A linchpin of U.S. and Western security has been keeping Vladimir Putin’s Russia in check. Time and again Trump has acted to sabotage this goal and undermine our allies. That’s the subject of the impeachment inquiry.

“Mr. Trump had a choice between executing his administration’s own strategy for containing Russia or pursuing a political obsession at home.

He chose the obsession.

In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years, and a cyber war underway in the capital, Kiev.

It is exactly that policy that Mr. Trump appears to have been discarding when he made clear, in the haunting words attributed to Gordon D. Sondland, who parlayed political donations into the ambassadorship to the European Union, that “President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden” than about Ukraine’s confrontation with Mr. Putin’s forces.” — David E. Sanger, “Trump’s Choice: National Security or Political Obsession.”

(Image: AP Photo/Evan Vucci via 8Red Current Events.)