Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky was in Washington, D.C., on Friday, but came away empty-handed, as President Donald Trump declined to promise that the U.S. would supply Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles. And let’s be clear: Trump was absolutely right to do so. While Russian President Vladimir Putin is exhibiting concerning signs that he will not agree to peace with Ukraine at all, and wants to conquer the entire country, we simply cannot take the most extreme option until we are absolutely certain that peace is not on the table.

Let me say that once again: Trump is right about this. And Trump is proving that he is the peace president — he’s proving that with the Middle East, and he’s trying to prove it with Russia-Ukraine as well. His instincts to wage peace rather than war are morally correct and politically popular, and represent a refreshing break from the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. If someone with Trump’s instincts had been leading the U.S. in the ’90s, ’00s and 2010s, as America accrued foreign policy blunder after foreign policy blunder and actually created the conditions for Putin’s horrific invasion of Ukraine, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.

© The Hill