Just because Russia is “big” does not mean its aggression should be rewarded with diplomatic recognition of its Ukrainian conquests.

“Russia is a very big power and [Ukraine is] not,” President Donald Trump said after his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska, justifying a proposal that would compel Ukraine to surrender its territory. It’s a sentiment grounded in cold realpolitik—the idea that might makes right, and that smaller nations must yield to greater powers when compelled by force.

Yet, as Trump discusses peace proposals with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky alongside European and NATO leaders, it’s essential to remember that this worldview neither tells the whole story nor should it shape the outcome of any Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations.

Realism has long dominated the worldview of American foreign policy thinkers, shaping the instincts of leaders like Trump and his closest advisors. According to this school of thought, nations act solely in their own interest, based on power calculations, rather than ideology. Democracy or dictatorship, rich or poor, all countries are presumed to behave the same under the pressures of geopolitics. In this view, Mexico or Russia, North Korea or Luxembourg are merely pieces on the same chessboard, judged by capability alone.

What realism leaves out—fatally, in my view—is any space for moral responsibility, soft power, or values. The very things that have made America great—its moral leadership, its commitment to democratic principles, and its ability to inspire allies around the globe—are rendered irrelevant by realism’s sterile calculus.

I know this not just from academic theory or current events, but from personal experience.

I am a Lithuanian-American who grew up in the United States, educated by its schools and universities, and shaped by its ideals. Now, I live in Lithuania with my husband and three young children. And I cannot help but wonder: What would happen if the Russians came again? They’ve done it before—in 1941 and 1944—and stayed until the 1990s. Back then, Soviet soldiers left a trail of death and terror. Would they now butcher Lithuanian civilians as they did in Bucha in 2022? Would the world once again stand by and rationalize the violence because “Russia’s a great power”?

Lithuania today is a member of NATO and the European Union, and is rapidly rearming. However, the country’s security still depends on one key factor: that the West, especially the United States, views honoring alliances and defending freedom as a moral obligation, not just a strategic calculation.

Ukraine, tragically, has already learned what happens when the world treats security assurances as symbolic rather than binding. In 1994, Ukraine gave up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia under the Budapest Memorandum. Those guarantees—though never formalized and detailed—promised to uphold Ukraine’s territorial integrity. As Russia has definitively broken its word, America and Britain owe Ukraine a moral debt. Words must mean something. Promises, even unenforceable ones, carry weight.

This is not a theoretical debate for the Ukrainian people. Since 2014, they have been shedding blood to defend their sovereignty—from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to the war in Donbas and the invasion of 2022. But their fight did not begin with tanks and missiles—it began with a choice to align with Western values.

In the winter of 2004, during the Orange Revolution, Ukrainians stood in freezing squares demanding free elections and a path toward the European Union and the United States. During the 2014 Euromaidan protests, they faced down riot police and government snipers to reject a future tethered to Moscow’s corruption and authoritarianism. These demonstrations were declarations of allegiance to a better world. To our world.

As a child in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, I remember sitting in my grandmother’s kitchen, listening to the crackling Voice of America broadcast. Those words—barely audible through the interference—carried the promise of freedom. They told us we weren’t alone. That America cared.

Ukrainians, too, have been listening. They believed in America’s message. They embraced the call to democracy, markets, and human rights. And they have paid a terrible price for that choice.

As one aging Lithuanian resistance fighter told me about his years hiding in the forests, “We kept fighting in the snow-covered trenches for years, waiting for the Americans or the British to come.” The West never came then. But will it fail again now?

A world governed solely by realism would abandon Ukraine. It would appease aggression in the name of stability. But such a world would not be stable. It would be a world where small nations live in fear, where values are transactional, and where dictators face no consequences.

The United States has a choice. It can acknowledge a moral obligation to Ukraine not only stemming from its past promises, but also because America’s global role depends on standing by those who share its values and take risks for its ideals.

Peace will eventually come to Ukraine. But if any territorial concessions are made, they must be de facto, not de jure. The world must never legitimize conquest by force. Ukraine must retain the legal right to reclaim its lands, even if it takes generations to do so. To do otherwise would reward aggression and endanger not just Ukraine, but Lithuania, Eastern Europe, and all who live in the shadow of tyranny.