Zelensky demanded a minimum of 200,000 European peacekeepers during the panel session that followed his speech at Davos, which itself saw him propose that France, Germany, Italy, and the UK combine their forces with Ukraine’s in order to counter Russia’s in nearly equal numbers. He also suggested that Trump will abandon Europe in order to cut a deal over Ukraine with Russia and China. The subtext is that they should organize a large-scale peacekeeping mission before that happens.
They’re unlikely to accede to his demand, however, for the same reason that the UK is unlikely to actually establish a military base in Ukraine like it agreed to explore doing in their new 100-year partnership pact. None of the Europeans want to risk a war with Russia where they’d be left fighting on their own without American support, not even the nuclear-armed UK and France, since Trump isn’t expected to extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to allies’ forces in third countries like Ukraine.
He, who loves having as much control over everything as possible, naturally wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing that others could provoke a war with Russia that might then drag in the US. Trump’s grand strategic goal is to wrap up the Ukrainian Conflict as soon as possible so as to prioritize his far-reaching domestic reform plans while “Pivoting (back) to Asia” to more muscularly contain China. Anything that could come in the way of that agenda, especially others provoking a war with Russia, is anathema.
That said, it can’t be ruled out the Europeans might assemble a large-scale force on Ukraine’s Polish and Romanian borders for rapid deployment in the event of future hostilities, regardless of whether this is coordinated through US-controlled NATO or outside of it. For that to happen, however, Polish–Ukrainian ties would have to improve (Zelensky ignored Poland in his speech despite it having NATO’s third-largest army) and Romania’s populist frontrunner would have to lose May’s presidential election rerun.
Moreover, Europe would need to make meaningful progress on building the “military Schengen” for facilitating the movement of troops and equipment through the bloc to its eastern borders, otherwise whatever it assembles on the Ukrainian frontier and then sends across it would be logistically vulnerable. Polish-Ukrainian ties haven’t yet improved, Romania’s presidential election rerun hasn’t yet happened, and the “military Schengen” remains mostly on paper, all of which work against Zelensky’s plans.
Consequently, the likelihood of the Europeans assembling a large-scale force on Ukraine’s Polish and Romanian borders anytime soon is low, let alone them unilaterally deploying peacekeepers – whether 200,000 or just 2,000 – to Ukraine without prior US approval. Nevertheless, Zelensky’s Davos speech and panel session might serve to plant the seed of “ambitious thinking” in European policymakers’ minds, which could lead to them initiating such discussions with the US.
From Trump’s perspective, it’s important to “share the burden” in Ukraine and ideally offload as much of it as possible onto the Europeans’ shoulders, though without emboldening them to provoke a war with Russia afterwards. To that end, he might publicly flirt with some variation of Zelensky’s European peacekeeper proposal, but only as part of a negotiating tactic with Putin so that he can then rescind it as a faux concession in exchange for something more tangible and meaningful from his counterpart.
Trump might also ultimately authorize the US to take the lead in assembling the aforementioned large-scale force on Ukraine’s Polish and Romanian borders, but conditional on all NATO members agreeing to his demand that they spend 5% of GDP on defense. There might also be other strings attached too, such as trade-related ones, for “comforting” them in this way by making a show out of not “abandoning” Europe like Zelensky just fearmongered that he might be plotting.
One way to coerce them to do both, namely spend 5% of GDP on defense while agreeing to trade-related concessions for leading an unprecedented NATO buildup on Ukraine’s western borders to “deter Russia” after the conflict ends, is to demand drastic cuts to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Zelensky warned during his panel session that Putin might demand a five-fold reduction per the precedent from spring 2022’s draft treaty, and if Trump agrees, then this might spook Europe into doing what he demands.
Whatever he ends up doing, the odds of him allowing the Europeans to unilaterally dispatch any number of peacekeepers to Ukraine are close to nil due to the chance that they’d provoke a war with Russia that could risk dragging in the US, thus derailing his domestic and foreign policy agendas. All that he has to do to prevent this is make clear that Article 5 mutual defense guarantees won’t be extended to those of their forces in third countries no matter the circumstances of the attacks that they might come under.
The only scenario in which he might countenance this is if he’s tricked by the military-industrial complex, the Europeans (especially outgoing Polish President Andrzej Duda who’s one of his close friends), and misguided advisors into turning Ukraine into his Vietnam like Steven Bannon just warned. While there are causes for concern, most notably his remarks about Russia after the inauguration, it’s premature to conclude that he’ll go this route so the European peacekeeper scenario remains very unlikely.
