At the age of 4, a future great director had his very personal interpretation of the red Riding Hood fairy tale: “Before entering the woods you have to take the wolf by the hand”. If diplomacy is “the ability to maintain relationships with susceptible people”, we are there: in a fairytale world of anthropomorphic wolves it is only right to mediate between the bad fame of the wolf and its hunger.

Ursula von der Leyen had the opposite instinct. When on September 1, 2022 a wolf killed his beloved pony, a continental crusade against that species called off (here). Three years later, the president of the European Commission translated its anti-lupo resentment in an analogous anti-Russian feeling.

Of course, it must not be easy at all to remain centered and balanced, working elbow in elbow with the current “high representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy”, Kaja Kallas, whose grandmother was deported to Siberia at the time of the Soviet regime. Someone wrote that the granddaughter tied it to the finger.

In this historical phase, relying on an Estonian foreign minister is comparable to a cardiovascular system that, in polar temperatures, continues to pump at full speed in defense of the ends (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania …), instead of reducing the flow to safeguard its vital organs (Germany, France, Italy …).

Instead of restoring luster to traditional diplomatic qualities to manage the neighbor who susceptible and armed to the teeth, Europe has chosen to shake its rusty iron fist, damn it from the velvet glove.

Moral of the Fable:

Russia is the wolf. Baroness Ursula is the Tagliagna. Value of the ax, 80 billion euros. To diplomacy, red riding hood. Agenda, grandmother’s photo on the desk.

PS: in 1959 the mother and great -grandmother of Kaja Kallas were also deported to Siberia. For rhetorical needs, in the article I only mentioned the grandmother.