Eli Lake, Columnist

Europe's High Representative for Appeasement

Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Russia have a friend in Brussels.

January 9, 2018 at 6:39 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

Federica Mogherini.
Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

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If Federica Mogherini didn't exist, the world's autocrats would be trying to invent her.

As the European Union's high representative for foreign affairs, she is a tireless advocate for engaging rogue states. Few diplomats though have pursued this kind of engagement with such moralizing puffery. In Mogherini's world, diplomacy with dictators should not aim to transition these countries to open societies, but rather to prevent conflicts at all costs.