As an immigrant, one of the things that impresses me the most about America is the extent to which leading politicians in this country focus on their legacies. Presidents and their cabinet members, as well as Congresspeople, take great pains to ensure that history will remember them well. I find it extremely beautiful when I see the sheer number of books that are written about certain individuals who are thought to have made immense contributions to this nation’s history.

I was born and raised in Ghana. When I have conversations with my African friends, I often argue that one of the reasons the African continent is in such a mess is that for politicians there, legacy is an alien concept. Because of that, people in public office spend much of their time scheming to loot as much as they can because they live only in the present. Few people care how anyone remembers them after they leave office—or die.

President Trump’s legacy will be shaped to a considerable degree by the kind of success he achieves in resolving conflicts such as the one between Ukraine and Russia. Much has been written and said in the last few days about his Ukraine Peace Plan. It has been met with incredulity here in America, in Ukraine, and in other Western capitals. The 28-point plan is heavily tilted in favor of Russia. Among others, it requires Ukraine to cede land that it currently controls to Russia, reduce the size of its military, and renounce its wish to join NATO.

In his superb op-ed two days ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman characterized President Trump’s peace plan as appeasement. He compared it to the 1938 Munich Agreement, under which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland, which was then part of Czechoslovakia. In doing so, Chamberlain hoped to avoid war with Germany. He told Britons that he had achieved “peace with honor,” adding: “I believe it is peace for our time.” The pact did just the opposite. Germany invaded Poland the following year, and that started World War II. Chamberlain resigned from office in disgrace. In Friedman’s article, he wrote that “This Trump plan, if implemented, will do the modern equivalent.”

I agree wholeheartedly with everything Friedman wrote in his op-ed, except for his comparison of the Ukraine Peace Plan to the 1938 Munich Agreement. It is not even close. It could be argued that Chamberlain had no way of knowing the sheer terror that Hitler was later going to unleash on Europe when he met him in 1938. At the time, Hitler was looking for a pretext to attack Czechoslovakia. A war of conquest hadn’t started.

It is a completely different story with Russia today. Its brutal war of conquest will soon enter its fourth year. The entire world has seen the atrocities in Bucha, Mariupol, Kramatorsk, Bakhmut and all across Ukraine, and everyone has heard about the forced abductions of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children by Russian forces. On top of all that, Vladimir Putin is an indicted war criminal. Hitler was not in 1938. Unlike Chamberlain, President Trump has the benefit of knowing all of this information. If he insists on Ukrainian capitulation to Russia despite the overwhelming evidence of Russian barbarity, history will judge him ten times more harshly than Chamberlain has ever been.

Friedman is not the only one who has engaged in this mischaracterization. Many other people have invoked the 1938 Munich Agreement in the last several months as they have tried to warn President Trump about the risk of his getting too cozy with Putin. The picture should be painted a lot more accurately than is being done now.