President Donald Trump undermined his Ukraine peace agenda during meetings with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday. The two leaders shared warm pleasantries and suggested looming agreements on trade, tariffs, and the future status of a British territory in the Indian Ocean heavily relied upon by the U.S. military. However, there was no agreement on the most critical issue.
Namely, the United Kingdom and France need Trump to assure that he will order U.S. military action in support of European troops deployed to secure a peace deal if Russia attacks them. Trump was repeatedly asked about this concern but did not respond with the declarative confirmation that America’s closest ally needs. The president came closest when he made a joke about the historical skill of the British army, questioned whether the U.K. would even need a U.S. military backstop, then rather whimsically stated, “If they need help, I’ll always be with the British, OK, I’ll always be with them. But they don’t need help.”
This might sound like enough of a backstop to the president. The problem is that those statements most certainly won’t sound like anything near enough of a backstop to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin only respects deterrence and strength when they are delivered with eyeball-to-eyeball clarity. Trump misunderstands Putin, regarding him as a strong but respectful partner who seeks mutually beneficial compromise. Instead, Putin’s personality, ideology, and appetite to establish a greater Russian imperium all drive him to view Trump as someone to be manipulated rather than respected. Putin may well be wrong that he can manipulate Trump, but that’s how the Russian leader approaches his American counterpart. This brings us back to the peacekeepers.
The U.K. and France are willing to lead a deployment of around 30,000 to 50,000 peacekeepers that would act as a “trip wire” to deter and delay any future Russian invasion of Ukraine in the event Trump gets a peace deal agreed. This force is the absolutely critical foundation of any successful peace deal for a simple reason.
Because, whether regarding chemical weapons treaties, nuclear weapons treaties, or the Vienna conventions, Putin’s word is about as reliable as swimming with saltwater crocodiles is conducive to one’s health. This is not a debatable point.
Putin has already breached his word concerning invading Ukraine. Under the 2014 Minsk II accords negotiated by the West’s most overrated leader, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Putin pledged not to invade Ukraine again. Eight years ago, he did so, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in the worst European war since 1945. But this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the unreliability of Putin’s word. Indeed, just six days before the start of Russia’s Feb. 24, 2022, invasion of Ukraine, Putin defended his massing of forces on Ukraine’s borders as “military exercises, drills, [which] are purely defensive and are not a threat to any other country.” Nor does Russia have any qualms about lying to America’s face. Just two days before the invasion, Russia’s then-ambassador to Washington told CBS News, “There is no invasion, and there [are] no such plans.”
It is no surprise, then, that Ukraine cannot and will not accept a peace deal without some kind of security guarantee such as that offered by a peacekeeping force. If America won’t offer a direct guarantee, which it shouldn’t, only the peacekeeping force can do so. Of course, it’s for this same reason that the U.K. and other countries can’t send troops to Ukraine without a U.S. backstop. They know that without American deterrent power at their back, Russia may well attack again in the future. To be clear, Trump is absolutely correct that the United States needs to refocus its military resources on the threat posed by China. However, the provision of U.S. Army brigades, Army aviation assets already in Europe, and limited fighter squadrons (some can be redeployed to the Pacific) would be sufficient to deter Russia from attacking a European peacekeeping force.
Indeed, without American deterrent power as a backstop, Putin would be even more tempted to attack again in what he would perceive as the additive benefit of fundamentally breaking the trans-Atlantic alliance. And Putin would have good reason to attack again. He views Ukraine as a breakaway province that, like Chechnya, must ultimately be brought under the Kremlin’s heel. Putin’s military investments reflect this understanding. They are designed both to continue waging war on Ukraine and provide long-term means of threatening NATO’s eastern flank. Putin is thinking about the long game.
AMERICANS SHOULD BE ‘A LITTLE IRRITATED’ WITH EUROPE, ESPECIALLY GERMANY
Ultimately, Trump will have to choose between securing a peace deal with both legs and teeth or walking away from the negotiating table because the Europeans won’t walk there with him. Unless a U.S. military backstop is forthcoming and understood as such by Putin, peacekeepers won’t be deployed, and Ukraine won’t be able to cut a deal. If necessary, it will have to fight on without American support.
Only Trump can deter Putin from restarting his bloody war, but only Trump can decide whether or not to show Putin who is the boss.