I used to fly frequently between England and Japan in the 1970s, often passing at 33,000 feet over the Arctic icecap and landing to refuel in Anchorage, Alaska. There, the airport was sometimes thronged with U.S. troops on their way to or from Vietnam.

My brothers and I found a sticker in a copy of Mad magazine, of which we were avid in-flight readers, bearing a photograph of President Richard Nixon and the question, “Would You Buy a Used War from this Man?” We adolescent know-it-alls stuck the sticker on the glass of a portrait of Nixon displayed in the departure lounge, where it produced the knowing grins and disapproving frowns we’d hoped for from military men passing by.

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I’m reminded of this by President Donald Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a military base outside Anchorage. Like Nixon before him, Trump wants to unload a war of which the American public has become sick and tired. He’s not a guy to linger over anything the popular mind finds irksome or even boring.

The president overpromised by saying he’d end the war on his first day in office, which was one of those Trumpy statements better taken seriously than literally, an undertaking to get it done fast, not really a guaranteed ceasefire by Jan. 21. But he’s been reminded of it incessantly, and it rankles. So Trump wants America out, which is to say no more sending scores of billions of dollars’ worth of aid and depleting our nation’s armory.

Trump must share blame because he has allowed Putin to play him like a balalaika and let ultimatums slip as the manipulative Russian leader and former KGB officer stalls and prevaricates while continuing to bomb and kill. The summit itself can be seen as just such a maneuver, although Trump threatens “severe consequences” for continued Russian gamesmanship.

Trump has not done what is necessary to make continued war more costly to Putin than a ceasefire. That would mean not just making threats about crippling the Russian economy with sanctions against Russia’s energy customers but actually imposing them. To end the war, Trump must inflict damage and let the Kremlin tyrant sweat while his military loses resources and his populace gets restive.

All that being said, however, it should be remembered that, like Nixon, Trump inherited this war in its appalling condition from a Democratic president who grossly mismanaged it. President Joe Biden encouraged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by saying he’d tolerate a “minor incursion” and by appeasing Putin over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.

Biden strung out the war by supplying Ukraine with enough weapons to avoid defeat but not enough to win it. He had no goal except to prevent both Russian victory and escalation. So there was no exit ramp or definition of success.

ONCE-GREAT ‘POWERS’ SURRENDER TO TERRORIST ISLAM

Trump thus came to office when the war was already in a condition of bloody stasis engendering massive suffering in Ukraine, ineffectual leadership in Western capitals, and American popular discontent.

The president is right that the war probably would not have started if he, not Biden, had been in the Oval Office. But you can only play the cards you’re dealt. In this deadly game, Trump must play the strong hand he holds, not get caught bluffing again.