviet Red Army crushed the German army (Wehrmacht) on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945 and liberated Berlin. The Soviet Union – nowadays Russia, a clarification that is necessary amid the remote possibility that Kallas may read this article – suffered more than 20 million casualties. The siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg) – a city not far from Kallas’s Estonian hometown – alone cost the Soviets more than one million people.
While it is true that the US and UK were instrumental in the victory of the Second World War in Europe, the country that literally destroyed the German war machine was the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. It suffices to note how many German armoured divisions were deployed on the Western Front after the US/UK landed in Normandy in 1944, compared with how many were deployed on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1945.
While Russian officials are accustomed to Kallas’s misrepresentations of their country, Chinese dignitaries were unable to conceal their shock
China endured similar immense suffering during the war, putting its death toll at 20 million. Before and throughout the Pacific War between the US and Japan between 1941 and 1945, China engaged at least one-third of the Imperial Japanese Army. Without China keeping hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers engaged inside its own territory, the US defeat of Japan would have been significantly more complicated and costly.
While Russian officials are accustomed to Kallas’s misrepresentations of their country, Chinese dignitaries were unable to conceal their shock at her recent remarks. A foreign ministry spokesperson issued an unusually harsh rebuke, saying her comments were “full of ideological bias”. This episode will not help efforts to put relations between the EU and China back on track.
What Kallas lacks in historical literacy, however, she makes up for in double standards. Having had no problem in severing all EU ties with Russia, she is now attempting the same with China – while apparently feeling no embarrassment in maintaining close relations with Israel, which is under scrutiny for genocide at the International Court of Justice, and whose leader has been indicted by the International Criminal Court.
Diplomacy abandoned
If double standards could be monetised, the EU would have enough resources for the green transition, post-Covid recovery plans, and defence spending on par with the astronomical American budget – while still maintaining intact all its social programmes.
Under the watch of Kallas and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU has become totally irrelevant on the world stage.
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It followed the US and UK down a very dangerous slope on the Ukraine war, by completely forgetting a political tool known as diplomacy and conventional wisdom, which cautions against demonising an adversary with whom, amid hard military realities, one must ultimately reach an understanding – particularly when the alternative is devastating and potentially catastrophic warfare.
Then, as often happens, the combative EU leaders were left in the lurch by their increasingly unreliable ally across the Atlantic Ocean, who recently rolled out the red carpet for Putin.
After having endured this humiliation, European leaders inexplicably doubled down by accepting a summons to the Oval Office, and sat around President Donald Trump’s desk like turbulent high schoolers whose principal has gathered them for a reprimand. This is not even to mention the deal Von der Leyen agreed to earlier in the summer with the US president after he played a round of golf in Scotland.
Unfortunately, it seems this is not over yet. EU leaders should brace for the next – and far bigger – shock they could face when the Trump administration issues its new national security strategy, which according to some rumours, will primarily focus on domestic and regional threats, reversing course on the last 80 years of US commitments abroad.
Hopefully, one day historians will shed light on the arcane reasons which, last year, and in such a critical moment of the old continent’s geopolitical position, pushed the EU leaders to hand he architecture of their common foreign policy to such an unskilled and untalented personality.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
