Gerard Baker’s recent lament in the Wall Street Journal, “America Abandons Ideals at Its Peril,” is the work of a man who came to this country by choice and loves it the way converts love a faith. He invokes Gen. Mark Clark standing on the soil of Normandy, where Americans died not to conquer territory, but to liberate people from tyranny. Their sacrifice represented something larger than American power: a belief that freedom and national sovereignty were worth defending.
Baker fears that America is abandoning that inheritance. President Donald Trump’s recent accommodation of Russian President Vladimir Putin gives him reason for concern. Washington has waived significant sanctions on Russia, pursued a diesel arrangement with Moscow, and entertained negotiations over Ukraine that could marginalize Kyiv. These decisions raise a question Baker is right to ask: What happens to American credibility when expediency displaces principle?
