In his confirmation hearing Wednesday, Ash Carter, the administration’s nominee for defense secretary, said that he is “very much inclined” to send arms to Ukraine. One hopes that this is not another piece of the administration’s one-step-forward, one-step-backward rhetorical pattern regarding the Ukrainian government’s months-old requests for lethal military assistance from the United States.

Consider: When asked during his confirmation hearing in November about providing such assistance to Ukraine, Deputy Secretary of State-nominee Tony Blinken responded: “That’s something we should be looking at.”