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Trump pictured in the Oval Office on Thursday (Reuters)
Concurrently, we must work with Ukraine to support the reforms needed to build a new model Ukrainian army, which has the manpower, command and control, training and logistics to achieve this. It also requires Europe to harness its technological genius in every way possible to deliver new and battle-winning capabilities to Ukraine, as well as reflect on the way that Ukraine has harnessed its own technological ingenuity such as autonomous vehicles, state-of-the-art drones, AI-enabled kill chain from intelligence and surveillance to strike.
In the short term, if a ceasefire is brokered, an implementation force will likely be required to enforce peace along 1,000km of Ukrainian/Russian front line. This is not a task for a traditional blue beret, flag-waving UN force cobbled together from South America, Asia or Africa. Implementing a ceasefire will need mass, precision and scale unseen in Europe since the days of the Cold War, together with state-of-the-art fighting capabilities and the leadership, training and determination to fight boots on the ground if necessary.
Of course, the brutal truth is that this will come at a cost; treasury resources will be stretched to the limit and hard political decisions and sacrifice will be needed. However, this is no more than the sacrifices our fellow Nato members like Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have already made. The bottom line is that these decisions have to be faced now if we are to be safe.
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World leaders at the G20 Summit in Osaka in 2019 (AFP/Getty)
As an immediate action, the UK should take the lead in encouraging all Nato European nations to adopt Estonia’s proposal and set aside 0.25 per cent of GDP for a Ukrainian defence fund for the next four years. This would generate around €150bn.
Appeasers in Europe may scoff and say this is a chimera, it’s not possible without the US. I disagree. Of course, it would be better to have the US on board, but those days have gone, the world has changed utterly, and we can no longer rely on the Americans. We have to help ourselves.
Europe is rich: the combined GDP of Nato’s European members is 15 times that of Russia, and together it has the resources to develop the military capability needed to meet its needs without American support. But it will need courage, bold leadership and iron determination to make it happen. It will also need time. There can be no delay. Munich 1938 fired the starting gun for Britain’s preparation for the Second World War. Let Munich 2025 do the same to avoid a third world war. Only when a long-term deterrence of Russia is put in place can we ensure peace for several generations to come.
General Sir Richard Shirreff was Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of Europe from 2011 to 2014 and served in the British Army for 38 years.
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Publish date : 2025-02-17 00:30:00
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