At a pre-G20 meeting of Foreign Ministers in Atlanta Kaja Kallas, the EU’s Foreign Affairs coordinator was choking on the presence of Foreign Minister Lavrov. She said:
We were talking about the big geopolitical crisis, including Ukraine, and we were able to address Sergei Lavrov head-on with this. Of course, he put forward a lot of lies, a lot of false narratives that we were also able to then rebuke. [1]
Now, I know that English is not Kaja Kallas’ first language. But even so, she speaks at C1/C2 level and there is quite a big difference between ‘refute’, which is what she means, and ‘rebuke’ which is what she said, according to AFP quoted by multiple outlets.
I hope this observation needs no elucidation – but, just in case. If she “refuted” Lavrov’s “lies and false narratives” that would mean she had confronted them with reason and evidence and had by this means shot them down. This, one imagines, is what she would like to do. But – what came out is she “rebuked” Lavrov. A “rebuke” is a telling off, from a position of superitority. It is an expression of disapproval. A “rebuke” is not about reason and evidence. And, sadly, this is precisely the reality. Kallas, von der Leyen, and the rest of them “rebuke” – that is disapprove – of Russia because Russia is not doing what they want Russia to do. But, “refute Lavrov” – they can’t, because that would imply reasoned arguments, empirical data and so on. And they steadfastly won’t even enter that territory – the territory of empirical data and rational arguments, (because, largely, they would ‘lose’ the argument, given that Russia has strong areguments about their legitimate seeurity interests, non-fulfillment of the European-backed Minsk agreements, and so on). They “rebuke” and pass it off as “refuting”.
Finally – shouldn’t the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affaris have a more profound intellectual model than “big geopolitical crisis”. We can live in hope.
Notes