Kaja Kallas has done it again. The EU’s top foreign policy high representative called China a “cancer” that needs decisive treatment with chemotherapy rather than temporary relief with morphine. This is the latest in a series of bizarre remarks that have unsettled her colleagues and led to the rapid loss of respect by her diplomatic counterparts. 

But it’s not the first time this has happened. An arrogant mindset of European exceptionalism is deeply engrained in the Brussels mindset. That has caused a series of diplomatic blunders that are increasingly making the EU irrelevant in global affairs, most recently by being excluded entirely from the three way ceasefire negotiations between Russia, Ukraine and the US on bringing that conflict to an end. Europe should have been at the heart of those negotiations, especially as it is paying for the war now, but it wasn’t even in the room. 

Speaking at the annual Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia, the EU’s chief diplomat said Europe has “a very clear understanding of the diagnosis of the disease” when it comes to China’s “coercive economic practices, unfair competition, and dominance in critical sectors such as batteries, chemicals, shipbuilding and raw materials.”

“If you have a very difficult disease, if you have cancer, you have two choices. Either increase the morphine or you start chemotherapy,” Kallas said. “Increasing morphine is not painful, but chemotherapy is,” she said, meaning that some countries wanted to avoid painful decisions and preferred handing out subsidies for European companies to compete with China. Kallas said this did not address the “underlying problems” of China’s policies.

Her comments are strikingly out of sync with the changing thrust of European diplomacy following the break up in the decades-old transatlantic alliance following the advent of the Trump administration over a year ago. As US-EU trade relations falter, EU leaders have been flying to Beijing to warm up ties and cut new deals to balance the decay of US commercial relations. Last March, US President Donald Trump met with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and imposed a punitive one-way deal that saw the US slap 15% tariffs on key EU goods, but left US imports untaxed. At the same time von der Leyen agreed to €750bn worth of US energy imports in a pledge analysts called delusional.

“Why would China be"cancer"? Because, in Kallas' own description, their companies are more competitive and this forces what she describes as a binary choice for the EU: "morphine" - subsidise EU companies - or "chemo", become more hostile to Chinese companies,” says political commentator and IntelliNews contributor Arnaud Bertrand.  

French President Emmanuel Macron led the charge to pivot to China in December to woo Chinese President Xi Jinping, but he made the same mistake as Kallas. He took a plane-load of top French businessmen but returned empty handed after he couldn’t resist lecturing the Chinese leader about his human rights record and “unfair business practice”. On his return he immediately threatened China with sanctions if it didn’t concede to Paris’ demands.

There is a long history of this lecturing in China. Both former US secretary of state Antony Blinken and US treasury secretary Janet Yellen did the same under the Biden administration, threatening sanctions if China didn’t open its markets. Former German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock did the same things during a working visit to Beijing a year earlier, where she rebuked the Chinese deputy foreign minister to his face in public comments for not intervening in the Russia-Ukraine war. He retorted that China had its own foreign policy that was determined in accordance with Chinese, not European, interests. Baerbock eventually left the German government and in a controversial decision was appointed to lead the UN General Assembly.

Kallas is being increasingly criticised as the EU flounders in its efforts to bring about a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine and being rude about China and Russia is not helping. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last year that the Kremlin would categorically refuse to negotiate with her if she were included in a negotiating team. That followed 2022 remarks saying she supported the idea of “dismembering” or breaking up Russia into small states and advocating a ban on Russian tourists in the EU. “Travel to the EU is a privilege, not a human right,” she said at the time.

But the single comment that probably did the most damage to EU-Russia relations was when Kallas said in September 2025 it was “news” to her that China and Russia were among the victors who defeated Nazism and fascism. Russia sacrificed 25mn men in WWII against about one million by all the other Allies combined and turned the tide at the battle of Stalingrad at enormous cost. To this day, the Russian victory over the Nazi invader is the source of enormous national pride in what Russians call the Great Patriotic war. Russian soldiers also took Berlin, liberated the prisoners of the concentration camps and recovered Hitler’s body after he killed himself in a Berlin bunker.

Kallas is increasingly being seen as a liability in EU foreign relations because of her fixation on campaigning against Russia and the belittling of both China and Russia. She has characterised 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”. Her own native Estonia is well-known as the inventor of the computer game Tetris and VOIP phone Skype, but not much else.

Her hyperbole has ruled her out from what should have been one of her most important tasks: representing Europe in ceasefire talks with Russia. The Kremlin considered her incompetent. Following the Victory Day parade this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the end of the war was “close” and said he was ready to talk to Europe for the first time, but ruled out negotiating with anyone that has been "spitting insults at us”. At the beginning of this year, Peskov categorically ruled out any negotiations with Kallas or the EU’s broader leadership, describing them as “incompetent” and lacking vision for the future.

To add to the other gaffes, this week Kallas also admitted that the EU doesn’t have a Middle East strategy as “there is too much going on there”.

“This comes among hundreds of similarly idiotic statements - basically every time she opens her mouth,” says Bertrand. “When you choose people like this to be your voice to the world, you deserve every ounce of irrelevance and mockery coming your way.”

In the jungle

This is not the first time a top EU diplomat has disparaged the rest of the world and emphasised Europe’s superiority. The mindset is deeply engrained amongst the Brussels elite. Kallas’ predecessor made exactly the same arrogant blunder. The former EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell caused outrage in a speech at the inauguration of the new European Diplomatic Academy in Bruges, Belgium, in October 2022 where he called Europeans “gardeners” and said everyone else is living in a “jungle”.

“Here, Bruges is a good example of the European garden. Yes, Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that humankind has been able to build - the three things together. And here, Bruges is maybe a good representation of beautiful things, intellectual life, wellbeing."

“The rest of the world ... is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden,” he said. “The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.”

The speech caused offence around the world. Borrell specifically said that Europeans have the right to go to this jungle and “should take care of it". But his sop to sovereignty was Europe should not just build walls (as they will never be high enough to keep the jungle out) but work to build gardens everywhere.

Within days the UAE summoned the acting head of the mission at the EU delegation home, demanding an explanation of what it said were “racist comments”.  The UAE foreign ministry said the remarks were “inappropriate and discriminatory” and “contribute to a worsening climate of intolerance and discrimination worldwide”, UAE state news agency (WAM) reported.

“The idea that Europe is a garden and the rest of the world is a jungle is rooted in the racial angst expressed by far-rightwing writers and talk show hosts such as Tucker Carlson in the Anglo-Saxon world. In American political discourse, this type of othering and rants on racial “replacement theories” and the so-called invasion of immigrants, found a resurgence with former [now current] President Donald Trump’s ascent to the Oval Office,” The Hill said in an op-ed the following week.

After days of mounting international backlash, Borrell was forced to climb down and apologised for his controversial remarks.

"Some have misinterpreted the metaphor as 'colonial Euro-centrism'," Borrell wrote in a blog post. "I am sorry if some have felt offended… My reference to 'jungle' has no racist, cultural or geographical connotation," the diplomat said. "Unfortunately, the 'jungle' is everywhere, including today in Ukraine."

Colonialism

As IntelliNews has reported, colonialism is alive and well. Despite all the progress, the developed world continues to export some 80% of its manufacturing, bleeding the developing world of its human capital wealth to enrich advanced societies in what has been politically dubbed “globalisation”.

It’s the same imperial model that Britain exploited in its empire days. Labour is done in emerging markets at a fraction of the cost of employing the native population to produce extremely cheap goods and so enriching the domestic population.

Trump’s liberation day tariffs have highlighted this model as the extraordinarily high tariffs he has proposed would cut the US off from manufacturing bases in Southeast Asia and an iPhone that costs $10 to make in China would cost $200 to make in the US, according to some estimates.

But this model is breaking down as the average wages in emerging markets rise thanks to explosive economic growth and the skill sets of labour in the emerging world improve and increasingly close the gap with the Global North workers.

The process is not finished. The unit cost to make a widget using 1kg of steel, one manpower hour and 100kW of electricity in Germany and the US is around $55 and $40 respectively, compared to only $16 in China, according to IntelliNews estimates.

And the flow of wealth is starting to reverse. After pouring money into innovation, cheap renewable power and access to raw material inputs, China is starting to leapfrog the West so that its goods are cheaper and better. China is now the dominant producer of EVs and clean energy equipment, but it seems to be adding another product category to this list every year. The colonial system that has been the basis of Global North wealth for centuries is now breaking down. The economic model where Germany made high quality engineered goods using cheap Russian power to become the Exportweltmeister is broken and cannot be repaired in the near term.

In the meantime, the rest of the world is racing ahead and increasingly ignoring the old world powers who are working hard to make themselves irrelevant.