Will NATO Conventionally Intervene In Ukraine?

French President Emmanuel Macron’s claim in late February that a conventional NATO intervention in Ukraine can’t be “ruled out” drew global attention to this scenario, which had hitherto been dismissed by Western media as so-called “Russian propaganda”. It came as Russia continued gaining ground in Donbass upon exploiting Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive last summer. Accordingly, as the pace of these selfsame gains increased, so too did calls for a conventional NATO intervention.

A representative of the French Communist Party told the press in early March after Macron met with parliamentary parties that “[he] referenced a scenario that could lead to intervention [of French troops]: the advancement of the front towards Odessa or Kiev.” Western leaders initially united in condemning the French leader’s earlier statement as reckless, but some of them soon thereafter came around to agreeing with him that this scenario can’t be ruled out.

Politico reported around the same time in early March that “France finds Baltic allies in its spat with Germany over Ukraine troop deployment”, where they also cited Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski as saying that “The presence of NATO forces in Ukraine is not unthinkable”. Earlier this month, Macron reaffirmed his threat from late February, after which Sikorski shortly thereafter repeated his aforementioned stance.

These statements coincided with Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper reporting that NATO could activate up to 100,000 troops along its eastern flank to conventionally intervene in Ukraine if a third country like Belarus enters the conflict or Russia threatens some of the bloc’s members. These two red lines and Macron’s reported ones regarding Russian advances towards Odessa and Kiev have yet to be crossed, but Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently said that NATO troops are already operating in Ukraine.

According to him, “NATO today is helping as much as it can. Without NATO’s help, Ukraine would not have been able to defend itself for so long. Well, and there are some troops there, I mean soldiers. There are some soldiers there. Observers, engineers. They’re helping them out.” To be sure, this is an open secret that objective observers were already aware of, but the importance of his statements rests in the fact that he leads one of the NATO countries that could conventionally intervene at a large scale.

His admission preceded the New York Times’ recent report by approximately one week where they claimed that “As Russia Advances, NATO Considers Sending Trainers Into Ukraine”, in which it was reported that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that “We’ll get there eventually, over time.” The US’ official stance is that it considers such a move to be putting American troops in harm’s way, but few believe that it hasn’t already done so over the past nearly 27 months of intense proxy warfare.

As was earlier mentioned, the talk of a conventional NATO intervention of some sort has ramped up in parallel with Russia continuing to gain ground in the special operation zone, so it therefore follows that this will be more actively discussed in light of its recent achievements in Kharkov Region. Despite telegraphing its intentions for months to carve out a buffer zone there for protecting its city of Belgorod, Russia was able to “simply walk in” according to a Ukrainian special reconnaissance commander.

That individual blamed corruption for resulting in an absence of border defense fortifications, which in turn contributed to the panic among US officials that the New York Times drew attention to in their piece about how “White House Worries Russia’s Momentum Is Changing Trajectory of Ukraine War”. Nevertheless, President Putin told the press on Friday while visiting China that his country doesn’t have any plans at present for capturing Kharkov, which might be intended to calm some of this same panic.

After all, if the West becomes convinced that Russia is supposedly about to cross one of its red lines, then France and others like Poland might form a “coalition of the willing” to conventionally intervene there in order to free up Ukraine’s reserves to go to the front and/or join them there. Regarding the first scenario, they could enter Western Ukraine as trainers and/or police who could be protected by Polish- and Romanian-based Patriot systems per the proposal from some German lawmakers last week.

As for the second, this could resemble a large-scale invasion designed to freeze the front lines in order to impose former NATO Supreme Commander Admiral James Stavridis’ proposal from early November for a Korean-like armistice that would de facto partition this former Soviet Republic. Both scenarios carry with them the very real risk of provoking World War III by miscalculation, especially the second one, which places Russia’s recently announced tactical nuclear exercises into context.

Seeing as how the likelihood of a conventional NATO intervention is growing by the day, it makes sense for Moscow to flex its military muscles in order to deter at least the second much more dangerous scenario of a large-scale invasion. It’s unclear whether Russia would target uniformed NATO troops that huddle along the Polish and Romanian borders under Patriot umbrellas while carrying out training or law enforcement missions, but it’ll probably target those that attempt to cross the Dnieper.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows the use of these weapons if the state’s existence is at stake, including its territorial integrity and irrespective of whether the threat is a conventional or nuclear one. A large-scale NATO invasion force racing across Ukraine en route to Russia’s newly reunified regions would constitute precisely such a threat even if they claim that they only intend to hold the front line and not cross it since the Kremlin doesn’t trust its former “Western partners’” words anymore.

Rational Western policymakers would thus expect that ordering uniformed NATO troops to cross the Dnieper en masse would trigger Russia’s tripwire for using tactical nuclear weapons in self-defense, but it can’t be taken for granted that those who are calling the shots are rational actors. Everything that they’ve done in the run-up to Russia’s special operation and especially afterwards suggests that they’re willing to take enormous risks that most rational policymakers would never countenance.

While some rational folks might still exist among them, most Western policymakers are ideological radicals hellbent on destroying Russia through proxy war means via Ukraine. They can’t accept that they failed to inflict a strategic defeat on their adversary and are unwilling to compromise by freezing the conflict on terms that ensure Russia’s national security interests. For these reasons, they might be preparing to “escalate to de-escalate” on terms that they deem more advantageous for their side.

Objectively speaking, it’s in the world’s interests that NATO-Russian tensions remain manageable and below the nuclear threshold, which is why it’s important that Russia’s presumed red line of no large-scale NATO invasion force crossing the Dnieper be respected otherwise it might resort to tactical nukes. To that end, truly neutral mediators like India could be relied upon for conveying this to the West, which might hopefully trust them enough to reconsider these plans and instead settle for a compromise.