Trump’s first contention is virtuous. Wanting to end a war to prevent further loss of life is obviously a positive motivation. The problem comes with Trump’s belief that he must end the war to avoid World War III. That’s because the natural extension of this argument is to end the war on terms manifestly favorable to Russian President Vladimir Putin rather than on terms tolerable to both Ukraine and Russia. Why do you think Putin keeps waving his nuclear brinkmanship warning sign? And at least at present, a Russia-favorable peace means Russia’s annihilation of Ukrainian statehood and democracy.

Trump sees himself as a leader who other nations respect and fear. But this dance to Putin’s nuclear waltz is anything but a manifestation of U.S. strength or a strategy in the country’s interests. It is a signal to Putin that all he needs to do to cow Trump and the United States is to wave a nuclear weapon in their faces.

Trump should know better. During his first term, Trump sought dialogue with Russia. But departing from the Obama administration’s dialogue-appeasement, he also responded to Russian escalation with strength. Trump developed new nuclear weapons capabilities. Where Russia directly threatened people, those doing the threatening were “annihilated.” And unlike former President Barack Obama, Trump provided anti-tank and other weapons to Ukraine. Oh, and as accurately noted Tuesday night, Trump also sanctioned Russia’s prized Nord Stream II pipeline (President Joe Biden subsequently waived those sanctions).

Today, however, defending his dance to Putin’s nuclear waltz, Trump makes frequent Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s arguments in kind. This is foolishness. Orban, after all, is hardly the nationalist strongman that Trump sees him as. Plainly viewed as a malleable idiot by Putin, Orban is also Xi Jinping’s, the president of the People’s Republic of China, on-retainer political prostitute in Europe. Orban might offer secure borders and pro-family policies that Republicans support, but his foreign policy agenda is deeply unfavorable to the U.S.

The basic truth is that Trump’s deference to Putin’s Armageddon rhetoric is antithetical to effective strategy and U.S. security. Yes, Trump is absolutely right to demand higher defense spending from NATO. Yes, Trump is right to demand greater support for Ukraine from the EU (contrary to the intelligentsia consensus, the EU is not doing its fair share for Ukraine). But cowering in the face of Putin’s nuclear phallus-measuring contest is the exact opposite of what works with Russians such as Putin. That is to say, Russians shaped indelibly by the harder anti-U.S. edges of the Cold War. History teaches us as much.

Trump’s deference to brinkmanship is the exact opposite of what former President Harry Truman did in the face of Joseph Stalin’s blockade of Berlin. Truman acted with courage to preserve both peace and West Berlin’s freedom. It is the exact opposite of what former President John F. Kennedy did during the grave days of the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy acted with courage to preserve the peace and U.S. security in the Western Hemisphere.

The way to deal with Russian nuclear brinkmanship today remains the same as in the 1950s: to seek honest dialogue supporting U.S. interests (such as in Ukraine’s case, with the defense of democratic sovereignty). It is to seek viable arms control agreements that the Russians actually abide by. It is to seek compromise where both sides benefit from it. But there are only two ways to respond to Russian nuclear brinkmanship. You either bow to it, as Trump is now doing, or you reject it.

The way to reject it is also the same today as it was during the Cold War, namely, by underlining that it is Russia that would suffer the outsize costs of any catastrophic confrontation. Contrary to the massively excessive fanfare surrounding new Russian strategic weapons, the U.S. would suffer grotesque losses but survive as a nation-state in a nuclear war with Russia. What was once Russia would be transformed into a Mad Max-style wilderness. Putin knows this. And even if he one day forgets it, the Russian general staff will still know it.

In turn, to end the war in Ukraine, the U.S. should continue to support Ukrainian defensive action while also pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to deal far more aggressively with corruption. The U.S. must also demand the Europeans do the same until Russia realizes its maximalist strategy cannot succeed. If states such as Germany decide to abandon Ukraine, the U.S. should relocate its military forces from those countries and suspend preferential trading ties.

But a peace signed at the barrel of Putin’s nuclear rhetoric would be very thin peace indeed.

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Russia aside, it would also teach Xi, Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong Un, and Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the way to beat Trump on any major concern is simply to show him a nuclear threat.

Put simply, the antithesis of the art of a foreign policy deal.