Brussels, 24 January 2025
Since the US Presidential election there’s been a debate in Europe over a possible ceasefire agreement and the security guarantees Ukraine needs to deter Russia from resuming hostilities. A European ground operation in Ukraine is a welcome idea but only if it can be backed up by the US. This means convincing Donald Trump that European leaders are fully serious about guaranteeing European security.
Force majeure
President Macron first suggested sending European ground troops to Ukraine in February 2024. And while it was met with rejection and ridicule by the likes of German Chancellor Scholz, various other European leaders – including President Zelensky and NATO’s newly appointed Secretary-General Mark Rutte – have since returned to the idea with a renewed sense of urgency.
This is due to the crumbling frontline in Ukraine, the gradual acceptance that some parts of Ukraine will remain occupied and, of course, Donald Trump’s return to the White House. The latter has stoked fears that his quest for a quick and possibly dirty ceasefire agreement – to honour a campaign promise to ‘get out’ of Ukraine and refocus on China – risks producing an unsustainable peace that would be detrimental to both Ukrainian and wider European security interests.
European decision-makers have had to accept that other forms of security guarantees for Ukraine are currently unattainable or undesirable. There’s no consensus to support Ukraine’s NATO membership and Trump won’t be stationing US troops in the country. Arming Free Ukraine to the teeth so it can defend itself is vulnerable to budget discussions on both sides of the Atlantic and would probably produce a fragile peace.
That’s why security guarantees would have to be backed up by European boots on Ukrainian soil. For this to happen, many hard questions need to be answered about the aims, nature, size, duration, and command and control arrangements of the operation, to name just a few.
If there is a ceasefire, a European ground operation would make a lot of sense. It would send a powerful message to Ukraine that Europe stands by its side; it would signal to Russia that a European presence would be triggered to defend Ukraine if it were to breach the ceasefire; and it would strongly show Washington that Europeans have skin in the game.
To be clear, the idea would not be to replace the Ukrainian army or join it in attacking Russia; nor would it be deployed to simply keep the peace like neutral UN blue helmets or as OSCE observers counting the number of shells fired by either side.
European troops would only support the Ukrainian army in holding and defending the contact line, thus serving as a deterrent force.
A major force?
Tens of thousands of European troops would be needed. Given political blockages in the US, NATO and the EU, only an ad hoc ‘coalition of the willing’ is feasible. Poland, with the largest European land army, has excluded itself for now, arguing that it needs to prepare for a possible direct attack from Russia.
Counterintuitively, it’s France that continues to lead the conversation, despite Macron’s ongoing political problems. France and the UK’s involvement would be key as the only European nuclear weapon states with sizeable armies. The Baltic states and the Netherlands, possibly Germany under new leadership, and other nations would also be needed.
A European ground force would also have to use NATO’s superior command and control arrangements and rely on a US commitment for backup (notably for logistics and intelligence) and for help of last resort. This requires consensus in NATO. On both counts, the European coalition would have to convince the Trump White House that they will actually do what it takes to defend the European security order.
Measurable commitments and concrete actions aside, NATO Secretary-General Rutte, when he visited Mar-o-Lago at the end of November, may have facilitated the decision-shaping process. Reportedly, he held Trump’s ear by describing a scenario where a hasty American retreat would make him look as weak as his predecessor when (not if) Putin shatters a less-than-solid ceasefire agreement. And if Trump were to offer American back-up for a European coalition, then other allies currently critical of the plan could drop their opposition.
No grey zones
By deploying troops under NATO command to police the ceasefire agreement, the West would finally end its fruitless pandering to the Kremlin’s neo-imperialist agenda and its denial of Ukraine’s right to self-determination. Yesteryear’s half-hearted security arrangements, embodied in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, NATO’s empty membership promise made at its 2008 Bucharest Summit, and the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements to end the war in Donbas, have miserably failed and belong in the dustbin of history.
A ceasefire agreement, let alone a peace deal, is impossible while Russia denies Ukraine’s existence. There should be no Minsk 3-type of arrangement – it would allow Russia to freeze its illegally obtained territorial gains, regroup, rearm and eventually launch a new offensive. Instead, peace would be better served by effectively extending NATO and Russia’s hard border, somewhere in eastern Ukraine. This would of course require Ukraine’s democratic consent.
To stop Russia abusing this new situation by launching a variety of hybrid and beyond-threshold attacks to test the European coalition’s resolve, it’s essential that breaches of the ceasefire agreement are called out and responded to in kind. Russia is not invincible and needs to be kept in check. This will require the right kind of intelligence, expertise, capabilities and quasi-automaticity in decision-making.
To stop a Russian escalation that leads to a large-scale war with NATO, the US needs to be onboard to provide the full deterrent effect.
Fast forward
The European debate over a ceasefire and how to police it is a welcome one, if long overdue. Despite substantial military support from America and Europe, Russia has been making battlefield advances, meaning Putin has no genuine interest in negotiating a ceasefire. It’s difficult to make peace when both sides are not in a mutually painful stalemate. But the Russian advance has been slow, comes at the unsustainable cost of World War I-levels of human lives and has produced a sombre economic outlook.
We need to urgently narrow Putin’s options so that he doesn’t see ceasefire negotiations as a way to continue the war by cheaper diplomatic means. Ukraine’s friends should double down on a variety of short-term measures, ranging from tightening sanctions on Russia and ramping up investments in Ukraine’s domestic arms production, to equipping Ukraine with more sophisticated hardware and allowing it to strike even deeper into Russia.
It’s not in Europe or the US’ security interest that Ukraine loses the battle over the territory that it has already lost to Russia and a possible future war where all of Ukraine is taken.
A ceasefire agreement policed by European boots on the ground would be a stepping stone to a durable and just peace. It’s now time to show some resolve.
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Steven Blockmans
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Source – CEPS