Lawrence Freedman
As the Trump administration embarks on its quest to bring peace to Ukraine, discussed in my previous post, one of the big issues waiting to be addressed is how Ukraine’s future security will be supported as part of any deal.
Consideration of this issue has led to proposals for a multi-national force, which would be largely European. This has sometimes been described as a ‘peacekeeping force’, including by Keir Starmer when speaking about a possible UK contribution, but elsewhere it has been described as a ‘deterrent’ or ‘trip-wire’, though these are very different concepts.
So far there has only been preliminary discussions about these ideas so a certain amount of loose language can be expected. But these labels matter because they can mislead as to the scale of the effort involved or imply more than can reasonably be delivered. Can security really be ‘guaranteed’? Is there a peace to be ‘kept’? Security guarantees can come in a variety of forms, as Bruno Tertrais demonstrated in his post of July 2023. Some will be taken more seriously than others.
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