Fico Is Spot On: What Is Mrs. Kallas For?

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico enjoys being blunt. He’s good at it, too. When, on January 23rd, he publicly asked what purpose Kaja Kallas serves as the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, the Brussels clique probably dismissed it as the provocation of an unruly leader. And yet, Fico was posing an entirely reasonable question—one that goes to the heart of Europe’s foreign policy dysfunction. In an era defined by the global generalisation of conflict, the collapse of deterrence, and accelerating geopolitical fragmentation, Kallas is remarkable only for her perfect balance of irrelevance and pomposity. 

Indeed, what is Mrs. Kallas for?  The Commission’s pretend foreign minister is so diplomatically isolated that major actors refuse to engage with her. As Russians, Ukrainians, and Americans discuss an end to the continent’s bloodiest land conflict since 1945, the only imaginable way for the EU to participate in the talks is by electing a special EU envoy from scratch—no European capital actually thinks that the Kremlin would ever accept to sit with Kallas, whose penchant for outrageous, infantile, and undiplomatic behaviour has become a cause célèbre around the world. The Russians have publicly said as much, accusing Kallas and her team of being “incompetent” and “illiterate.” And so have the Americans, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeatedly refusing to meet with the EU foreign affairs chief more than once. Indeed, whereas the Lisbon Treaty specifically established the position of High Representative for Foreign Affairs with the goal of increasing Brussels’ ability to participate in world affairs, Kallas’ immaturity and ineptitude have relevantly contributed to making the Europeans a non-player in the resolution of a war fought in their backyard. 

This marginalisation of Kallas is not accidental or unexpected. It is the inevitable consequence of Kallas’ approach. Instead of acting as a mere coordinator and facilitating compromise among 27 member states whose geopolitical interests are profoundly different, she has adopted the language and posture of a partisan, emotionally committed actor. Her approach has consistently been dominated more by empty sloganeering than by a prudent, cold assessment of reality as it is. She has persistently refused negotiations “until Russia is defeated”, becoming one of the main mouthpieces of the very type of empty-headed drivel that brought Ukraine—and Europe—to their current predicament. Her cringe Cato cosplay rendered her unacceptable as an interlocutor to one side of the war and useless to the other. Worse still was her toxic mix of sanctimony and hypocrisy: not many have forgotten how corporations held by her husband continued to prosper in the Russian market even as Kallas, then Estonia’s prime minister, called for ever harsher anti-Russian sanctions.

The clearest example of this performative, counterproductive diplomacy is her backing of the so-called Russian war crimes tribunal initiative. Roughly €10 million of EU-linked funding has been earmarked for the creation of a special legal mechanism intended to prosecute Russian officials for crimes committed in Ukraine. This has been ludicrously presented as a landmark step towards accountability. This is nonsense. Not a single sane person in the world actually believes this multi-million-euro farce will result in arrests, trials, or enforceable judgements. Russia, obviously, does not recognise the court’s jurisdiction. The defendants will never appear before this Brusselian theater. Non-Western powers have shown no interest in endorsing it. Neither has the U.S., focused, as it is, on real diplomacy with the Russians to bring the war to an end. The whole thing is a charade to soothe a European political class still in disbelief at the sheer scale of its miscalculations. 

But all this empty signalling comes at a very real—and palpable—cost. By institutionalising a process that presupposes the permanent criminalisation of the Kremlin leadership, the EU further reduces Moscow’s incentives for a compromise while making negotiations harder, not easier. Of course, that is the exact purpose of the initiative: to, once again, sabotage peace efforts and keep the war going for a few extra months in the hope that, come the November midterms, the U.S. Democrats retake both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Trump becomes a lame duck president, and the transatlantic, globalist, pro-war consensus finally returns to power. But such manoeuvres are clever, not wise—Trump isn’t only trying to bring the Ukraine war to an end in order to refocus on China and engage in a grand neo-Kissingerian attempt to disentangle Moscow from Beijing; he is doing it because he correctly understands that Ukraine is utterly exhausted. Kallas’ antics aim to save Kyiv from a bitter compromise, but they may instead lead to Ukraine’s collapse and actual capitulation.

Kallas’ job is to be a diplomat. But her temperament couldn’t be more ill suited for it. A zealot, she is wholly lacking in that most diplomatic of skills: the ability to look at problems from all angles, therefore crafting solutions that all could, at least, not be offended by. The purpose of foreign policy is not moral purification; it is to secure tangible interests as well as they can be secured in the existing balance of power. In this context, with a war raging in Europe that involves a nuclear-armed power, the odds are even higher: her mission is to prevent catastrophe. With Russian and NATO forces operating in ever-closer proximity, drones crossing borders, and the risks of escalation multiplying, Europe cannot afford a foreign policy chief whose primary output is press statements and girl-boss psychodrama.

Fico’s pugnacious attack on Kallas will not earn him friends in Brussels, though he has none anyway. But the reason it will hurt the most is that everyone knows it to be true: the EU, indeed, currently has no foreign policy leadership worthy of the name. Kallas does not command the authority to negotiate, the credibility to mediate, or the flexibility to adapt to our rapidly changing world. Uninspired and uninspiring, she is not shaping events; she is reacting to them. 

What is Mrs. Kallas for, then? These are dangerous days—certainly the most dangerous in many decades. Today, Europe needs a diplomat capable of keeping channels open, managing power realities, reducing the risk of continental war, listening to all, understanding all, and talking to all. Times such as ours require statecraft, not theatrics; reason, not emotion; reality, not illusions. They certainly have no need for Mrs. Kallas.