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Of all the decisions a president can make, the most perilous is going to war. The Vietnam War doomed Lyndon Johnson, just as the Korean War did Harry Truman. The Iraq invasion was a political debacle for George W. Bush. The lesson is that presidents should avoid war at almost any cost.

But Donald Trump, no student of history, has not absorbed that lesson. For months, he has been courting war with Venezuela : blowing up boats alleged to be smuggling drugs, massing naval forces and fighter jets in the Caribbean, demanding the resignation of President Nicolás Maduro and declaring the closure of Venezuela’s airspace .

He may hope these measures will be enough to get rid of Maduro. If they aren’t, Trump appears poised to launch direct att

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