It’s been a seismic week for American democracy, as the nation confronts the serious possibility that the president of the United States has been compromised by Russia—or at least is being “manipulated,” as Republican Congressman Will Hurd put it in a New York Times op-ed. But President Donald Trump, whom even Fox News castigated, has insisted there’s a good reason for his unusual relationship with Russia: He’s the only thing standing between his critics and war.

“As president, I cannot make decisions on foreign policy in a futile effort to appease partisan critics, or the media, or Democrats who want to do nothing but resist and obstruct,” Trump said Monday in his prepared remarks after the Helsinki summit. “Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world. I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”

There’s a certain canniness to Trump’s claim, since it’s one of the only ways he could plausibly defend his chumminess with Vladimir Putin, despite evidence that the Russian president had ordered the plot to sway the 2016 election. Trump justified his unorthodox summit last month with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in similar terms: as a means to avoid nuclear war, fears of which he had stoked himself. But in Russia’s case, the excuse is even more self-serving. Even the most ardent critics of Russia’s attacks on the American democratic system aren’t seriously proposing military force as a response.

His tweets also betrayed his bad faith. “The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war,” Trump wrote on Thursday. “They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I’ll probably have a good relationship with Putin.” He doubled down a few hours later: “Some people HATE the fact that I got along well with President Putin of Russia,” Trump added. “They would rather go to war than see this. It’s called Trump Derangement Syndrome!”

Trump’s latest excuse for appeasing Putin reveals his unserious, performative approach to the role of commander-in-chief. Though Trump’s predecessors made frequent use of the military in armed conflicts, few if any so lightly invoked the prospect of mass death and destruction. For Trump, war appears to be a largely abstract concept, one he invokes as a political threat without regard for the consequences of doing so.