Politico: A Trump peace deal needs European boots on the ground to secure Ukraine, Estonia says

[Dennis Donovan]

Politico - A Trump peace deal needs European boots on the ground to secure Ukraine, Estonia says

European troops are the next best thing to NATO membership to guarantee Ukraine’s security.

November 19, 2024 1:46 pm CET
By Ketrin Jochecová

European leaders should be ready to send military forces to secure any Russia-Ukraine peace deal brokered by United States President-elect Donald Trump, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said.

While NATO membership for Kyiv would be the best security guarantee, Tsahkna said, troops being deployed to Ukraine to secure an agreement might be the next best thing.

"If we are talking about real security guarantees, it means that there will be a just peace. Then we are talking about NATO membership," Tsahkna said in an interview with the Financial Times published Tuesday.

"But without the US it is impossible. And then we are talking about any form [of guarantee] in the meaning of boots on the ground," he said.

During his presidential campaign, Trump threatened to leave the military alliance if European members don't increase their defense spending.

He also promised to engineer a quick peace deal once he takes office in January, sparking fears that the agreement would be unfair to Kyiv.

/snip

[Prairie Gates]

1. Trump peace deal will involve ceding the Baltic States to Putin

Estonia and the others better get on the stick and understand what's happening. Putin is trying for what CNN will invariably call "the greatest political comeback" - a reconstitution of the Soviet satellite states under Russian rule. Hell, he might want to add Sweden, Finland, and Poland for that matter.

[Wicked Blue]

3. Looks like I shouldn't flee the U.S. and go to Estonia now

even though I potentially have dual citizenship.



I hope someone bumps off that bastard Putin, and soon

[Emrys]

2. It seems a stark and realistic projection of what may happen if Trump forces a settlement that rewards Putin,

retains the current land holdings, and doesn't resolve Russia's publicly proclaimed imperial ambitions.

It harkens back to the Cold War years, when NATO troops were stationed along the border with the USSR in a tense and costly standoff, including tactical nuclear weapons pointing either way. Currently, the US has over 35,000 active duty troops stationed in Germany alone. At the end of the 1980s, it had some 250,000.

Some of the differences are that Russia (on its own at least) is now a far weaker force, and NATO without the US has no such tactical weapons. Europe is also more united than it was then.

Nor would this standoff be restricted to conventional or nuclear weaponry. Russia has used chemical weapons in Ukraine, and has already been practising hybrid warfare away from the current war zone, including covert sabotage. The information war would continue, ramping up tensions even more, with the US inevitably involved even if it became isolationist and withdrew from Europe and even NATO altogether.

Contemplating some defensive alliance to resemble NATO without US involvement is something the European bloc needs to seriously consider, and I'm sure it's being done behind the scenes. If Trump grandstands about leaving - which he may do even if the European powers go along with his plans for Ukraine - there needs to be a fallback position to help call his bluff.

I don't know what appetite there is in Europe to station troops along any "neutral zone" beyond individual national borders - I suspect not great given the other demands and pressures on its armed forces. Stepping up to provide support and weaponry for Ukraine now to keep the Russians at bay seems a cheaper and less onerous option, and relatively less risky. Russia's economy is staggering along and its infrastructure is rapidly crumbling, and the crunch is predicted by many sources to arrive by the middle of next year. Unrest in Russia is bubbling under, and areas like Georgia and Abkhazia may require armed intervention, to safeguard the displaced remnants of the Red Sea Fleet if nothing else, not to mention Russia's campaigns in other hotspots outside Europe. How much sustained support for a static war it can expect from its current allies is an open question.

And in the wider perspective, if Ukraine does manage to hold out and prevail largely intact, there will be enormous amounts of money to be made from its reconstruction, and I'd imagine Trump and his cronies and wider US interests would like a few slices of that pie. If he's abandoned Ukraine - and Europe - the pickings may be less generous. Those countries that do invest will have an incentive in not seeing Russia renew hostilities against Ukraine. The dangers of corruption in this massive rebuilding programme are obvious. For the likes of Trump, it might seem a happy hunting ground, with the prospect of ostentatious Trump properties in Kyiv and other cities, along the Black Sea etc.

Anyway, far more competent and informed people than I am are no doubt gaming this out as I type. Once Trump starts to try to put in place whatever he has in mind for Ukraine, he may find the world a more complicated place than his tiny mind can contemplate. What his backers have in mind is another matter.