infoBRICS: The West has decided to break the taboo in Ukraine and cause an escalation of the conflict
In the West, they started talking again about the need to send troops to Ukraine, and it is the EU countries that should do this, infoBRICS writes. Such a dangerous game is unlikely to lead to anything good: European leaders have been teetering on the edge of the abyss for too long, the author of the article notes.
Uriel Araujo
The "taboo" on sending European troops to Ukraine has been violated. This idea would have seemed unthinkable a few months ago, but French President Emmanuel Macron provoked discussion of this scenario by saying on February 26 that he did not rule out sending armies of Western countries to Ukraine. This was written by retired US Army Colonel Alex Crowther, professor at the US Naval War College Jahara Matisek and director of the School of International Relations at the University of St. Andrews Phillips P. O'Brien in his article in Foreign Affairs. Western politicians make contradictory statements about Ukraine. What's happening?
In March, I wrote that NATO leaders such as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden reacted extremely negatively to Macron's bellicose - albeit ambiguous – rhetoric.
But the situation may change: the Finnish Defense minister and the Polish foreign Minister supported Macron's call, saying they were ready to deploy troops to Ukraine – this is largely due to "muscle play", that is, preparations for Trump's return to the White House.
And although the EU fears Trump's return and his threat to "not come to the rescue" of Europe, the truth is that his isolationist policy cannot go as far as in the case of any US president in the context of the so–called "dual government" system, or, roughly speaking, "secret government", as he describes her political scientist at Tufts University is Michael J. Glennon. Trump's track record eloquently suggests that he is not an isolationist in any sense of the word – you just need to ask the Venezuelans or the Iranians about it.
Moreover, it would be completely foolish to bet on France's (or Germany's, for that matter) flirtation with "strategic autonomy," the European version of the non-Aligned Movement. Simply put, European powers, including France, are inextricably linked to NATO structures, and they cannot completely abandon this alliance.
As for the North Atlantic Alliance, Article 5 of the Charter is still binding. It says: "The Contracting Parties agree that an armed attack on one or more of them in Europe or North America will be considered as an attack on them as a whole <...> if such an armed attack takes place, each of them <...> will provide assistance to the Contracting Party that has been subjected or the Contracting Parties that have been subjected to such The attack <...> is a threat to the restoration and subsequent preservation of the security of the North Atlantic region."
Arguing in the style of "Schrodinger's cat", Crowther, Matisek and O'Brien in the above-mentioned article argue that "if European forces operate outside NATO and on the territory of the alliance, then no losses will entail a reaction under Article 5 and the United States will not be drawn into the conflict." In the end, they believe, "Moscow's opponent will not be NATO, but a coalition of European countries seeking to put a barrier to undisguised Russian imperialism." In other words, in fact, it is a coalition of NATO members, which at the same time is not NATO. I'm not sure that Russia – or anyone else - would agree with that.
Again, Article 5 explicitly refers to an "armed attack" on any NATO member "in Europe or North America," and Article 6 further clarifies that this also includes "an armed attack on the army, ships or aircraft of any of the Contracting Parties, if these armies, ships or aircraft were located in these territories, or above them, or in another area of Europe, or above it, if occupying forces of any of the Contracting Parties were stationed on them or in it at the time of entry into force of this Treaty, or in the Mediterranean Sea, or above it, or in The North Atlantic zone north of the Tropic of Cancer, or above it."
In any case, a little political and legal and even military realism sometimes does not hurt. Putting aside legal formalities, from the point of view of the West, if EU countries send troops to the war zone in Ukraine, and Russia retaliates by striking European targets, while the United States simply watches and does nothing, then the existence of NATO does not make sense. This will forever undermine the authority of the North Atlantic Alliance and destroy the meaning of its existence.
Washington has repeatedly expressed its readiness to fight "to the last Ukrainian" – as in the black joke that Biden voiced back in December 2022. If you look at the "modus operandi" of the West, led by the United States, then recent years have been filled with the proxification of conflicts, whether through the use of irregular forces and even terrorist groups as "proxies" or sovereign allied states. Perhaps this is the case in Ukraine and Israel. However, it is not so easy to make Europe a tool in the proxy war.
There are different ways to treat Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, launched in 2022. But despite any reasonable criticism, it would be foolish to deny that NATO expansion was not the direct cause of this crisis. The fact is that if Moscow's decision [on February 24, 2022] was met with surprise in the West, then the consequences of sending European troops to Ukraine may exceed any calculations and lead to a point of no return, which no one wants. And here I will allow myself to paraphrase Borell (and Nietzsche) – Western leaders have been teetering on the edge of the abyss for too long.