Robert Fico, Slovakia’s notorious new pro-Putin PM, claims that some western states “are considering sending soldiers on a bilateral basis.” As a rule, nothing Fico says ought to be taken seriously. This time, though, Emanuel Macron appeared to echo his comments, refusing to rule out possible troop deployments to Ukraine. “There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out.”
Macron likes to talk tough, and is not very good at following through. His words, like Fico’s, should not be granted any great weight. Still, it is possible the two leaders are referring to some kind of limited training mission: after all, it would be much simpler to train newly-mobilized Ukrainians without shipping them off to Spain or England first.
Those comments do raise a broader question: are there any circumstances under which NATO member states would consider deploying combat forces to assist Ukraine? The notion might seem fantastic—even the more limited no-fly-zone idea was basically laughed out the door. Right now, Germany refuses to send much-needed cruise missiles in order to avoid become “a party to the conflict.” No one has ever demonstrated any appetite for a direct military confrontation with Russia.
If such a confrontation comes, though, it will arise from necessity and reason, not appetite. In fact there are specific circumstances under which individual NATO member states—especially Poland—might deploy troops. This has been true since the beginning of the war, as I hinted in passing last summer. It’s a simple strategic calculus. Take an extreme example: suppose that Ukrainian forces start to collapse so badly that Russia is able to threaten or take Kharkiv, reach the Dnipro and continue advance, perhaps threaten Kyiv again—in other words, imagine a total rout that risks complete Russian victory. (This scenario is extremely unlikely, but let’s use it as a thought experiment.) Now the risks to Poland are enormous: millions of refugees, Russian troops on its border, the threat of direct attack.
By contrast, a military intervention would stop Russia in its tracks, and probably at acceptable cost. Poland’s land forces are large, well-trained, and well-equipped—far superior to Russian ground forces. Poland has a functional air force, and will soon receive F-35s, enabling operations even against dense Russian anti-aircraft systems. Drones and artillery might cause problems, but in general Poland’s prospects are very good. The cost-benefit calculus obviously favors intervention.
There are two wild cards. Nuclear weapons present the first difficulty. But Russian nuclear use is actually very unlikely in this scenario. It creates grave dangers for Russia, most notably the prospect of American conventional retaliation. It might not even produce military advantage: tactical nuclear weapons are not very useful in a static conflict without large troop concentrations. (Russia suffers from a lack of precision, not a lack of firepower.) And Putin can deal with being stopped, especially after seizing large parts of Ukraine. Only outright defeat threatens his goals and his regime in a way that makes nuclear use attractive.
The real barrier comes from public opinion. Polish farmers have spent weeks blocking highways and holding up aid shipments to Ukraine. They are angry about having to compete with a flood of Ukrainian products, and support from the Polish public at large has cooled. In case of extreme Ukrainian collapse, public opinion might shift, but right now it’s hard to imagine majority support for direct military action. Other nations face similar problems—see the aforementioned Fico.
The basic point, though, is that European ground deployments are not absurd but instead almost certainly rational under some circumstances. And that ought to raise questions about whether they make sense even absent the kind of catastrophic collapse envisioned above. If Ukrainian shell starvation worsens, and Congress refuses to act, limited deployments designed to stabilize Ukrainian lines might make sense, given the fairly low risk of nuclear escalation. They’re not likely, and arguably unwise. But they aren’t irrational, and it is important not to create a conceptual barrier to a rational strategic option just because it sounds scary.