WE COME to the vital question of rules of engagement. What are the fighter pilots to do if, say, they are illuminated by a Russian air defence radar? Jargon buster: ‘Illumination’ means that the radar is acquiring a potential target; ‘locking on’ means that a missile is now tracking; ‘launched’ means a missile is on the way, pulling some G, and that turning, burning and deploying counter measures would be a good idea. When the no-fly zone over Iraq was in place, radars that illuminated NATO aircraft were routinely engaged and destroyed before they could lock on. NATO member aircraft killing Russians on Russian-occupied soil has potential for escalation along the lines of World War Three. Has anyone explained this to Starmer and Macron? If so, did they understand?
Do Starmer and Macron have any hint as to what sort of peacekeeping operation it will be? There are many varieties. The base level is passive observers, as the Irish were for the UN on the border between Syria and Israel. There is patrolling a buffer zone, as the British Army still does in Cyprus, and there are the rather more robust methods used in the former Yugoslavia. All need clear rules of engagement, and the ability to act effectively and decisively when challenged – which they will be.
This needs to be thought through and the scenarios rehearsed. How does one platoon (25 soldiers) of peacekeepers stop an errant company (100 soldiers) of Russians or Ukrainians bent on revenge? When peacekeeping goes wrong, which it easily can, it gets messy. Srebrenica was the consequence of an ill-equipped and ill-prepared peacekeeper’s inability to stop a Serbian raid. At one point in the former Yugoslavia, it was taking twelve hours to get clearance to drop a bomb on a threatening air defence radar.
The Force Structure
Starmer and Macron envisage a multinational force of 20,000. That’s roughly the size of the force the US maintains in Korea to deter a restart of hostilities, although the Ukrainian line of contact with Russia is much longer than the Korean Demilitarised Zone. Multinational divisions can work: NATO has two of them in the Baltics, and there was a Commonwealth Division in the Korean War. However, they need to train together a lot before they become operationally credible. Language is one problem; capability gaps and mismatches are another. Incompatible tactical approaches and jargon are a third, although that’s less of a problem for NATO forces as in theory they operate in the same way, and their radios should be able to talk to each other. Logistics are always a challenge, and that challenge gets harder when there are, for example, three or four types of tanks to support in the field as opposed to just one. Finally, there is the legal basis of the operation, the chains of command and the rules of engagement. As recent events in the UK have shown, retrospective lawfare is a huge problem for British soldiers. Will they have robust indemnities? Will those indemnities last?
What Peace? What Ceasefire?
In any case, there is no peace or ceasefire today. President Putin has already said that he will not accept NATO member countries deploying military forces in Ukraine. That was, after all, part of his casus belli, so seeking to station them there is an obstacle to the ceasefire. Whether you, me or Starmer agree with President Putin’s fear of NATO in Ukraine is irrelevant – President Putin went to war about it and won’t accept it as a precondition for ending a war that he is winning, albeit at terrible cost to Russian, Kazakh, Chechen and Korean mothers.
President Trump knows this. He and Putin also both know that Starmer and Macron are posturing windbags, not military powers. They’re filling newspaper column inches for domestic consumption and, perhaps, to prop up their egos and put themselves in the running for a Nobel Prize. They’re not building a credible military force, and they’re not adding anything to end the killing.
Supporters of Ukraine will argue, with good reason, that a ceasefire without guarantees of security and friendly forces on the ground is tantamount to surrender. However, that misses the point that President Trump is not prepared to risk World War Three to support Ukraine. With equally good reason, he wants the fighting to cease forthwith. While many professional diplomats and their chattering colleagues may despise Trump’s approach, their efforts have delivered nothing, only prolonging the agony of Ukraine’s occupation. They didn’t prevent the war and they sure as hell aren’t helping Ukraine win it.
If President Trump can deliver a ceasefire, Ukrainian mothers may rename the various Johnson Streets and Squares to Trump Boulevards and Piazzas.
