As I write on March 2 2022 Russian artillery is shelling Ukrainian cities and there is a real prospect of urban warfare with mass civilian casualties. This is unconscionable. However to avert it, were NATO to intervene, that could provoke a nuclear exchange. That is also unconscionable. A NATO policed no-fly zone over Ukraine would be as likely to provoke this outcome as actual troops on the ground. I am pretty sure that a Europe that does not intervene as Ukrainians die for Europe, and that is how this is now understood, loses its soul.
So what to do? What I am about to suggest is, I realise, incredibly risky, and I want to make clear that I would be absolutely willing to be a civilian observer if we actually went this way. Pontificating about how other people should put themselves in the mouth of danger (as the anthem puts it) makes me queasy.
There are four non-NATO members of the EU who all have significant experience of peace-keeping. If under EU authority we were to actually do what the Russians claim to do and send a peace-keeping force into Ukraine we could end the war. There is a real likelihood that we (the Finns, Swedes, Austrians and Irish) end up in conflict with the Russians, and that pulls the French and Germans in after us, even if only in the skies. However, if neutral European troops were airlifted into Kyiv and Kharkiv, fully aware that it could not in the first instance be an effective fighting force, we make the political and military cost of shelling civilians too high, without provoking World War Three if there is conflict.
The huge problem here, of course, is that the very fact that Russia has invaded Ukraine illustrates their adventurism, and they might well escalate and be damned. NATO asked troops in Germany to act as human trip wires for decades, in a strategy designed to leave enough time to use nuclear weapons. I think a similar tactic, but this time with a view to avoiding their use, may offer a route for us not to stand idly by, but not destroy the continent either.
