Understanding the conflict three years on.

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Let’s consider some relatively recent history. In 1999, NATO waged a 78-day war against Yugoslavia, aiming to halt a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign by Serbian troops in the restive province of Kosovo. The Serbs ultimately withdrew, and the Western alliance filled the resulting vacuum by dispatching peacekeeping troops. The number of forces deployed was 50,000—even though Kosovo is a tiny piece of territory, a bit smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut or about one-third the size of Belgium. Today, 26 years later, there are still approximately 4,500 peacekeepers stationed there.

So now we turn to Ukraine—a country, it should be noted, that is 55 times the size of Kosovo. Since the recent flurry of diplomatic activity in Alaska and Washington, the discussion about ending the Russia-Ukraine war has turned to the notion of “security guarantees”—a strikingly fuzzy concept that means very different things to different people. The pundits in Europe and the United States are busily jawboning over what form it might take. But the entire discussion is permeated with a palpable sense of unreality.

Let’s consider some relatively recent history. In 1999, NATO waged a 78-day war against Yugoslavia, aiming to halt a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign by Serbian troops in the restive province of Kosovo. The Serbs ultimately withdrew, and the Western alliance filled the resulting vacuum by dispatching peacekeeping troops. The number of forces deployed was 50,000—even though Kosovo is a tiny piece of territory, a bit smaller than the U.S. state of Connecticut or about one-third the size of Belgium. Today, 26 years later, there are still approximately 4,500 peacekeepers stationed there.

So now we turn to Ukraine—a country, it should be noted, that is 55 times the size of Kosovo. Since the recent flurry of diplomatic activity in Alaska and Washington, the discussion about ending the Russia-Ukraine war has turned to the notion of “security guarantees”—a strikingly fuzzy concept that means very different things to different people. The pundits in Europe and the United States are busily jawboning over what form it might take. But the entire discussion is permeated with a palpable sense of unreality.

The aim of any security guarantee for Ukraine should be to provide it with security—in other words, to keep it safe from Russian invasions going forward. A piece of paper saying “guarantee” will not do; that has already been tried and failed. Russia, the United States, and Britain did not honor their guarantee of Ukraine’s borders, which was signed in Budapest in 1994. Russia’s invasions of Ukraine since 2014 also violated multiple other agreements signed by Moscow.

It is hard to imagine how any form of protection for Ukraine would not entail the presence of a large body of troops on the ground. The Europeans have been referring to this theoretical entity as a “

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