President Macron’s suggestion that Western troops may be deployed to Ukraine has brought a backlash from leaders across the continent. But the French leader is right — it is time to consider a new and more muscular approach.
Macron conceded in his February 26 statement that there was no consensus. That’s putting it politely — the period since his statement has seen an unseemly and craven scramble by other countries to put the intervention genie back into the bottle.
This is quite a change from the many years when France led in trying to conciliate Russia over Ukraine, and when it continued to hold out forlorn hopes for diplomacy even after the full-scale invasion began two years ago.
Macron chose his words carefully. He said: “We will do everything we can to prevent Russia from winning this war”, and added that the notion of sending troops to Ukraine — if that was what was required to prevent Russia from winning — should not be taken off the table. For its part, he said that France intended to maintain strategic ambiguity on this question.
What was he seeking to achieve? Macron’s words represented deterrence in action and were in line with broader French thinking on security. Ambiguity is a key part of effective deterrence. Other countries might have done well to mirror the French approach, rather than rushing to dismiss the option.
This has been a war of incremental and belated Western responses. Ukraine’s friends have been far too slow in considering and then delivering military aid. Remember the painful and long-drawn-out debates on tanks, HIMARS-guided munitions, and F-16 combat aircraft?
And that takes no account of what remains undelivered — systems like ATACMS, Taurus cruise missiles and, in this case, sending troops.
At a minimum, strategic ambiguity seems the right approach. Why provide Putin with the comforting assurance that he will not face Western troops?
It does make sense, of course, to ensure that this does not become a war between Russia and NATO, and to make clear that is our intent. That has been the essential framework for all the support provided to Ukraine thus far.
But Ukraine’s allies have over-interpreted what the avoidance of such a war between Russia and NATO requires. The result has been military assistance consistently lacking in ambition, speed, and scale.
F-16s could already have been in Ukraine today if pilot training had started earlier (June now seems the earliest possible date). The ATACMS missile system should already be in Ukraine, but the “deliberation” (i.e., prevarication) continues. In this context, it is encouraging that the February 26 Paris meeting talked of more support with medium- to long-range missiles.
But rather than ambiguity, the US, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, and others have rushed to reiterate the underlying assumption to date — no Western troops (beyond a few advisors) in Ukraine.
This provides assurance for Putin that he can continue to pursue his objectives in Ukraine, and specious assurance for Western populations that war with Russia is not at hand.
But it does not provide assurance for Ukraine. Nor does it provide assurance for those concerned at the very real prospect of Russia invading a NATO ally: Macron said that Russia was likely to go further than Ukraine. Other leaders think the same. So, it does not provide assurance for the future of peace in uninvaded Europe.
The longer we prevaricate, the less we support Ukraine, the more we cede the battlefield to Putin, the more we will endanger Western security, and the more we will raise the price — for Ukraine and for the rest of us.
There are many ways we can do more for Ukraine without going to war with Russia.
We could do more with Western forces and capabilities in Ukraine, without crossing any red line.
- We could do more to help Ukraine operate the most effective possible integrated air and missile defense system;
- We could undertake multinational air policing;
- We could deploy significant forces to train and exercise in Ukraine;
- We could establish bases in Ukraine — which will be needed when it joins NATO;
- We could do more to help build — and defend — its defense industry; and
- We could assist with demining.
And we could explicitly keep other options open to support Ukraine on the ground.
Putin can end the assault on Ukraine whenever he chooses. He knows perfectly well that Western countries have no designs on Russian territory.
But he should not be surprised if Western countries act to ensure that Russia makes no further progress in occupying and subjugating a sovereign, independent, and democratic European country.
And he should not be surprised as and when NATO invites Ukraine to join — as it ought to do at its summit in Washington in July.
In the run-up to Russia’s invasion two years ago, Western countries made the mistake of drawing down their presence in Ukraine, rather than building it up. We are in danger of making the same kind of mistake again.
Whatever the prospects of early recovery of the remainder of Ukrainian territory taken by Russia, we should ensure Russia makes no further gains, in 2024 or beyond.
If that means deploying Western troops this year, so be it. Not to fight Russia, but to ensure that Russia cannot progress further. To make clear that we have an enormous stake in Europe’s security and that we will not cede it.
And lastly to draw a genuine red line: thus far and no further. So President Macron is absolutely right to say that “nothing should be off the table”.
Patrick Turner is a Distinguished Fellow at CEPA. He was the Assistant Secretary-General for Defence Policy and Planning at NATO from 2018 to July 2022 and was the chair of NATO’s Defence Policy and Planning Committee and its Resilience Committee. He was also the UK’s Deputy Ambassador to NATO and served in the private office of three NATO Secretaries General (Manfred Worner, Willy Claes, and Javier Solana). Patrick joined the UK Ministry of Defence in 1984 after studying history at Merton College, Oxford.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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