The 61st Munich Security Conference will take place Feb. 14-16 at Munich’s renowned Hotel Bayerischer Hof, located on the edge of Munich’s old town on the Promenade Platz. Much is expected of this year’s conference since it’s been widely assumed that, formally or informally, the gathering will mark the beginning of negotiations to effect a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Indeed, the announcement that President Trump has now spoken directly with Russia’s Vladimir Putin gives added weight to these expectations.

Although neither Trump nor Putin will attend the conference, the U.S. is sending a very high-level delegation, headed by Vice President JD Vance and includes retired General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s point person on Ukraine. Ukraine’s President Zelensky will also be there, and it’s widely assumed that he and Vance will have a significant sidebar discussion. (RELATED: President Trump and Peace in Ukraine)

Despite the buzz that’s been generated in recent days, the Trump administration has been at pains to suggest that no “deal” is anticipated in connection with the Munich Conference, and this, at least, is a very good thing. The last thing that President Trump should lend himself to is an agreement that might be termed “the Munich Agreement.” The symbolic reason for this can be found a brisk ten-minute walk from the Bayerischer Hof, just past the intersection of Briennerstrass and Arcisstrasse.

Today the neo-classical building on your right facing north is home to various art and music functions, but when it was completed in 1937 it was known as the “Fuhrerbau,” the “Fuhrer Building,” and it served Adolf Hitler, during his frequent sojourns in Munich, in much the same capacity as the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House serves U.S. presidents. Located just around the corner from Nazi Party Headquarters, the notorious “Brown House,” housed the overflow of party staff, but also provided Hitler himself with a getaway office and several large conference spaces.

One of these spaces has gone down in history as the site of another Munich conference, the one in 1938 at which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Eduard Daladier concluded the infamous “Munich Agreement” with Hitler. With bystander Benito Mussolini looking on in bemused satisfaction, the British and French leaders bargained away Czechoslovakia’s strategic Sudeten mountain region, along with its valuable border fortifications.

Worse, they sent an unmistakable signal that the future of Czechoslovakia hinged upon Hitler’s whim, not the security promises that France had hitherto offered. And, sure enough, scarcely five months later, Hitler made nonsense of the assurances offered at Munich by invading the remainder of Czechoslovakia. Having been deprived of any tactical advantage, and having no assurance of assistance, the government in Prague meekly acquiesced.

In six short months, the entire strategic situation in Central and Eastern Europe had changed, to the irretrievable disadvantage of the Western powers. Poland’s long southern flank was exposed, making an already challenging defensive posture nearly impossible to maintain. Countries such as Hungary, reading the writing on the wall, drew closer to Hitler.

Critically, the path to an agreement between Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany opened, culminating in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Soon Poland would be carved up, the Baltic states would be overrun by the Red Army, and Finland would be assaulted, all in the name of providing Russia with a safe buffer zone and an unassailable sphere of influence.

The parallels between “Munich 1938” and “Munich 2025,” then, practically leap off the page. Britain and France yielded partly out of awareness of their own military weakness, particularly in the air. The prospect of the Luftwaffe flattening London and Paris exerted much the same paralytic effect as Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling. (RELATED: The Cold Goddess: Anne de Kyiv and Her Brigade)

The list of similarities goes further. Economies were in disarray across Europe, and, with the Depression, a gulf had opened up between the masses and the elites. Looking further afield, 2025’s concerns about the Middle East and Taiwan are scarcely more grave than the 1938 concerns about the Spanish Civil War or the Japanese invasion of China.

The future headlines practically write themselves. “Peace with Honour,” following Neville Chamberlain (or Richard Nixon’s “Peace with Honor” following the Vietnam Paris Accords). If the security guarantees offered to Ukraine fail, as is only too likely, then the Churchill quotations will surely follow. “You were given the choice between war and dishonor — you chose dishonor and you will have war.” Or perhaps, “We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame. My feeling is that we shall choose shame and then have war thrown in a little later on even more adverse terms than at present.”

One can be certain that, in the event that a Ukraine deal turns out badly, the Democrats will make it a signature failure of Trump’s leadership, Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan on steroids. Indeed, in the final days of the Biden administration, the groundwork for such a future indictment was already being laid. Vance is prominently associated with Ukraine negotiations, which is wonderful for him if things turn out well — but the Democrats will delight in hanging failure around his neck in 2028. (RELATED: Biden’s Foreign Policy Was a Colossal Failure — From Ukraine to China)

And the issue runs much deeper than its impact on U.S. domestic politics. If the result is, in effect, a surrender to Putin, no matter how nicely packaged, then NATO’s eastern flank likely disintegrates. The Germans return to being toadies to Russian energy and Chinese markets, and much of the rest of Europe retreats further into itself. The impact across the rest of the world is incalculable, particularly with respect to Taiwan — it’s no accident that Taiwan has been vocal in its support for Ukraine.

Of course, Trump has been dealt a very bad hand concerning Ukraine. As Jim Geraghty notes, Joe Biden slow-walked key weapons shipments to Ukraine, creating a “worst of both worlds” outcome in which critics could point to high spending numbers while actual equipment deliveries languished, in effect crippling Ukrainian efforts to favorably shape the battlespace. The real story of western support for Ukraine has always been, “too little, too late.”

None of this means that Trump should shy away from promoting a negotiated peace. Neither side is capable of a decisive, war-ending victory, and no one should readily countenance a never-ending battle of attrition. No one is going to come away with everything that they want through continued fighting, so the incentives for peace — even a peace that inevitably disappoints both sides — are very high indeed.

So long as, in one form or another, Ukraine’s security is assured, its rebuilding begins, and Putin is discouraged from further adventurism along his Baltic “near abroad,” something perhaps akin to the outcome of the Korean War, then one might count a settlement as successful. But it took a very long time for Korea’s ceasefire to be negotiated at Panmunjom, and it has taken an even longer time — decades, in fact — for the rebuilding of a devastated South Korea as one of the success stories of the modern era.

So now might be a moment for a bit of “expectations management,” even though it runs contrary to Donald Trump’s way of doing business. A successful negotiation will take time and sustained effort on the president’s part. It will take pressure exerted on both sides, but, in the present moment, greater pressure on Putin, who still believes he holds most of the cards. And success won’t be measured when the deal is signed, but rather in its working out over months, if not years.

Given all this, the Trump administration would do well to minimize any associations between future negotiations and this weekend’s security conference at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. By all means have informal conversations between Vance and Zelensky, the more the better. Perhaps the two men might also benefit from a stroll up the street to the former “Fuhrerbau,” taking time to contemplate together just how badly wrong things can go wrong in Munich.

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James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. His recent novel, Letter of Reprisal, tells the tale of a desperate mission to destroy a Chinese bioweapon facility hidden in the heart of the central African conflict region. A forthcoming sequel finds the Reprisal team fighting against terrorists who’ve infiltrated our southern border in a conspiracy that ranges across the globe. You can find Letter of Reprisal on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback editions and on Kindle Unlimited.