As a baby boomer, I was weaned on the Cold War and its contours. In college, I learned of the errors in American strategy applying containment as an all-points, no-corner-for-the-enemy approach, one that ultimately led to the Vietnam War. But what remained was that World War II and related wars were fought for freedom and democracy. The inestimable costs of those conflicts stood as sacrifices and investments for the ongoing promise and opportunity of constitutional systems of government, not autocracies of various forms. If Mao and Stalin weren’t Hitler, they weren’t guides to the ways of liberty and equality. Legions still cry for freedom from arbitrary rule in the name of varied unholy grails.

The end of the Cold War, the introduction of market economies (somewhat) in China, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the flowering of democratic states in Eastern Europe and elsewhere all signaled a “peace dividend.” Gorbachev met Reagan in Reykjavik to turn back nuclear madness.

Today’s persistent rush by U.S. President Donald Trump to conclude the war in Ukraine marks either a momentary lapse in that vector, or its end. An isolationist and populist leader intent on deals........

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