How Trump can get himself out of his Ukrainian pickle and end the war as promised

Recent moves by the Trump administration have called into question 11 years of US opposition to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.They’ve raised the prospect of President Donald Trump, following many of his predecessors, undertaking his own reset with Russia.All of which has culminated in fact-challenged US tirades against the president of a country valiantly fighting for its survival against a nuclear superpower that has regularly called the United States an adversary.How did we get here? And how do we get out? To Trump’s critics, these events were inevitable. In their view, Trump has always had an affection, or a blind spot, for autocrats, particularly Russian President Vladimir Putin.So Trump was predestined to make a deal that would undermine beleaguered Ukraine and present new problems for US allies in Europe.Yet this analysis doesn’t account for an element of Trump’s approach evident since last spring, when he supported passage of a long-delayed US aid package for Ukraine and described the country’s survival as “important” to the United States. This element grew in importance during the US presidential campaign and afterward, as Trump insisted that he could end the war and achieve a sustainable peace quickly — initially claiming he could do so in 24 hours. His team even unofficially put out key details of this plan: It required concessions by Ukraine (territorial compromise and at least a 20-year moratorium on NATO membership) and by Russia (acceptance of the deployment of European troops in a demilitarized zone and major arms supplies to Ukraine to deter future Russian aggression). While Ukraine signaled flexibility on territory, Russia publicly rejected the Trump team’s ideas. That’s why Trump, during his first days back as president, identified Putin as the obstacle to peace, and spoke of the possibility of applying pressure on Moscow.Why would Trump do all this — effectively making clear that he now owns this war —...