The Trump administration is currently considering providing Ukraine with some sort of security guarantee. While the exact nature of the security guarantee is still to be determined, the administration has indicated that they could come in the form of coordination and support for a European-led coalition, American-provided weaponry, and even American-provided air support. The only concept which seems to have been taken off the table by President Donald Trump himself is the idea of American troops being deployed to Ukraine.
If Trump’s promise to keep American boots out of Ukraine, it would be good for America, as expanding our presence in Europe, instead of shrinking it, would represent — at best — a strategic distraction, when we should be focusing more on Asia and on our own people. More concerning, deploying troops to Ukraine would keep Washington focused on a regional war fought by regional powers far from America’s shores, all while escalating tensions with the only other nuclear superpower.
More broadly, participating in a peacekeeping operation — or even encouraging Europe to partake in such an operation while NATO is still existent — would be an even larger mistake because peacekeeping missions, contrary to their nomenclature, simply do not work.
They sound nice, of course. Who could be against keeping the peace? The issue is that peacekeeping, a mostly post-Cold War practice, can — at best — stall a problem. Take the litany of peacekeeping operations currently being undertaken by the United Nations. At present there are 11 deployed to peace-filled areas including Sudan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Haiti ranks as a past “completed” peacekeeping mission.
Sceptics of this argument may hand-wave it away by arguing that the United Nations has no real firepower to back it up, and that such missions were therefore doomed to fail (which should lead one to question why the United States provides more than one-fourth of the funding for such doomed missions). The real peacekeeping, they argue, comes from words backed up by firepower.
One area they may point to is the Balkans. By the mid-1990s, the collapse of Yugoslavia had ushered in genocide and war. This resulted in American intervention and, afterward, a series of NATO peacekeeping missions, including a still-ongoing one in Kosovo, which sought to keep the peace in that fragile region.
On the surface, these efforts have worked. Peace has been kept. But the problem is that it has been an extremely fragile peace. So fragile, in fact, that an issue as simple as license plates kicked up a recent storm which resulted in strained relations and even the death of a Serbian policeman. Crudely-drawn borders which have divided communities and created new countries wholesale have aggravated all sides. Bosnia and Herzegovina, a state essentially created wholesale by the “international community,” is even ruled by the UN-approved Office of the High Representative, who has more or less dictatorial powers whenever he or she deems their use necessary. Bosnia and Herzegovina itself is a powder keg, one which was nearly set alight when the last commissioner, Austrian Valentin Inzko, declared that genocide denial was illegal — a decision which infuriated the Serbian part of the country, alleging it implied Serbs were genocidal.
Without NATO troops present in Kosovo — and the implicit backing of American strength throughout the region — it is not inconceivable that the entire Balkans would have flared up, or war would have even broken out, a long time ago. Yet are these missions intended to be forever? And if so, how many peacekeeping missions should the United States become involved in? Should we station troops in the Balkans until the end of time?
And now, should we add Ukraine to that mix — and in doing so, force ourselves to pay even more attention to a region which is relatively insignificant to American national security? Much of the Ukrainian border is, like the Balkans, drawn somewhat haphazardly; Crimea itself only became Ukrainian because Nikita Khrushchev wanted to do something symbolically nice for his homeland. And the rest of the east, even before the Russo-Ukrainian War, was a mishmash of Russians and Ukrainians on both sides. George Kennan, the Cold War mastermind, long warned the United States against getting involved in a (then hypothetical) war between the two. Getting involved in a peacekeeping operation would be only slightly less dangerous.
That’s because no peacekeeping operation will solve the fundamental issues in the conflict. Russia will continue to be alarmed at the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, and, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated, Russia has long had an interest in keeping Ukraine, at minimum, in its sphere of influence. There is a reason that Ukraine was fought over so fiercely in the Crimean War, World War One, World War Two, and of course today’s Russo-Ukrainian War. History and geopolitical realities will not change no matter the year — or no matter how long a peacekeeping operation lasts.
Which means, to answer the question posed above, any peacekeeping operation would be tasked with an indefinite mission. Even if America does not become involved in providing guarantees, it will still be involved indirectly so long as NATO exists. European officials reportedly have no concrete ideas as to how a peacekeeping mission could proceed, with one official even saying that “such a mission would not be responsible for enforcing peace” while at the same time arguing that “a combat mandate” would be necessary for any foreign troops stationed in the country. This is just peacekeeping, by another name.
Peacekeeping has an honourable goal. But it is a tool which can only put problems on ice
If those troops are attacked by Russia — or a fight somehow breaks out — it is not difficult to imagine how America could become involved. Even if the Trump administration makes clear Article V protections would not apply to European troops stationed there, those protections would surely eventually kick in if, say, a NATO base outside Ukraine was attacked. And if American planes are providing air support over Ukraine, they can still be targeted or become inadvertently involved in fighting.
Peacekeeping has an honourable goal. But it is a tool which can only put problems on ice. If the United States wants to avoid getting bogged down in Ukraine forever — or at least as long as there is a Russia and a Ukraine — it should seek to solve the underlying problems now instead of letting them fester.
