A year is all Donald Trump has needed to stir chunks of the world in near crisis
Washington — President Donald Trump erupted onto the global stage under the isolationist banner "America First" — bent on tearing the multilateral world order down to its foundations. Now, at the end of his first year in office, the US and its shell-shocked allies face several escalating crises that could plunge the world into devastating new conflicts. When Trump came to office in January, his predecessor, Barack Obama, warned that North Korea’s breakneck dash to develop long-range nuclear missiles was his most pressing threat. As 2017 comes to an end, that threat has soared dramatically — in November, Kim Jong-un test fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and boasted that his nuclear arsenal could now hit any city on the US mainland. Trump himself has stirred tensions with reckless language, sneeringly branding Kim "little rocket man" and threatening to visit "fire and fury" on his authoritarian regime. Alongside the bravado, US diplomats have put together a punishing...
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