The true nature and the full price of President Trump’s Russia and Ukraine policies has become clear in recent days. Mr. Trump believes that improved relations with Russia are necessary for the American revival he hopes to lead, and he is willing to pay a high, even stupefying, price in moral authority, alliance relations and Ukrainian territory to get his deal. Vladimir Putin understands this and will charge the U.S. accordingly.
Mr. Trump isn’t the first American president to set aside morality to make a deal with Moscow. Franklin D. Roosevelt, believing he would need Soviet help against Japan if the Manhattan Project failed to deliver a war-ending weapon on time, traveled to Yalta in the closing months of World War II hoping to enlist Joseph Stalin in the Pacific fight. Bogged down in Vietnam and contemplating the collapse of the Bretton Woods financial system, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger reached out to Leonid Brezhnev with an offer of détente.