Why the UK should not be sending Troops to Ukraine

During the cold war, both the West and the Soviet Union had a very rational fear of one another. They both acutely understood the threat of mutually assured destruction, the notion that if one were to attack the other with nuclear weapons, both would inevitably be destroyed. As a result, the two sides treated the cold war with extreme caution - the possibility of direct military confrontation between them was to be avoided at all cost, as this could easily scale up into nuclear conflict. Instead, proxy wars were fought, such as in Vietnam or Korea, where there was no such threat of direct military confrontation.

Despite the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, our nuclear weapons never went away. Since the start of the 21st century, a new tripolar cold war has been taking shape, between NATO, Russia and China. In theory, this situation is even more unstable than that of the original cold war, with the rise of China as a third nuclear superpower, currently in an unofficial alliance of convenience with Russia, representing an even greater threat to global security.

But instead of an increase in caution as a response to this, NATO has taken the opposite approach, pursuing maximalist goals of global dominance after the fall of the soviet union. Crucially, the peace settlement in 1990 between the Soviet Union and the West was contingent upon a verbal agreement that NATO would not expand one inch eastward of a newly unified Germany. Over the years this promise would be repeatedly broken, with NATO expanding to include virtually all of Europe, despite constant protest from Russia.

In 2008 this western triumphalism and blatant disregard for Russia’s security concerns came to a head with Ukraine being given verbal assurances that it would join NATO, crossing a clear red line that had been set out by Russia. While this does not excuse Putin’s deplorable act of aggression in invading Ukraine in 2022, it is important to understand that this invasion did not directly risk nuclear war because Ukraine was not yet a NATO member. 

However, the same cannot be said about Keir Starmer’s recent proposal to send British troops to Ukraine as part of a 30,000 strong European force. Not only will this raise tensions between NATO and Russia, but it enormously increases the possibility of direct armed conflict between Britain and Russia, a scenario which more level headed cold war leaders of the past would have bent over backwards to avoid. 

If such a conflict were to break out between this European force and Russian troops it would be catastrophic for global security, due to the nature of conflict escalation - the side which escalates the conflict the most will surely be dominant, and if a side is losing it will look to escalation as a means to regain the upper hand. Given that the pinnacle of this escalation would be nuclear war, it is certainly not a scenario to be taken lightly.

If we are to avoid this outcome, we must learn from the lessons of the 20th century cold war, in which global catastrophe was fortunately avoided through careful diplomacy and compromise. If this new cold war is to end in the same way, in the west we must be prepared to swallow our pride at times and seek a resolution with Russia, even if it may include outcomes we find distasteful, such as Russia gaining control of some Ukrainian territory. As Kennedy and Khrushchev understood at the peak of the Cuban missile Crisis, there is no other option.