Could Europe really keep the peace in Ukraine? The proposed European-led Multilateral force Ukraine (MFU), AKA the Reassurance Force would certainly have a demanding mission. The UN says that successful peacekeeping requires force engaged to fulfil five basic conditions: unified political support; realistic resourced mandates; strong multilateral partnerships in support of mission goals; the ability to ‘strengthen’ operations should they be required; and a clear understanding by all parties to the conflict of the limits of such a mission.
First, there is little unified political support, not least from the Russians, who have so far never accepted a European presence on Ukrainian ground. The Russians have even suggested they might take part in any such deployment, which Ukraine would never accept. The Americans are hardly reassuring. The Trump administration’s idea of ‘peace’ seems to be resource extraction in return for some private military contractors deployed to defend rare earth mining communities. Any political leadership would thus need to be provided by Europeans at a time when the Trump administration is effectively decoupling from European security and division. Worse, the Russians know that.
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Second, and given all the above, there would be little chance of a properly resourced mandate if said mandate was to be seen as credible in either Kyiv or Moscow. The model that is being touted for any such mission is the so-called ‘Demilitarized Zone’ in Korea. However, there are some 1.2 million well-armed, mobile and readily deployable US and South Korean troops stationed within 90 kilometres of the DMZ. Europe?
Third, there is the question of strong multilateral support. Legitimacy would be as important as capability and for that balance to be struck a UN Security Council Resolution would need to be agreed. This is a very big ‘if’ given the Russo-Ukraine War is part of a wider systemic struggle between parts (not all) of the West and the Great Autocracies, China and Russia. One only has to see the anti-Western rhetoric at this week’s Shanghai Co-operation Council to see how fragile European leadership of any such mission would be. Even European political support for such a mission is at best soft. Critically, Russia would finally need to agree to NATO and EU forces deployed up to a 30-kilometre-wide DMZ in Ukraine with robust Rules of Engagement along a 2000-kilometre front.
Fourth, the Americans are saying that at best they might offer some ‘top cover’ (air power and intelligence) but it would fall to Europeans to ‘strengthen’ any such mission when one or both of the Parties to the conflict threaten to break any armistice. Russia has already linked the war in Ukraine to the wider European security architecture. This is why Moscow has announced an end to its self-imposed moratorium on the deployment of intermediate range ballistic nuclear tipped missiles on their western border. The message to the Americans and, indeed, the Western Europeans is clear: “Are you be willing to commit nuclear suicide to defend Eastern Europe, let alone Eastern Ukraine”?
The hard truth is that Europe could only keep the peace in Ukraine if both Russia and Ukraine were fully invested in such a peace. That seems unrealistic given that Russia has made all the territory it has occupied formally part of Russia, and Ukraine remains committed to recovering its lost lands. European militaries simply lack the forces and resources to deploy a capable coalition of the willing to Ukraine as foreseen at the March 2025 Lancaster House meeting of British, French and German leaders. Worse, the 60,000 strong very capable force the Reassurance Force would need to convince Moscow it could fight if needs be unhinging the wider NATO European defence of Europe. The Russians would like nothing more than to see the bulk of NATO European forces tied up in Ukraine so they could make mischief elsewhere along the Alliance’s extended border with the Russian Federation.
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The New NATO Force Model foresees an Allied Reaction Force of some 40,000 troops being transformed into a future force of some 300,000 troops maintained at high alert, with 44,000 kept at high readiness. Progress is at best slow. A force of that size and with the necessary level of fighting power would normally mean that with rotation there would always be a force of some 100,000 kept at high readiness. A NATO standard brigade is normally between 3,200 and 5,500 strong. Given that both air and naval forces will also need to be included, a land force of, say, 200,000 would need at least 50 to 60 European rapid reaction brigades together with all their supporting elements. At best, there are only 20 to 30 today. Ukraine?
That is why the current force plans for Ukraine range between an absurdly desultory 4,000 troops to the full 60,000 troops. Force rotation would in effect require 180,000 well-armed, rapidly deployable troops at high readiness for an indeterminate period. The reality is that without US (or German) troops forward deployed, no ‘Article 5-style’ security guarantee to Ukraine is at all possible. Without them any such ‘force’ would be little more than armed observers.
The figure being discussed involves some 20,000 troops but deploying even that plainly inadequate force would be challenging. Made up of a few British and French forces, maybe some Australians (really) and Canadians together with some Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians any such force would be wholly dependent on the goodwill of both the Russians and Ukrainians. With force rotation that would still mean 60,000 at most highly vulnerable troops stuck between a Russia that has learnt from its mistakes but is still committed to mayhem, and a Ukraine Hell bent on revenge.
Such a force could neither keep the peace nor make it, but it would provide Russia with hostages to fortune if and when it chooses to escalate war in Eastern Europe. Such a European force in Ukraine would incapable of undertaking the task assigned it on ground that both sides still regard as ‘sacred’. That begs a further question: would it not make a wider European war more likey and are Western Europeans, in particular, willing to take that risk?