Rick Morain is the former publisher and owner of the Jefferson Herald, for which he writes a regular column.

Like many words, “peace” carries a number of meanings. U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy use “peace” to describe two different scenarios.

When Trump says peace, he means the absence of physical fighting. He says the goal in Ukraine is to stop the war, which he emphasizes has killed thousands upon thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.

That’s a laudable goal. And it’s Zelenskyy’s goal as well. But when Zelenskyy says peace, he has more in mind. He means the peace that comes when the aggressor is defeated and withdraws, when his invaded nation is no longer partially occupied by foreign troops.

Whenever Trump calls for peace in Ukraine, he omits the part about why the fighting started in the first place, and why it continues. His refusal to cite Russian President Vladimir Putin as the aggressor strongly hints that he is willing to let Russia occupy Crimea and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine after the fighting stops.

This Zelenskyy is unwilling to do. He could have had Putin’s and Trump’s version of peace at any time in the past three years. It’s not what he has in mind for his country.

And who can blame him?

What if Trump’s vision were followed elsewhere in the world?

Suppose mainland China invaded Taiwan. Would the U.S. accept the destruction of Taiwan’s democracy for the sake of “peace,” and is that what Taiwan should do?

Suppose Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations invaded Israel. Would we work simply to end to the fighting, and try to persuade Israel to accept Egyptian (or Iranian) occupation of parts of Israeli soil?

Suppose North Korea invaded South Korea again. Would we agree to the conquest of the northern part of South Korea in order to end the war?

Suppose Russia invaded Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which the Soviet Union annexed in 1940. All three Baltic states are now part of NATO, and all NATO nations (including the U.S.) have pledged to support each other against aggressors. Would we push simply for an end to the fighting, leaving Russia still occupying those countries?

And suppose Mexico invaded the American Southwest, or Russia invaded Alaska? Both of those parts of the United States belonged to Mexico and Russia in the past. Would we, in order to prevent further fighting, agree to cede Texas to Mexico or Alaska to Russia?

The first five years of the American Revolution saw damage in the American colonies by British troops, with significant loss of life on both sides. But Congress, and George Washington, did not sue for peace to bring a halt to the war. They continued to gut it out until British General Cornwallis finally surrendered in Yorktown in 1781, and British troops left American soil.

We could have had “peace” at any time during the war simply by surrendering to Great Britain. We chose not to do that. It’s the same with Ukraine and Russia.

Trump’s definition of peace in Ukraine is not unfamiliar to the modern world. In 1938, with Germany’s Adolf Hitler on the move in central Europe, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to Hitler’s conquest of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. As he did so, he said the decision would mean “peace in our time.”

He was wrong. His decision, shared by other major European powers, emboldened Hitler, instead of satisfying him.

That is not to say that Putin would necessarily move on from Crimea and the Donbas in Ukraine, to gobble up the rest of that nation and then attack other neighboring countries. But it would abandon Ukraine to Putin’s desires, the same way surrendering the Sudetenland served Hitler.

It’s not been America’s custom to allow aggression by powerful nations against weaker neighbors, certainly not in the 80 years since World War II. The kind of “peace” Trump is proposing, while it might bring temporary cessation of fighting to Ukraine, is a giant shift in how the U.S. approaches the world. And to agree to it in this case would make it harder to stand up for other smaller nations in the future. That danger has implications for America’s future as well.

If Zelenskyy must settle for Russia’s version of “peace” at the expense of important segments of his nation, is that really what the American people elected Donald Trump to do?