Kaja Kallas' shocking lack of historical literacy

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has consistently demonstrated a reductive and simplistic approach to geopolitics that betrays a serious lack of strategic depth and historical knowledge for such a critical role. Her failure is symptomatic of a broader decline of European statecraft.

Reacting to the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the military parade in Beijing dedicated to the victory over fascism in World War II, attended by dozens of leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kallas expressed that it was "news" to her that China and Russia were among the victors who defeated Nazism and fascism

This is not a minor gaffe; it is a shocking lack of historical literacy. The Soviet Union (whose primary successor state is Russia) suffered over 20 million casualties in the Great Patriotic War, a sacrifice that, in alliance with the United States and Britain, fundamentally broke the back of the Nazi war machine. China, for its part, endured immense suffering in a brutal conflict with Japan that was a crucial, though often overlooked in the West, theater of World War II. China puts its death toll at 20 million. To be unaware of this is to be ignorant of the foundational architecture of the entire post-war order.

To compound this, in a bizarre caricature, she characterized the Chinese as “very good at technology but not that good in social sciences, while the Russians are super good in social sciences but bad at technology." It surely must be alarming that the EU's top diplomat would present this juvenile dichotomy as a legitimate lens through which to view two of the most complex and serious strategic challenges facing the continent.

Kallas’ statements were so egregious that they prompted an uncharacteristically direct and harsh rebuke from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, a move that signals a worrisome degradation of the EU’s diplomatic standing.

This primitive understanding is now being operationalized into a dangerously rigid foreign policy. Under the leadership of Kallas's European External Action Service (EEAS) and Ursula von der Leyen's European Commission, the EU has systematically severed every channel of communication with Russia. In Brussels, there are no behind-the-scenes diplomatic dialogues, no backchannel explorations, and not even engagement at the think-tank level behind closed doors. The official position is an absolutist moral stance: we do not talk to Putin, a war criminal.

This policy is not just strategically naive; it is laughably inconsistent. The same institutions maintain deep, continuous engagement with Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes. The EU's floundering response to the war in Gaza laid bare this incoherence: aside from principled stands taken by Spain, Ireland, and Slovenia, the bloc has failed to impose any meaningful costs on Israel.

The selective application of the moral principles by the EU masks a strategy of total disengagement with Russia. By refusing all contact, the EU voluntarily blinds and deafens itself, ceding all initiative and forfeiting any ability to probe for weaknesses, explore off-ramps, or even accurately gauge the adversary’s disposition. This is not statecraft; it is self-imposed paralysis.

The EU’s strategic abdication stands in stark contrast to the complex reality of modern global diplomacy. What we witnessed in Beijing was not a formation of some sort of a Chinese-led anti-Western bloc, but a convergence of interests among non-Western powers on two key fronts: minimizing the impact of U.S. secondary sanctions and building independence from the dollar-dominated financial system. For countries like China, India, and Russia, this is not primarily about opposing the West, but rather asserting sovereignty and creating strategic autonomy. They are resisting Washington's ability to unilaterally dictate global economic terms, a concern that resonates far beyond any single alliance.

This is a strategy of multi-vectorism, not monolithic opposition. Nations like Turkey (a member of NATO but cooperating with Russia) and India (balancing ties with the West, China, and Russia) are skillfully playing this game. Even China itself practices it, supporting Russia economically while simultaneously attempting to strengthen ties with Europe.

Russia, largely isolated from the West due to its war in Ukraine, is forced to lean into its Eastern vector, as evidenced by new energy agreements with China. However, this is a pragmatic adaptation, not an ideological marriage. The Kremlin would likely reactivate the Western pivot if offered sufficient economic incentives and political concessions, such as acquiescing to Moscow’s core war aims in Ukraine (namely, recognizing de facto its territorial gains and securing Ukraine’s neutrality, i.e. non-membership in NATO) and lifting all sanctions.

It is currently politically untenable for the West to extend such concessions. Even so, Putin went to meet with Donald Trump in Alaska, which shows his willingness to at least partially restore the Western vector through working bilaterally with Washington. Hence, his visit to Beijing was not any more “anti-American” than his visit to Alaska was “anti-Chinese.”

This pragmatic, multi-vector strategy is not confined to non-Western powers. In fact, it presents a profound internal contradiction for the EU itself, where member states Hungary and Slovakia stand as rare examples of attempting this approach within the bloc. Prime Ministers Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico have consistently advocated for — and practiced — a foreign policy that seeks to maintain open channels with Moscow and Beijing, arguing for diplomacy over perpetual confrontation and emphasizing the severe economic costs of decoupling for European economies.

Yet, rather than engaging with this strategic perspective, the dominant EU narrative simply dismisses them as Putin sympathizers. This refusal leaves the bloc with a foreign policy that is neither coherently values-driven nor pragmatically effective. It is stuck in a moralizing limbo, exemplified by the likes of Kallas and von der Leyen.

Alarmingly, as the rest of the world hedges, the EU is not only refusing to do so but is rather actively increasing its strategic dependence on a single, increasingly disinterested, partner: the United States. Examples abound: the one-sided trade deal; the humiliating supplication to Trump on Ukraine; the detached-from-reality discussions on the “coalition of the willing” providing "security guarantees" to Ukraine that the EU and UK are utterly incapable of fulfilling without American military might; the U.S.-backed snapback of UN Security Council sanctions on Iran, an act that directly contravenes European economic and security interests by increasing the likelihood of a new war between Israel and Iran and pushing Tehran further into the arms of the Russia and China.

This lack of strategic autonomy is all the more damning as even the United States, despite its rhetoric, is undergoing a pragmatic reassessment of its global positioning.

If Europe is to navigate the treacherous waters of the 21st century, its leaders must show they possess some basic understanding of the great powers with which they must contend rather than the kind of cartoonish mindset propagated by Kallas and her ilk. The unbearable lightness of the current approach will leave Europe not as a protagonist in the shaping an emergent global order, but rather as its helpless, disoriented, and increasingly irrelevant spectator.