Trump’s effort to end the Ukraine conflict was signalled well in advance of his election. That’s why discussion between European governments about supporting a potential halt to the fighting should have started at least 12 months ago. It will probably not be the permanent settlement that Putin is demanding because no Ukrainian leader – current or future – will accept the enslavement of its citizens in the occupied territories.
There is now a clear statement from Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hesgeth, that the US wants to see “robust security guarantees” for the ceasefire and that “there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine” to support those guarantees. Significantly he did not rule out using US aircraft and other military assets to back up those guarantees. The UK and other European military planners are already analysing the scale and type of US capabilities that could help provide those “robust security guarantees”. They will also now be aware of two potential constraining principles. Whatever supporting capabilities that the US might provide cannot significantly increase the risk to their service personnel or the cost to US taxpayers.
How will the proposed European force being discussed deliver the robust security guarantees that everyone agrees are needed? President Macron has said that the first step is to have a ceasefire, partly to test whether Putin is really willing to stop his attacks. Once that has been put in place France, the UK and other European nations “are ready to send troops, not to go to the front line, not to go in confrontation, but to be in some locations……. as a presence to maintain this peace and our collective credibility with the US backup.”
Where does all this leave the UK and the decisions that the UK Government needs to make? If the proposed force is 30,000 strong the UK will be providing at least 5,000 troops, if not more. There will be some immediate decisions for UK Ministers to make, such as rapidly delivering more intensive generic training programmes and basic equipment requirements to improve UK military readiness. More mission specific decisions can wait. A critical question will be what British military capabilities will be available to attack Russian sites both in the occupied territories and in Russia itself if British troops come under attack from these sites.
The planned increases of defence spending to 2.5% and then 3% of GDP will help but they may not be enough. This deployment may well last ten years or longer, and it will need to be securely funded. Lessons from Ukraine may been learned but have they been properly implemented? Is the British military equipped and trained to use drones and anti-drone technology in the most effective manner and at the right tactical level? Does it have the necessary stockpiles of munitions and other commodities? Above all does it have the right systems and funding streams in place to recruit, train and retain the numbers and types of service personnel we need?
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has already said that having foreign forces in Ukraine is “completely unacceptable.” This means that there will be strong pressure from Moscow to have the minimum possible European military capabilities in Ukraine if they are forced to abandon that position. British forces will be subjected to Russian hybrid attacks, including sabotage, cyber hacking, and perhaps most dangerous of all disinformation designed to undermine popular support. That last threat requires a whole of Government and whole of society response that Ministers (and hopefully Shadow Ministers) will need to lead.
Reducing UK foreign aid to fund the increase of defence spending to 2.5% of GDP was a difficult choice for the Cabinet to endorse. Moving to 3% of GDP will be even harder. One relatively painless option that could contribute to this shift is for the UK to be involved in issuing European defence bonds, something that is already on the table. One possibility could be to make use of the $300bn of Russian State Bank assets currently frozen in European banks as some form of collateral for these bonds. The profits (or interest) from these assets are now being used to support Ukraine so there appears to no significant principled or legal objections to making use of the assets themselves. Telling the British public that cutting public services is a better way to fund the 3% of GDP defence spending target than making some foreign bankers more risk averse may well be counterproductive. Another very short term but potentially effective use of Russian assets frozen in the UK is to offer to partially or wholly fund the US military aid to Ukraine that has been paused by Trump. He may reject this proposal but given that this pause puts US defence industry jobs at risk it could be popular with some Republicans.
So, in the current environment this Labour Government cannot avoid the tough decisions it will have to make in the coming months and years. David Lammy and John Healey have recently written about the fact UK governments did too little in 2008 when Putin invaded Georgia, and in 2014 when he first went into Ukraine. They will be looking for support from their Cabinet colleagues in the debates to come about how to strengthen UK national security. What are the means available to do so and the methods to be used, especially when it comes to integrating different branches of Government in this effort. In 1949 after 4 years in a Labour Cabinet, and having been involved in some far more difficult decisions about national security Aneurin Bevan, that voice of the Labour left, said “The language of priorities is the religion of socialism”.
No doubt this maxim has been and will continue to guide Labour Ministers as they struggle with decisions that determine whether or not the UK and our NATO allies can avoid war with Russia.
Read MP for Gillingham and Rainham Naushabah Khan’s on defence spending here.
