French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that sending Western troops on the ground in Ukraine is not “ruled out” in the future after the issue was debated at a gathering if European leaders, as Russia’s full-scale invasion grinds into a third year.
The French leader said at the meeting of 20 European heads of state and other Western officials in Paris that “we will do everything needed so Russia cannot win the war.”
“There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out,” Macron said in a news conference.
The short answer is it depends.
The long answer is that treaties and international law are pretty window dressing around the utterly anarchic reality of geopolitics. If states saw it as in their best interest to allow Poland to fall to Russia, they would allow it regardless of whatever treaties they previously signed.
Article 5 provides that the alliance must support a member after an armed attack against them on their territory in Europe or North America. In plain reading, this would apply should Russia attack Polish soil regardless of who started the war. In reality, it really depends.
No one (in the west) wants a ‘real’ war. War is a distraction from making money. If Poland expanded the war by joining in, I doubt they would receive the full support of the alliance.
I could see us creating an exclusion zone like the Falkland wars to avoid a nuclear war. Not sure if Russia would agree or not. It would be In their best interest to agree to it. Ukraine would be the battleground and everything else would be war free.