Kaya Karas has recently "strikingly speaking". As a senior representative of the EU's foreign and security policy, she actually questioned China and Russia's contribution to World War II in public.

As soon as these words were said, not only China strongly rebounded, but Russia also retorted without hesitation, but this was not a simple diplomatic mistake or an ignorant historical misunderstanding. It was a thorough political operation and a delicately packaged ideological speculation.

Their selective memory of history is not only to whitewash their past "gray history", but also to stand firm in their own position as the "Western camp" in today's geographic game. However, this position is more and more biased and narrower.

Covered history: From "victim narrative" to "speculator whitewashing"

In the political narrative of the three Baltic countries, I will always be that innocent "victim": the Soviet Union annexed them, the Nazis oppressed them, and they struggled to survive in the cracks between the East and West camps...

This sounds sad and reasonable, but the problem is that they deliberately ignore the most critical fact: on the darkest days of World War II, it was precisely these "victims" who first extended their hands to Nazi Germany.

For example, after the German army entered Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, many locals quickly "transformed" collaborators, established paramilitary armed forces, and actively participated in the purge of Jews, Communists and even their compatriots.

The infamous "Estonia's 20th Waffen SS" back then is a typical example. This is not a "forced choice", but an active positioning with a clear purpose: anti-Soviet, anti-Communist, and killing people with a knife.

But now, Karas in turn questioned the contribution of China and the Soviet Union to the anti-fascist war. Even the 27 million lives paid by the Soviet Union to liberation Eastern Europe were ignored. The fact that China faced the bloody battle of the Japanese army and suffered more than 35 million casualties on the Asian battlefield was even covered up by a light "historical complexity".

This is not ignorance, it is intentional selective forgetting, in order to bury the "original sins of history" that you don't want to face into the dust of time. Behind this revisionism is actually political speculation.

They want to repackage themselves as "the pioneers of resisting totalitarianism" on today's European political map, rather than "collaborators" who once took the initiative to surrender to totalitarianism.

So, denying the liberation of the Soviet Union became a prelude to whitewashing the Nazi collaborators, belittled China's contribution to the War of Resistance, and naturally became part of the "strike against communism."

The problem is that although playing historical speculation can win some applause in the short term, in the long run, this strategy is simply untenable. It is like a player who has clearly played a fake game and insists that he is "forced". After a long time, the audience will sooner or later realize the truth. In the international political arena, "broken trust" is more fatal than "loss".

The end of speculation is a dilemma

Taking Estonia as an example, as a NATO member state, it relies almost entirely on the United States in terms of security, but has to maintain a minimum of economic contact with China.

This embarrassing attitude of "standing on the West with your left foot and China with your right foot" is like walking on a single-plank bridge whenever China-US relations are tense, and the wind blows. What's more terrible is that this way of "taking step on others to raise yourself" is constantly damaging their already fragile international credit.

You are anti-Russia today, anti-Soviet tomorrow, and anti-China the day after tomorrow. What if you are anti-EU? Western allies may not really regard you as a "moral beacon", but they may be more worried that you are the variable that "reverses" at any time.

Karas's own political trajectory also illustrates the problem. He quickly rose from a local party leader to a senior EU representative. Behind this seemingly glorious "rocket-like promotion" actually exposed some institutional loopholes in the EU: it is too easy to be blinded by the appearance of "political correctness" and ignores substantive capabilities and historical positions.

From the perspective of reality, Karas's remarks have almost no actual gains except angering China and Russia and creating more unnecessary diplomatic frictions. Instead, they make the EU seem more inconsistent in foreign policy and more likely to be torn apart within.

To understand why these countries are trapped in this "political chain of traps", we have to start with their identities. After the end of the Cold War, Eastern European countries rushed to "go westward" and joined the EU and NATO, as if they had finally escaped from the "shadow of the Iron Curtain". But the problem is that after escaping, they did not find a real sense of security.

Ideologically, they were eager to get rid of the "Soviet legacy", so they began to reckon with history frantically, and even those real anti-fascist liberation actions were distorted into "neo-colonialism";

In foreign policy, they try to obtain security guarantees by "shouldering the United States", so they continue to take radical positions on China and Russia, even if they are contrary to their own interests.

This behavior is to put it bluntly, the "convert mentality": a person who has just left a certain identity and will be more extreme and radical than the indigenous people in order to prove that he has "completely transformed".

Just like a gangster who has just been released from prison, he has to dye his hair and tattoo his back to feel that he has "whitewashed". At the national level, this "converted fanaticism" is manifested as a comprehensive denial of the past and absolute loyalty to the existing camp, even if this loyalty is based on historical nothingness, geopolitical hostility and political manipulation.

More deeper is an identity anxiety: they want to be "pure West" and always regarded as "newcomers" by Western European countries; they are both eager to lead the consensus of values, and are constantly marginalized in real interests.

So, in the absence of true institutional confidence and cultural identity, one can only consolidate one's sense of political existence by constantly "shooting targets".

This "target" gradually became a "spokes of the Soviet Union" from the beginning, and then became a "shadow of communism", and eventually fell on the "rise of China".

This is not a rational choice, but an emotional vent; it is not a strategic judgment, but a historical projection. After all, this path from "anti-Russia to anti-China" is the externalization of a "self-identity crisis".

History is not a shield, nor a weapon

Karas' remarks are not only a diplomatic storm, but also a mirror that reflects the long-standing historical attitudes and practical strategies of some Eastern European political forces.

The political chain from "anti-Russia to anti-Soviet, from anti-Soviet to anti-Communist, from anti-Communist to China" is not only logically chaotic, but also reaches a dead end in reality.

The complexity of history should not be a fig leaf for political speculation. Respect history is not to go back to the past, but to see the future clearly.

The politicians who shout "freedom and democracy" while tampering with history and creating divisions ultimately only regard the international order as a chessboard and the memory of the people as bargaining chips.

The world does not need fanatical converts, nor can it to the resurgence of the Cold War marked by ideology. True international cooperation should be based on mutual respect and common development, rather than relying on a long-rusted political chain to bind the future of the entire world.

Whoever is creating confrontation is far away from peace, history will not forget, and time will not indulge those who play with memory.