With Vladimir Putin’s planned two-day war to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government now in its third month and Russian casualties piling into the tens of thousands, concerns abound that Putin might take increasingly drastic steps to alter the disastrous situation he faces on the battlefield. To prevent those grim prospects—or at least contain their effects—President Joe Biden should turn to the playbook his predecessors drafted.

Senator Joseph H. Ball, a Republican from Minnesota appointed unexpectedly to office in 1940, supported the Lend-Lease Act to aid Britain in its defense against Nazi Germany and debated against Charles Lindbergh and his America First populism.