Kaja Kallas and the Iron Within

Churchill wasn't a hawk. FDR wasn't a hawk. Neither is KK.

Not once.

But atleast twice, Kaja Kallas has put western european leaders in their place.

Western Europe does harbor the urge to treat Eastern European nations as hapless buffer zones. But thanks to European leaders like former Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Czech President Peter Pavel, and a few others, the Western European grip on dictating Europe’s trajectory has considerably weakened. And that’s not a bad outcome at all.

Because it was Western European leadership that left the continent’s security architecture in tatters. It wasn’t even worth the paper it was written on, and full credit must be given to past German and French administrations. They assumed they knew better and got away with it.

In June 2021, just five months into her tenure as Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas faced Europe’s most powerful leader head-on.

With headlines warning of Russian troops massing near Ukraine, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel proposed inviting Vladimir Putin to an EU summit. Backed by French President Emmanuel Macron, Merkel aimed to push the plan through at a European Council meeting in Brussels.

Kallas refused to comply. “A summit on what?” she asked pointedly, challenging the room. Putin, she argued, was not to be trusted, let alone appeased. Several Eastern European leaders stood with her.

Merkel, lacking consensus, abandoned the idea. As she left, Macron, stunned by Kallas’ defiance, leaned toward her and asked, half-jokingly: “Will you still be prime minister tomorrow?”

What a farce it would have been: Putin at an EU summit, spinning propaganda, returning home to launch an attack, and toasting it all with his KGB cronies over vodka. Now it is the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel on a global book tour who is painfully explaining her policies that got Germany stuck so hard on Putin’s gas supplies. Kaja Kallas has resigned as the Prime Minister of Estonia to become Europe’s top diplomat.

EU’s top diplomat post is often seen as symbolic, with little real sway over European outcomes. Not for Kaja Kallas. The former lawyer knows that actions speak louder than words.

At the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., in July 2024, Hungary’s quasi-autocratic leader and Putin’s EU ally, Viktor Orbán, declared Ukraine should never join the alliance, plunging the room into silence.