Starmer offers Ukraine a defense check it can't cash

The blue and yellow flag of Ukraine billowed above Britain’s government buildings Monday, as it has every day since Russia’s invasion began nearly three years ago. Inside, officials were making calculations that will test the extent to which that gesture of solidarity could prove a hollow one.

On Sunday, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to put British boots on the ground as part of a theoretical future peacekeeping force protecting a ceasefire in Ukraine. But given the stretched state of his military, that’s a commitment he lacks the financial firepower to deliver.

"We have got to show we are truly serious about our own defense and bearing our own burden. We have talked about it for too long — and president Trump is right to demand that we get on with it,” Starmer wrote.

This statement of intent came before the prime minister headed to an emergency summit of European leaders on Monday to discuss U.S. President Donald Trump’s startling assumption of direct peace talks with Russia, which cut out both Europe and Ukraine itself. Starmer’s resolute words should also be seen in the context of a much-anticipated visit with Trump in Washington next week. The British premier is seeking to finesse lukewarm words from the president about the U.S.-U.K. special relationship and his own willingness to serve as a "bridge” between Europe and the U.S. into tangible ongoing support for Ukraine.

But with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressing "irritation” at the idea of his own forces joining a mission and little support from leaders at the summit beyond France’s Emmanuel Macron, Starmer may find he’s writing checks he can’t pay up on.

Macron has kicked around the idea of a peacekeeping force made up of some kind of coalition of the willing for several months, but it took the prospect of the U.S.-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia, which began Tuesday, and Vice President JD Vance’s excoriating words vis a vis Europe at last week’s Munich Security Conference, to push Starmer into publicly signing up.

The rushed (some say panicked) nature of the summit and lack of coordinated response as an outcome will only confirm the view in both Moscow and Washington that Europe is irrelevant when it comes to Ukraine. Nor are they likely to be impressed with Starmer’s offer of troops, a pledge that seems wildly unrealistic given the scale of the challenge.

Ukraine’s border with Russia is more than 1,400 miles, nearly 10 times the length of the DMZ, the demilitarized zone between the combatants in the last arrested world conflict, Korea. Any standalone peacekeeping force would need to be substantial in order to create a proper deterrent, enough to give Russia pause and avoid the kind of humiliation experienced during the Balkan conflict in the early 1990s, when ineffective and insufficient U.N. peacekeepers were brushed aside by Serb forces intent on ethnic cleansing.

Experts including NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself have suggested this would entail as many as 100,000 troops, led by the U.K. and France as the only major (and willing) military powers in Europe. Yet regular U.K. army forces currently stand at less than 75,000. Richard Dannatt, who led the British army between 2006 and 2009, has said that even a force of 10,000 would effectively drain the army of 30,000 troops a year, given the need for rotation and logistical support.

Under Starmer’s leadership, there has been no sign that the U.K. is ready to expand its armed forces to the numbers that could sustain that kind of campaign. We don’t even know the date by which Britain will reach the prime minister's target of increasing spending on defense from 2.3% of gross domestic product to 2.5% (it is promised some time "this spring”).

Dannatt and former U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace have said that at least 3% is needed if the U.K. is to come close to meeting even its existing commitments, which still falls well short of Trump’s admonition to Europe to hit 5% of GDP spending on defense.

The problem is, Starmer doesn’t have much cash to play with, after his Chancellor Rachel Reeves committed to a set of eye-watering fiscal rules that leave no scope for borrowing, coupled with a die-in-a-ditch pledge not to raise taxes. That means any increase in defense spending must be balanced by politically treacherous cuts elsewhere.

Bloomberg News reported Tuesday that as part of the government’s ongoing spending review, nonprotected government departments (i.e., outside of health, education and defense) are already being asked to find cuts of up to 11%.

The hunt is on to find savings to mitigate the pain, particularly in the spiraling welfare budget. In a speech to the Institute for Government on Tuesday, Defense Secretary John Healey set out reforms which, in the field of procurement in particular, would hopefully save a chunk of cash. An ongoing Strategic Defense Review will seek to recalibrate Britain’s military so it is as practical and efficient as possible.

But without tax increases, it remains hard to see how the sums add up. Boosting defense spending to 2.5% in the next financial year would cost £4 billion, according to Hannah White from the IfG, the equivalent of the entire budget of the U.K. Department of the Environment. A hike to 3% would cost £17 billion — the combined budgets of the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Business and Trade.

Healey made clear, as has Starmer in recent days, that any peacekeeping force would not be viable without a U.S. security "backstop” making it unthinkable that Russia would breach any ceasefire. That assumes a lot about the current willingness of either side to play by the rules.

Those leading the charge for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine should consider fully what they would be prepared to do in the event of an infraction by Russia. It seems implausible to imagine British squaddies wielding a gun in anger at Russian forces somewhere in Donetsk, with all the potential that would bring for escalation and an ensuing hot war between Russia and a NATO power.

To date, the British public has been fulsome in its support for Ukraine. At the outbreak of the conflict, 100,000 families opened their homes to Ukrainians fleeing the war. That goodwill largely remains, with a recent poll showing a majority would discourage Ukraine from accepting any peace deal that left territory in Russian hands. All the major U.K. political parties favor continued financial and military backing. However, other surveys show U.K. support has dipped since last year, while remaining among the most staunch in Europe, well above France, Germany, Spain and Italy.

It’s also far greater than in the U.S., where many ordinary people view Ukraine as a distant conflict in a faraway continent of little relevance to their own lives and appear to welcome Trump’s pledge to end the fighting even on terms antithetical to Ukraine.

If Starmer asks U.K. voters to commit not only more funding at the expense of their fraying public services but also the lives of young soldiers, it’s hard to see how British attitudes won’t go in the same direction.