Trump became president because the smart people in charge of U.S. foreign policy failed in disastrous ways, and even after this past week his own failures haven’t nearly matched their body count. Maybe Erdogan’s war can be contained, but maybe there’s a regional conflict and a reconstituted ISIS downstream from this debacle — in which case Trump will have repeated the blunders of his predecessors, but with vastly less excuse. And even if this particular crisis stabilizes, the decision-making approach that Trump used makes Kaiser Wilhelm look like a model of cool statesmanship, and its application in a crisis involving a real great power could be catastrophic. Nothing about the relative calm of years one through three guarantees that the test isn’t lurking in year four. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram, join the Facebook political discussion group, Voting While Female.

Source: New York Times October 19, 2019 18:22 UTC