Outrage Is Not a Strategy

I. Two Truths That Cannot Coexist

There are two sentences, both true, that one almost never reads in the same paragraph.

The first: Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine is a crime. A crime against international law, against the territorial integrity of a sovereign state, against the civilian population being bombed, displaced, and killed. There is nothing to relativise, nothing to "contextualise", nothing to understand. It is a crime.

The second: Russia will not disappear. 144 million people, 17 million square kilometres, resources for generations, 6,000 nuclear warheads, a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. No sanctions regime, no moral condemnation, and no amount of justified outrage will change this. Russia is a geographical, demographic, and geopolitical reality. Realities do not vanish because you condemn them.

The European debate has chosen to speak only the first sentence. Anyone who adds the second is suspected of relativising the first. This is not merely intellectually dishonest. It is strategically suicidal.

II. The Geography of Ruthlessness

While Europe tends to its outrage, the rest of the world acts.

India buys Russian oil in record quantities — discounted, via tanker fleets, through intermediaries no one controls. India's oil imports from Russia have multiplied since 2022. The country calls it "diversified energy supply". What it is: a multi-billion business filling Russia's war chest. India faces no sanctions for this. It is too large, too important, too useful as a counterweight to China.

China deepens its strategic partnership with Moscow — not despite the war but because the war intensifies Russia's dependence on Beijing. Chinese companies fill the gaps left by Western firms. Chinese technology replaces Western components. Chinese banks process transactions that Western banks no longer handle. What sanctions drove out of Russia, China picked up.

Turkey plays all sides simultaneously — NATO member, drone supplier to Ukraine, Russian trading partner, transit country for sanctioned goods. Ankara calls this diplomacy. What it is: Machiavelli's textbook, live and in colour.

The Gulf states invest. Brazil distances itself. South Africa positions itself as "neutral". Half the world continues to do business with Russia — openly or covertly, officially or through detours, but it does.

And Europe? Europe gives speeches.

III. The Schröder Fallacy and Its Opposite

Gerhard Schröder, in a guest column for the Berliner Zeitung, warned against the "demonisation of Russia as an eternal enemy" and advocated a return to Russian gas imports. Outrage erupted across Europe. Estonia's foreign minister called it appalling. Ukraine accused Schröder of having blood on his hands. Members of every party in the Bundestag competed in condemnation.

The outrage is justified — but for the wrong reason.

The problem with Schröder is not that he thinks about the future of German-Russian relations. The problem is that he does so as a corrupt lobbyist who collected millions from Russian energy companies, and whose "peace policy" is in reality the defence of his business model. Schröder discredits a question that must be asked by asking it from the dirtiest conceivable motives.

But Europe's reaction commits the opposite error: it dismisses the question because the questioner is corrupt. This is a logical fallacy. The origin of an argument says nothing about its validity. And the question — what will Europe's relationship with Russia look like in ten, twenty, thirty years? — is real, pressing, and is not answered by condemning Schröder.

IV. What the Americans Understood

Throughout their entire history, the United States have conducted foreign policy as interest-based policy — without sentimentality, without outrage culture, without moral debates that paralyse action.

America negotiated with the Soviet Union — while the Cold War raged. Nixon flew to Beijing — while the Cultural Revolution was still costing millions of lives. The US has done business with Saudi Arabia — while Saudi terrorists brought down the Twin Towers. They have negotiated with Iran, with North Korea, with the Taliban. Not because they approve of these regimes. But because geopolitics is not moral philosophy.

Trump is now negotiating with Moscow — about Ukraine, about European security architecture, about spheres of influence. And he does so without Europe. Not because he hates Europe, but because Europe has made itself incapable of action through its own culture of outrage. Those who cannot negotiate are not invited. It is that simple.

Europe is outraged that Washington and Moscow are negotiating over its future. But what is the alternative? Those not at the table are on the menu. That is not Trump. That is geopolitics for five thousand years.

V. The Illusion of Permanent Isolation

Sanctions are a tool. They are not a condition. Every sanctions regime in history — every single one — was either lifted, circumvented, or eroded until it became ineffective. Cuba. Iran. North Korea. Iraq. South Africa. Rhodesia. The question is never whether sanctions end. The question is under which conditions.

European sanctions against Russia are the most comprehensive regime ever imposed on a major economy. And they work — partially. Russia's access to Western technology is restricted. The financial sector is impeded. The rouble has suffered, though less than hoped. But the Russian economy has not collapsed. It has restructured — away from the West, towards China, India, the Gulf states, Turkey.

Every year that passes reduces Europe's leverage. Every year in which other countries fill the gaps Europe left behind, alternative trade routes, financial systems, and partnerships grow. If Europe decides in five years to talk to Russia again, it will find that Russia has acquired other interlocutors — less moral but far more reliable.

The irony is bitter: by deciding to isolate Russia, Europe is in the long run isolating itself.

VI. What Comes after Putin

Putin will not rule forever. He is 73 years old. Russian men have a life expectancy of 68 — statistically, he has already won. But biology is not negotiable, not even for autocrats.

The question Europe does not ask, because it is perceived as betrayal of Ukraine: what comes next? And what does Europe want when that moment arrives?

There are three scenarios. First: Putin's successor is a hardliner, worse than Putin, more nationalist, more aggressive. For this, Europe needs military deterrence — RIEGEL, not Leopard tanks. Second: Putin's successor is a pragmatist seeking economic stabilisation and willing to compromise. For this, Europe needs a negotiating offer — not outrage but architecture. Third: chaos, disintegration, power struggle — the most dangerous scenario in a country with 6,000 nuclear warheads. For this, Europe needs crisis management, communication channels, and relationships that must be established today.

In none of the three scenarios does outrage help. In all three, preparation does.

VII. What This Is Not an Excuse For

I must draw a line here, and it must be sharp, because otherwise it will be blurred.

Nothing I write is an excuse for Putin's war. Nothing is a relativisation of Ukraine's suffering. Nothing is an argument for ceasing support for Ukraine. Ukraine is defending its existence as a nation, and it has every right to be supported — militarily, economically, politically.

But supporting Ukraine and thinking strategically about Russia are not opposites. They are prerequisites for each other. For the best support for Ukraine is not endless warfare without a peace perspective, but a European security system that includes Ukraine and deters Russia from ever attacking again. Such a system requires that Europe has a conception of how it intends to deal with Russia in the long term — beyond "outrage for as long as necessary".

Ukraine itself will eventually have to negotiate. Every war ends at the negotiating table. The stronger Europe's position at that table, the better for Ukraine. And Europe's position is not strengthened by outrage but by architecture, alliances, and strategic depth.

VIII. The Hypocrisy of Values

There is a sentence European politicians love to say: "We act on the basis of values." In practice, it means: we are outraged about Russia but trade with China. We condemn Putin but court Erdoğan. We sanction Moscow but supply Saudi Arabia with weapons while it wages a war in Yemen that no one discusses. We demand human rights but conclude migration deals with dictators in North Africa.

"Values-based foreign policy" is not foreign policy. It is a PR instrument applied selectively — harsh towards enemies, soft towards useful partners. This would be acceptable if Europe admitted it. It would be realpolitik, and realpolitik is legitimate. But Europe does not admit it. It claims to stand for values and acts on interests. The discrepancy is so obvious that it is destroying Europe's credibility worldwide.

The Global South has seen through this for decades. When Europe condemns Russia while trading with countries that trample human rights, the message is not: "We stand for values." The message is: "We stand for our interests and dress them up as values." And that message has been received.

IX. What Europe Would Have to Do

First: Honesty. Europe's Russia policy is interest-based policy — it should openly be so. This does not mean accepting the war. It means clearly naming what Europe wants: security, stable borders, a predictable neighbourhood, economic advantages where possible. Not as a betrayal of values, but as the precondition for values being enforceable at all. Those who are economically weak have no values. They have Sunday sermons.

Second: Architecture over appeal. RIEGEL shows the way: a security structure that works because it is based on geography and mechanisms, not on good will or American guarantees. A European defence that Europe itself controls and that signals clear, automatic consequences to Russia — without escalation risk, without dependence on Washington.

Third: Communication channels. Even during the Cold War, there was the red telephone. Even between the bitterest enemies, there are ambassadors, intelligence contacts, informal channels. Europe needs the ability to talk to Russia — not as a sign of weakness, but as an instrument of control. Those who do not talk learn nothing. Those who learn nothing are surprised. And surprises in geopolitics cost lives.

Fourth: Preparation for transition. Europe needs today — not tomorrow, not after Putin's departure — a plan for the relationship with a post-Putin Russia. Which sanctions will be lifted under which conditions? What security guarantees can Europe offer? What economic incentives? Who negotiates? With what mandate? These questions will come. Those who have not prepared will improvise. And improvisation in geopolitics is another word for capitulation.

Fifth: European sovereignty. As long as Europe depends on American security guarantees, American technology, and American negotiation outcomes, it is not an actor. It is a spectator with expensive tickets. Emancipation from Washington is not an anti-American gesture. It is the precondition for Europe being able to formulate a Russia policy of its own — instead of commenting on America's.

X. Machiavelli and Morality

Niccolò Machiavelli is unjustly read as a cynic. He was a realist. He lived in an era when Italian city-states were ground between great powers — because they wanted to be morally superior rather than strategically wise. His message was not: morality is unimportant. His message was: morality without power is impotence. And impotence protects no one — neither one's own citizens nor the victims of aggression.

Europe today stands where Florence stood in the fifteenth century: morally convinced, strategically helpless, dependent on foreign armies, unable to shape its own destiny. And like Florence, Europe cultivates the belief that the superiority of its own values compensates for the weakness of its own position.

It does not. It never has. It never will.

Outrage is a feeling. Politics is an activity. Feelings are justified. But they do not replace strategy. And a strategy that consists of being outraged and waiting for the outrage to solve the problem is not a strategy. It is a refusal.

The natural laws of geopolitics are not negotiable. Those who ignore them are not punished — they become irrelevant. And irrelevance is the only penalty from which there is no recovery.