The World Didn’t Change Much in 2019. That’s Bad News for 2020

It’s not hard to think of worthy candidates in the category of “most significant foreign-policy event of 2019.” Pick your poison: the Hong Kong protests, the whistleblower revelations that led to the House of Representatives voting to impeach U.S. President Donald Trump, the Amazon and Australian fires, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s electoral triumph, or Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s march toward a new and narrower conception of Indian nationalism. Or if you prefer to look on the bright side, maybe you’d cite the U.S. stock market, the record number of women sworn into the 116th Congress, or the progress made in addressing diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Ebola.