Kaja Kallas exposes her diplomatic ineptitude as Europe cheerleads genocide. Ursula von der Leyen has hijacked EU foreign policy to serve a neocolonial, fascistic agenda, which Kallas has accepted.
In the process, the EU and its leaders have squandered its remaining moral capital and soft power on the global stage.
If Kaja Kallas were to rise to the level of an EU High Representative, she would need to overcome her visible insecurity and develop the kind of leadership presence that EU diplomacy is lacking at the moment.
There is a significant gap between today’s European diplomats and the former giants of French and German diplomacy. Dominique de Villepin, Hubert Védrine, Joschka Fischer, Hans-Dietrich Genscher—these were individuals who had a deep understanding of European place in the world and its power dynamics, and they could operate with a level of authority and weight that today’s ministers seem to lack.
Comparing Kaja Kallas to seasoned diplomats like Sergey Lavrov (Russia), Wang Yi (China), and India’s S. Jaishankar makes sense to question her immaturity for the position. As the Prime Minister of Estonia, Kallas wasn’t primarily a diplomat, though she certainly had some diplomatic experience, although in population and economy size, Estonia is comparable to a medium-sized Chinese city. However, the size of a country isn’t the determining factor. Smaller states such as Qatar and the UAE have emerged as powerhouses in modern diplomatic mediation, or medium-sized nations like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
Comparing Kallas with these seasoned figures, it’s hard to argue that she’s in their league at this moment. Her voice and body language do not carry the same kind of force, security, diplomatic knowledge and historical weight that figures like Gérard Araud, Jean-Marc Ayrault or Sigmar Gabriel once had.
If Kallas’s current diplomatic posture is marked by hesitation, uncertainty, and a weak grasp of international relations and European values set aside for obscure reasons, she might, in fact, be fairly representative—especially when compared to recent European diplomats like Jean-Noël Barrot, Annalena Baerbock, or even Liz Truss during her time as UK Foreign Secretary.
A meeting with Liz Truss was described in a to some geopolitical analysts by Sergey Lavrov and Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, as the most embarrassing day of Lavrov’s career—due to Truss’s lack of basic knowledge of foreign affairs, including the Minsk Agreements and even elementary geography, such as the location of the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, which constituted elements of their discussions.
European diplomacy today is in poor shape—and the same can be said of the U.S. For now, Poland’s Radosław Sikorski stands out as one of the betters positioned among his European peers.
By supporting a genocide and the burning of children in their tents in Gaza, Kaja Kallas is almost certain to face the International Court of Justice—alongside Ursula von der Leyen—as preparations for proceedings against both are already underway. In doing so, Kallas has not only helped destroy what remained of European moral capital and soft power, but by failing to oppose von der Leyen’s authoritarian and fascistic impulses, she has made herself fully complicit.
In her defence, I would urge Kallas to align more closely with European Council President António Costa—who holds the mandate to represent the EU internationally, not the Commission President—and to distance herself from the authoritarian instincts of Ursula von der Leyen, who is under investigation and facing a vote of no confidence in the European Parliament today over corruption allegations.
The question is whether Kallas has any chance of overcoming her limitations—or if her style and nature is fundamentally misaligned with the demands of the role.
Ricardo Martins ‒PhD in Sociology, specializing in International Relations and Geopolitics
