JD Vance argued on Meet the Press that the war in Ukraine will need to end with a negotiated resolution — which means, by implication, an agreement acceptable to Russia. So far, so good; I’ve argued the same thing for years now. And while this may be uncomfortable for Americans who are accustomed to thinking of our wars as ending in victories, the reality is that even most American wars have ended with a negotiated resolution, including unambiguous American victories such as the American Revolution, the Mexican War, and the Persian Gulf War.

But Vance oversold his point and stepped in it in a way that is not merely an incidental misspeak, contending that “if you go back to World War II, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.” This is true in only the most attenuated sense. In the Second World War, as in the American Civil War, we demanded of our adversaries unconditional surrender, and we more or less got it — in Japan’s case, after offering some reassurances that they could keep their emperor. These were in every real sense surrenders, just as the Confederacy surrendered. And those surrenders produced a far more lasting peace than wars that end with hard-bargained negotiations. Germany did not cut a deal; its capital was occupied, and its leader killed himself. Japan’s surrender was preceded by dropping two atomic bombs and was followed by us occupying their country and imposing a new form of government via an American-penned constitution. To the extent that Vance means that the Allies in the Second World War negotiated at Yalta what would follow the war, that’s an even worse case — because we almost immediately entered into a superpower Cold War with the Soviets that lasted 45 years. That is no model for a successful peace.

The paramount goal for Ukraine and its Western allies should be to make a peace with Russia that is lasting and preserves Ukraine as a sovereign state — even if it is a reduced one in land and people. That won’t be easy, and accepting losses of territory will be painful. It won’t feel much like victory. But Vance isn’t helping the case for selling that peace by pretending that nobody ever ends a war by winning it.