EU should beware Kallas' bias leading it astray

As both sides are apparently intent on striving for a favorable position in any future negotiations, which some believe may be on the cards with a new US administration due to take office next month, the fighting in Kursk has become another "meat-grinder" battle in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Despite the bloody engagement of attrition, and the huge loss of life already in the hostilities, some armchair fighters in Brussels seem hell-bent on insisting that there will not be peace unless it is won through victory on the battlefield.

Russian President Vladimir Putin left no room for doubt in his year-end meeting with the media last week that he is open to cease-fire talks with Ukraine. Yet the European Union's top diplomat Kaja Kallas seems intent on stymieing that possibility. Instead of welcoming a cessation of the hostilities in Europe and seeking to facilitate negotiations, the new EU high representative of foreign affairs and security policy has chosen instead to take a hard line insisting Putin is not sincere and trying to drag China into the fray.

Although the Ukrainian leader reportedly urged Kallas to restrain her criticism of China over the Ukraine crisis during her high-profile visit to Kyiv earlier this month after taking office, along with other senior EU officials, she apparently has no intention of toning down her blame-China rhetoric.

She seems to believe that China is a key the EU can use to unlock the incoming US administration's tariff threats, presumably with the notion that having the same "enemy" should naturally make the EU and US partners in arms.

But her approach of sacrificing the EU's relations with China to save the EU's economic and trade ties with the United States will, as Kyiv correctly warned, isolate the world's second-largest economy and do no party any good.

After his initial tariff threats toward the EU after winning the US presidential election last month, the US president-elect posted on social media last week: "I told the European Union that they must make up their tremendous deficit with the United States by the large-scale purchase of our oil and gas. Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!"

While admitting there are no winners in trade wars, Kallas told reporters before a summit of EU leaders in which they discussed the 27-nation bloc's place in the world and its relations with the new US administration and China on Thursday, "If the US is looking at China, then we should stick together — Europe and the United States. If we have a trade war between the US and the EU, then who is laughing out loud? It is China."

If she admits a tariff war with the US hurts both sides' interests, how can she avoid an equally disastrous tariff war with China from hurting the common interests of the EU and China, something her policy necessarily leads to. Who will be laughing out loud then?

The EU has wrongly started imposing comprehensive sanctions on Chinese entities and individuals over the Ukraine crisis since Kallas took office. That's a dangerous sign that the EU is alienating an otherwise reliable partner it can work with for the same objectives of not only ending the Ukraine crisis as early as possible but also establishing a lasting, workable and balanced peace mechanism in Europe.

The US president-elect has demanded the NATO countries increase their defense spending to more than double the current target to about 5 percent of their gross domestic product, which is almost a mission impossible given their difficulties in fulfilling a 2 percent commitment, hinting that is a condition for the US continuing to stay in the organization. The EU should evaluate the rationality and feasibility of sacrificing China relations in the belief that it will put itself in the new US administration's good books.

The EU China hawks should also be reminded that the incoming US leader has recently said Beijing and Washington can work together "to solve all of the problems of the world".