"Peace-keeping" in Ukraine: issues to consider

If and when we reach the stage of sending a "peace-keeping" force to Ukraine, there are lots of aspects of the mission which need to be thought through carefully

I am still slightly bemused by the speed at which the Prime Minister, a couple of weeks ago, pivoted from Donald Trump’s announcement that he had begun talking to President Putin about a settlement of the conflict in Ukraine to debating what kind of contribution the United Kingdom might make to a peace-keeping force on the ground. Not only is there as yet no peace agreement, there have barely been any negotiations of substance on the shape of a deal and it is not at all clear that a settlement which satisfies both the United States and Russia will be achievable, before the government of Ukraine—the ongoing independence and existence of whose country is at stake—has been consulted. Under those circumstances, with so little known even to a degree of probability, the question of precisely how large a force the United Kingdom might deploy to engage in peace-keeping seems an almost obtusely distant and contingent topic of debate.

There are several major hurdles in the way. So far the Kremlin has been consistent in saying that any force deployed in Ukraine which included personnel from western nations, which probably means NATO member states in most frequent usage, “can’t be allowed”. Sergei Lavrov, who today marks 21 years as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, argued this was because such a deployment would represent “direct, official and unveiled involvement of NATO members in the war against Russia”. This is of course partisan bunk: there is no “war against Russia”, Russia invaded Ukraine and had a track recoprd of intervening. militarily in neighbouring countries over which it sseks dominance.

Let us be generous, however. Let us suppose that the United States can find some kind of arrangement to which Russia will at least superficially agree and which it not utterly unacceptable to Ukraine. There are still several aspects of a deal which will be critical to how it is sustained, and it is worth consideration a few of them with some care.

What’s the mandate?

What, if anything, will be the legal basis of the settlement and its enforcement? Sir Keir Starmer, in an attempt to be realistic, has spoken repeatedly of the peace-keeping being carried out by a “coalition of the willing”, and thinks there are around 20 countries, mostly in Europe and the Commonwealth, which might join such an alliance. The term “coalition of the willing” was coined in the early 1970s by Professor Lincoln P. Bloomfield of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an op-ed in The New York Times and taken up by United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but it became more popular from the 1990s onwards. President Bill Clinton applied it to a possible response to the stand-off with North Korea over its development of nuclear weapons in the summer of 1994, and President George W. Bush referred to the concept in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America. It was used to suggest flexibility and pragmatism, supplementing action by multilateral organisations like the United Nations, NATO and the World Trade Organization.

It also, however, carries connotations of circumventing the rules of these bodies, especially after it began to be applied to the United States-led coalition which undertook the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The invasion was carried out without specific authorisation from the United Nations Security Council (though a respectable case can be made that existing UNSC Resolutions could be read in a way which authorised the use of force against Saddam Hussein’s régime), causing sharp divisions and polarisation within the international community.

Many peace-keeping operations are carried out explicitly under the mandate of the United Nations and its Department of Peace Operations. These usually have the legal authority of Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, and will be specifically mandated by a UNSCR. They also tend to be established and implemented by the UN, with forces under UN operational control. But that is not essential: the Security Council can authorise another body like NATO or the Economic Community of West African States, or ad hoc coalitions of the willing, to undertake peace-keeping on its behalf. So, for example, peace-keeping in Cyprus is the responsibility of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) under UNSCR 186 (1964), while the mission in Kosovo (KFOR), although authorised by UNSCR 1244 (1999), is led by NATO, with contributions from NATO and non-NATO member states, and its chain of command goes to Allied Joint Force Command Naples and then to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, NATO’s highest level of military command.

A peace-keeping force in Ukraine, therefore, could be provided and operated by a “coalition of the willing” assembled from those countries willing to contribute (Russia’s so-far insistence on no Western forces notwithstanding). The Security Council has already passed UNSCR 2774 (2025) but it is very loosely worded and merely “Implores a swift end to the conflict and further urges a lasting peace between Ukraine and the Russian Federation”. It is worth observing that while the resolution was carried with 10 votes in favour and none against, five countries, including the UK and France, abstained.

The United Kingdom’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Dame Barbara Woodward, explained the reasons for the UK’s abstention:

Only a just peace, one that honours the terms of our Charter, will endure. And the terms of the peace must send a message that aggression does not pay. This is why there can be no equivalence between Russia and Ukraine in how this Council refers to this war… Russia chose to launch a war of aggression against a sovereign state, but again today is seeking to obfuscate that fact… No peace will be sustainable without Ukraine’s consent.

Given that Russia has a permanent seat on the Security Council and therefore the power of veto, as do the United States, the United Kingdom, France and China, it may be extremely difficult to find consensus on a form of words and on a wider settlement, given that Russia will simply deny reality and President Trump seems inclined to allow Putin anything he wants, while the UK and France are insistent that the war cannot be framed neutrally. The French Permanent Representative, Nicolas de Rivière, said “There will be no peace and security if aggressors are rewarded and the law of the jungle wins”. (Ironically, de Rivière is about to take over as the French Ambassador to Russia.)

The mood at the United Nations is not particularly good. Last week, the President of the General Assembly, Philémon Yang of Cameroon, recalled that the body had underscored “its unwavering commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”. That seems an impossibility now, given United States Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s observation last month that Ukraine will never be likely to be admitted to NATO, a key part of the country’s foreign and security policy, and President Trump’s strong suggestion that any peace settlement would not require Russia to cede the 20 per cent of Ukraine’s territory it has seized since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.

As I wrote in The Hill last October, I am sceptical about much of the UN’s work, purpose and relevance, and I think international law as a concept is often an unforceable catalogue of pieties. Nevertheless, creating and sustaining a peace settlement will be all the more difficult of there is no explicit authorisation or mandate from the United Nations. The invasion of Iraq in 2003, although UN resolutions were cited as partial justification for the action, rested principally on US congressional law, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. This weakened the case for the conflict and fostered division within the international community, of which the scars are still very much visible. Yet it is entirely plausible that it will not be possible to achieve consensus on a specific set of provisions at the United Nations, with enormous implications for the legal status of and participation in any peace-keeping force.

What is the mission?

Most of the discussions of generating a force to be deployed to Ukraine in support of a settlement have referred to “peace-keeping”. I doubt that much thought has gone into the use this term: it is, surely, just a commonplace term which we all more or less understand? Well, yes and no. The United Nations, to take its peace-keeping operations as a benchmark for a moment, explains that there are three principles underlying peace-keeping: the consent of the main parties in the conflict, which reflects a commitment in their part to a political process; impartiality, with the caveat that the terms of the mission must be observed scrupulously and rigorously; and non-use of force except in self-defence and in defence of the mandate of the operation, and an assumption that use of force should be the last resort.

There are other forms of what we might broadly consider “peace-keeping” missions. What are called multidimensional missions include the traditional peace-keeping functions of separating the parties to conflict and monitoring observance of the terms of the peace settlement, but they can also carry out other, more ambitious and involved functions like election observation, police and security sector reform, institution-building and economic development. The United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia (UNTAG) in 1989-90 oversaw the country’s journey from occupation by South Africa to independence, which included election monitoring, managing refugees, establishing new democratic institutions, responding to renewed armed activity and the imposition of a new ceasefire.

Another step up in intensity are peace enforcement missions, where it is not possible to secure the agreement of all the belligerent parties. These require much larger and more capable military components and are mandated to use force beyond the usual parameters of self-defence. The NATO deployments to Bosnia and Herzegovina, IFOR (1995-96) and SFOR (1996-2004), were missions of this kind and required significant elements like the availability of air power to implement and enforce the terms of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the so-called Dayton Accords agreed in the second half of 1995. Peace enforcement is only a realistic option if the force has a substantial military superiority over any of the belligerent parties, so it is difficult to see how this would be achieved in Ukraine; it is, perhaps, conceivable that a settlement to which Russia agreed but Ukraine did not could be imposed by force, but I am not at all sure that anyone has both the military power and the willingness to exercise that level of coercion on the Ukrainian government.

What kind of mission are we anticipating in Ukraine? It is too early to say, of course, because, as I began by saying, we find ourselves in this bizarre Potemkin situation of planning the implementation of a negotiated settlement before substantive talks have even begun. It is a question which will have to be answered eventually, however, because it is critical to the size, capabilities and equipment required of the peace-keeping force.

Rules of engagement and national caveats

Let us imagine that a settlement which brings the conflict to an end has been agreed and a multinational force of a considerable size, with 15 or 20 contributing nations, is being assembled to deploy to Ukraine. Even if the auguries are promising and a peaceful, even if grudging, acceptance of the settlement is anticipated, military staffs must, to be responsible, make plans for worst-case scenarios. Before any units reach the area of operations, therefore, planners will have to have rehearsed their response if, for example, one or the other side suddenly resists the implementation of the agreement and the situation escalates to the level of combat.

Whether the peace-keepers find themselves having to respond to Russian or Ukrainian action—I make no judgement, this is purely a hypothetical exercise—they will have to have been issued with clear and workable rules of engagement setting out the level of force they are allowed to use and the circumstances under which they are allowed to use it. The United Nations does not have a single, universal set of rules of engagement but rather issues bespoke guidance for each peace-keeping mission.

Clear rules of engagement do not necessarily negate any legal consequences. To use an example from the British Army’s Operation Banner, the deployment to Northern Ireland during the Troubles, soldiers were issued with what were known as Yellow Cards which set out the circumstances under which they could open fire and the intermediate steps which had to be observed before that stage was reached. The Yellow Cards did not grant immunity from the criminal law but they provided a robust and uniform standard of behaviour. It was rare for soldiers to depart significantly from this guidance, and when it did happen, the results were disastrous, the most infamous occasion probably being the killing of 14 unarmed civilians by men of 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, in Londonderry on 30 January 1972, now remembered as Bloody Sunday.

An associated challenge which caused great difficulties for NATO commanders in Afghanistan during the International Security Assistance Force’s mission there between 2001 and 2014 was the imposition of what are called national caveats: essentially, individual national governments can place different limitations on what their contingents are allowed to do. For example, different countries may take a variety of views on where within the area of operations their forces are permitted to deploy, with whom they can cooperate, what equipment they must have or can’t have, who they regard as enemy combatants, when they are allowed to use lethal force and so on.

This patchwork made running a multinational force like ISAF extraordinarily difficult. In total, 48 countries participated in ISAF, and it was calculated that national caveats imposed somewhere between 50 and 80 separate restrictions on commanders. Each national contingent had an officer designated to hold a so-called “red card”, which could be used to inform the chain of command that the contingent was unable to undertake a certain task or participate in a specific activity because it would infringe a caveat set out by their government. For example, early on in the mission, Canadian forces were required to obtain advance approval from their national chain of command for any operation which might cause collateral damage, essentially necessitating a consultation with Ottawa every time they left their bases. German forces were not permitted to move outside their designated sector unless for a very short period and only if critical to the success of ISAF’s overall mission. They were also forbidden from engaging in offensive actions, which in practice meant they could not engage the enemy if he started to move.

This elaborate network of permissions and restrictions was supremely frustrating and often operationally compromising for ISAF commanders. It also led to friction between national contingents, giving the appearance (perfectly accurately, in fact) that some countries were taking on a heavier burden than others. If we find ourselves with a 15- or 20-nation coalition peace-keeping force in Ukraine, both political and military leaders will need to undertake thorough preparations so that potential problems like these are analysed and solutions found well in advance rather than having to be resolved while operationally deployed or, in the worst-case scenario, in combat.

Conclusion

There are huge questions about the very notion of a peace-keeping force in Ukraine, many of which I haven’t touched on. The fundamental composition of any force will be hugely significant, as will the levels of commitment different participants are willing to make. Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Sir Keir Starmer’s Whitehall fixer, told the BBC this morning that countries could not be “dragooned” into participation: “it’s their decision, they’re sovereign countries”. UK officials had already suggested that, while around 20 nations had expressed an interest in being involved, it could not be assumed that all would send combat troops to Ukraine and some might support a mission in other ways. Espen Barth Eide, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway, said that his government was “happy to contribute in one way or the other but we have not made choices. We need to know what is it that is there to be secured first.”

Eide sums up the problem at this stage. We have no idea what a peace settlement might look like or even if one can be achieved, yet we are poring over detailed preparations. Still, time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted, as the only military axiom has it. If this happens at all, it is going to be a fiercely complicated and delicate operation and an enormous challenge for all participants, but there is absolutely no excuse for not having considered the issues as early as possible. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was scarred perhaps above all by a blithe lack of preparation and foresight. Ukraine would be a very different type of operation but the same mistake would be unforgiveable.