The problem is threefold. First, Trump does not understand that Russia’s current objectives in Ukraine are unacceptable to Ukraine, European security, and U.S. interests. Second, he is dancing to Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s nuclear escalation waltz. Third, Putin does not presently respect Trump.

Let’s take these points in reverse order.

On the matter of respect, Trump rightly senses that the presentation of strength is critical to effective foreign policy leadership. The problem is that Trump’s preferred model for such strength is the ultimate fake strongman, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. And while Orban can get an audience with Putin or Chinese President Xi Jinping whenever he wants, Orban isn’t the one talking. In the end, Orban’s nationalist sovereignty persona exists only within the Chinese Communist Party womb. Orban earns frequent praise from Putin and Xi but ultimately does what Russia or China wants him to do. And when it comes to action, Putin and Xi aren’t afraid to show Orban who is boss.

Putin plainly senses he can apply the same dominance over a second-term Trump. Disingenuously claiming that he wants Vice President Kamala Harris elected in November, Putin instead believes Trump can be manipulated at the intersection of his ego and ignorance. Putin sometimes can’t resist publicizing his sentiment here. The most memorable example came in Helsinki, 2018, when Putin replicated a Shakespearean “tennis balls, my liege” insult of Trump by gifting him a soccer ball. But where Henry V turned the Dauphin’s gift to gun-stones, Trump simply grinned at Putin’s insult. Trump must recognize that Putin does not respect kind words or seek fireside chats. He respects negotiation tempered by American strength.

That leads us to the second concern, Trump’s willingness to dance to Putin’s dangled threats of nuclear war. In his first term as president, Trump abandoned Obama-era appeasement policies and bolstered U.S. nuclear forces in response to Russian treaty breaches. Today, however, Trump bends the knee whenever Putin dangles nuclear brinkmanship rhetoric. Hence why Putin keeps doubling down on this strategy. On Wednesday, for example, Putin warned that an attack by a non-nuclear state on Russia utilizing conventional Western weapons could justify the use of Russian nuclear weapons. Putin made this threat because he wants to reinforce President Joe Biden’s hesitation against allowing Ukraine to use Western weapons inside Russia.

Trump’s deference to Russian nuclear threats does not represent realist caution. Rather it represents ignorant weakness. He ignores America’s stronger hand. Russia knows the U.S. has deliverable nuclear strike supremacy. Even then, however, Putin could not afford to lose his relationships with India and China. And that’s exactly what would happen were he to order even a limited nuclear strike. Moreover, the Russian general staff would likely shoot Putin before following a catastrophically self-destructive nuclear order.

Yet, by bowing to Putin’s threats, Trump utterly undercuts his own negotiating hand with him. Why would Putin accept a concessionary peace with Ukraine if all he needs to do to get a dominant peace is to warn Trump that nuclear war will follow if he doesn’t get what he wants?

Finally, there’s the not-so-slight problem of Russian imperialist ideology. Putin doesn’t simply want the Donbas and Crimea, he wants Kyiv under his finger. He wants Ukraine to be the same as Belarus: a subordinate power that will do what Moscow wants when it wants. This is obviously incompatible with Ukraine’s democratic sovereignty. And while a peace accord is the best way to end this war, a viable peace accord will only be possible if Putin recognizes he cannot achieve his maximalist aims by the use of force.

That requires both Trump’s willingness to tell Zelensky that he must make concessions but also his willingness to warn Putin that his own failure to make concessions will result in continued support for Ukraine. This matters. Those who say Ukraine’s survival is unimportant to America ignore the impact it would have on some of the very best American allies in Europe: the Baltic states and Poland. And the damage that Russian victory in Ukraine would cause to trans-Atlantic peace and prosperity. They also fail to realize that Putin lies when he says that his ambitions for Europe begin and end with Ukraine.

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Trump is right to want peace between Ukraine and Russia.

But peace will not be possible unless Trump recognizes that a viable peace requires both a greater representation of American strength and his greater awareness of what kind of a leader Putin truly is, and what objectives he ultimately seeks.