The Atlantic

Trump’s Luck, Cold Wars, and Trouble in the Americas: The World in 2019

As foreign-policy experts assess what the year ahead holds, one issue comes to the fore: whether President Trump’s good fortune will continue.
Source: Eduardo Munoz / Reuters

By this point in his presidency, George H. W. Bush was preparing for battle with Iraq, Bill Clinton had begun bombing Serb targets in the former Yugoslavia, George W. Bush had invaded Afghanistan, and Barack Obama was about to encounter the Arab Spring.

Donald Trump, by contrast, has been lucky.

That is the conclusion of released Monday by the Council on Foreign Relations ranking the conflicts that could most threaten the United States in the coming year. The study notes that the Trump administration “has yet to confront a serious international crisis in which the president has had to wrestle with the agonizing decision over whether to commit the

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