We’re to celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE day on 5th May, which is the bank holiday Monday. The precise date of VE day is a tad more complex.
Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945 and Admiral Karl Doenitz took charge. On May 4th (Star Wars Day to many) Admiral von Friedburg met Field Marshall Montgomery and signed the surrender of all German forces fighting in Northwest Europe. The Red Army captured Berlin on 2nd May and the German hope (it was never much of a plan) of surrendering to the western allies while fighting the Red Army evaporated. The imperative for German soldiers became surrendering to the west allies rather than to the Soviet Union.
On 5th May Doenitz sent General Jodl to sign an unconditional surrender unless he could negotiate something better. He couldn’t , although he managed to cause further delay. In the early hours of 7th May he signed, as did British, American, French and Russian counterparts, the fighting to cease at 23:01 on 8th May. Stalin insisted on ratifying it in Berlin, which is why Russia celebrates VE day on 9 May (Moscow time being ahead of Berlin time).
As President Trump is learning, ending wars is hard even when one of the participants is virtually destroyed. In Ukraine both the belligerents remain viable states, albeit ones under military and economic pressure with populations diminishing at about 2,500 a week each. Neither has an easy path to victory on the battlefield so the killing is largely pointless, but killing is what armed forces do in wartime.
Whether Trump’s discussion with Zelensky or his messages of displeasure to Moscow (the real ones, not the tweets) are sufficient to end the killing is unclear. Losing US support would cripple Ukraine. Whether more aggressive US sanctions on Russia (and its major trade partners, China and India) will bring Putin to the table is less clear.
What we know of the current plan includes formally returning Crimea to Russia and barring Ukraine from NATO. The threat of Ukraine in NATO was one of Putin’s casus belli (or whatever the Latin for “Special Military Operation” is). If he can get what he needed without the enormous economic and human cost of a continuing war he would me mad not to take it – and Putin is rational, albeit in a manner that some in the West find hard to understand.
That’s all tough for Ukrainians in general (and Zelensky in particular) to swallow. However they’re utterly dependent upon the United States so their room for manoeuvre is limited. If the ceasefire and the minerals deal make Ukraine a strategic asset in the eyes of President Trump their position is much improved. The country won’t be as large as it was when it was founded following the breakup of the Soviet Union and it may find that it’s become a vassal of the United States. That’s better than being the proxy of European NATO members who, it transpires, didn’t have the resources or industrial capacity to arm it sufficiently well for it to win. It’s also better than being stuck in a war it can’t win, let alone losing that war.
As Gilbert and Sullivan knew, keeping the King’s Peace is far from easy. Keeping a ceasefire on a 2,000 kilometre front isn’t going to be a walk in the park either. The best example of how to do it is the Korean De-Militarised Zone (DMZ). The DMZ spans the 250 km wide Korean peninsula and is approximately 4 km deep. The depth is the crucial bit as it prevents North Korean Troops seeing South Koran Troops (and vice versa). As much military weaponry depends upon line of sight contact, the depth of the DMZ renders combat almost impossible.
Yes, missiles and artillery could be launched over the DMX but that would be an obvious breech. It would also require some preparatory moves and some drone or elevated observer. Both would be clear and obvious to any ceasefire enforcer who, depending upon rules of engagement (RoE) and available weaponry, might be able to do something about it.
That of course begs the question of who is supplying the troops to patrol a DMZ ten times the length of the Korean one and, if necessary, act robustly to maintain the ceasefire. In the la-la land of Kier Starmer and Macron it was to be a “coalition of the willing.” It turns out that not many were willing and that the generals pointed out to their vainglorious leaders that US support was a fundamental requirement. President Trump has no intention of getting involved in a foreign war and won’t put GI Joe at risk. He has, it seems, agreed to make intelligence assets available. That should mean that whoever is enforcing the ceasefire will have some warning if an artillery or missile unit prepares to break the ceasefire.
That just leaves the considerable problem of patrolling the ceasefire line. There is no escaping the reality that observing a 2,000 Km front continuously will take an enormous number of troops. Assuming that a single observation post (OP) can cover 2km that’s 1,000 OPs. If each has four soldiers (the absolute minimum) that’s 4,000 soldiers. If they’re working four hours on, four hours off then it’s 8,000. They can’t do that indefinitely, so that’s 16,000. Nor can they be unsupported military or logistically. Every front line soldier, like those in the OP, has at least two behind him (or her). So that’s 48,000, just to observe the border and provide limited intercession in the event of a breech.
Of course, soldiers can’t be sent to Ukraine for the duration, so that number must be trebled (one group deployed, one group training and one recovering. Call it 150,000 in total excluding any counter attacking forces, air defence or aviation. The entire British Army numbers just half of that. Without such constant coverage how can the world, Ukraine or Russia be certain that the ceasefire will hold?
Meanwhile the “coalition of the willing” has developed it’s focus on becoming a “reassurance force” and training the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Where the troops are to come from remains a mystery. It’s not being talked about in any detail in public (no surprise there) but if you were a Ukrainian or a Russian would you believe in a ceasefire without capable peacekeepers in place?
That’s what it took to halt the killing in the former Yugoslavia. The peacekeepers were equipped for combat and they used their weaponry. It started as a somewhat ineffective UN operation (UNPROFOR), which had command and control problems and inadequate rules of engagement. That was replaced by the NATO led Implementation Force (IFOR) which forced the UN’s terms into reality. IFOR in turn was replaced by the Stabilisation Force (SFOR). The alphabet soup indicates how complex peacekeeping is. The strength of IFOR, the force that brought about a ceasefire, was about 60,000.
Getting the belligerents to implement a ceasefire is far from easy. To get them to retreat out of line of sight is harder (they shed blood to get to the positions they’re now required to leave). Finding a competent and willing force to sit in the middle will be challenging indeed. Perhaps the Indians might oblige, in return for a (long overdue) seat on the security council? Without peacekeepers there can be no lasting ceasefire, and without a ceasefire there is no obvious path to peace. Upgrade to paid.
If the peacekeeper problem is solved President Trump is probably right to think that the presence of American contractors in Ukraine, variously digging mineral mines, operating the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and rebuilding infrastructure, would deter the Kremlin from breaking the ceasefire. However Ukrainians from either side of the line of contact might see the Trump imposed peace as a sell out to the West.
Not all Ukrainians hate Russia; at least some of them helped the invasions. Locals might well take matters into their own hands. American contractors may find that their kidnap and ransom insurance is expensive. Investors aren’t keen on putting money into companies that have high cost bases or that incur lawsuits for putting their employees in harm’s way so imposing a rule of law is fundamental to the Trump plan.
Ukraine is a very corrupt country – the tidal waves of money associated with the war have guaranteed that. Kiev may have made some progress in cleaning up but corruption remains endemic; Ukraine is ranked 106th on Transparency International’s corruption index. (Big numbers are bad. The least corrupt country comes in in first place – it’s Denmark. The UK came in at 20th – equal with Japan).
Corruption, organised crime and terrorism go hand in hand. It’s entirely possible that Ukrainian terrorist organisations emerge after the ceasefire. The recent spate of attacks deep inside Russia indicates that the capability already exists. While the United Kingdom managed to maintain more or less cordial relationships with Eire during the troubles despite its abetting republican terrorists there is no reason to think Russia would be as patient or passive. Hence the need for some deterrent force as well as the peace keepers.
The overarching lesson of the Ukraine War is that wars are best avoided. Of course, that lesson has been learned and forgotten countless times throughout history, particularly in Europe. We Britons also tend to forget that we got off lightly in the Second World War – our casualties were around 350,000, less than half of what we lost in the First World War. The Germans lost some 5.3 million, plus about 2 million civilians. The Russians lost some 8.7 million soldiers and some 16 to 19 million civilians.
How do you avoid wars? As Teddy Roosevelt put it, ‘speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Sadly the UK’s soft speaking, i.e. diplomacy, isn’t going well – as paying to give away the strategically important Chagos Islands to a Chinese stooge shows. We no longer have a big stick either, our armed forces are in a desperate state.
The Royal Navy’s much touted carrier battlegroup deployment to the China Seas is using one of our two available destroyers and one of our six available frigates. The Royal Navy’s cupboard is bare. The rest of the armed forces are equally bereft. Service personnel continue to leave faster than they can be replaced; our armed forces continue to shrink at 3 per cent per annum. Reversing this decline will take time and money, the latter being in short supply. The UK’s deficit hit a new high, or rather the government’s management of the UK’s finance hit a new low – at £152 billion it’s even worse than the OBR thought. (That’s twice the current defence budget – there really is no money to rearm.)
The UK has had to re-arm before. After the Boer War the Haldane reviews addressed the many military failings exposed in South Africa. The result was that the British Expeditionary Force sent to France in 1914 was probably the best Army in the world, albeit rather small. It halted the German advance at the Marne. Its well conducted retreat from there bought the time for the Parisian busses to deliver the French Army to the Somme. That saved France.
Post First World War Britain disarmed and only started rearming in the mid-1930s. That rearmament gave us the Spitfire and Hurricane, but the expeditionary force we sent to France in 1940 was inadequate. It failed to stop the German panzers and most of it was evacuated weaponless form Dunkirk. It took three years to rebuild an effective British Army.
So while you party to celebrate the victory in 1945 ask yourself if you believe that would peace is inevitable. If you conclude that it isn’t what part of government spending are you prepared to sacrifice to ensure that this country has a big enough stick to protect itself?
