FRUKUS: the security guarantee that could stabilise Europe
The question the world is asking: how can Ukraine, and therefore Europe, be secured? The following is a first credible plan to do it...
Aim: A security guarantee that can achieve stability beyond the current US administration – and be upheld, and enduring, even through potential weak future US Presidencies.
Newly elected Republican President Eisenhower’s armistice has stood the test of time in Korea – 71.5 years and counting. What shape could a security guarantee for Ukraine take, fronted by Europe, to get President Trump’s forthcoming agreement into the league of such company – enduring for decades to come?
• The 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement was remarkable in that it combined a US security guarantee with (clause 13d) restrictions on weaponry that could enter South Korea.
• This deterred further invasion, without provoking the North/China.
• Separate a security guarantee (which should be robust, and is in itself non-provocative) from infusions of further weaponry (the aspect of NATO that is intolerable to Russia – for anyone who understands the Cuban Missile Crisis, understandably so; though the likes of Boris Johnson remain deaf to). Here, emulate clause 13d of the Korean Armistice.
• Continual recurrence of conflict will come about without this – as the Budapest Memorandum and Minsk agreements have shown. Investors and reconstruction funds are unlikely to come in at scale without a security guarantee, and 8+ million Ukrainians now abroad will be less likely to return.
The 1953 Armistice Agreement reads:
“Cease the introduction into Korea of reinforcing combat aircraft, armored vehicles, weapons, and ammunition… [weaponry] may be replaced on the basis of piece-for-piece of the same effectiveness and type… Every incoming shipment of these items shall be made to the Military Armistice Commission and the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission [then comprising Sweden, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and Poland].”
This demonstrates how to grant a robust security guarantee while being sensitive to the other side’s desire for arms restrictions for a country on its border (Russia not wanting long-range missiles pointing directly into its territory). An equivalent Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (Hungary, Turkey, India, Brazil…) should be put together today.
Important to note: the US did renege on clause 13d four years later, in 1957. But the clause effectively did the job of getting stability in place.
Backing the security guarantee:
FRUKUS
• An alliance of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
• In the acronym, the US deliberately coming last. This should be fronted by Europe. And the US is to backstop it only for seven years.
• After seven years, US involvement sunsets. Poland (which spends a commendable 4.1%+ on defense) and Germany replace the US, and it becomes “Friends of Ukraine and the US”.
Continue reading: FRUKUS – The security guarantee that could stabilise Europe
X post: https://x.com/EdwardMDruce/status/1891100045132325005
NB. FRUKUS is to be pronounced like “ruckus”. It intentionally sounds like “don’t eff with us”. It needs European heads of state to build it at speed, to convey deterrence.