President Donald Trump’s assertion that the war in Ukraine “should never have happened” is an accurate one.

It was August 1991, just weeks before Ukraine declared independence from a crumbling Soviet Union. President George H.W. Bush stood before the Ukrainian Parliament and delivered what would become known as the “Chicken Kiev” speech. Rather than encouraging Ukraine’s break for freedom, Bush urged restraint: “Freedom is not the same as independence,” he warned, cautioning against leaving the Soviet orbit too hastily. That instinct of taking into account Russia’s distress or “understanding Russia” would define U.S. foreign policy for more than three decades.

By 2014, this bore a particularly bitter fruit for Ukraine. Russia annexed Crimea and instigated war in eastern Ukraine, cloaked under........

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