Every day brings a new example of White House distraction.

If they're not plotting against one another, officials in President Trump's administration are offering contradictory messages. It's a reflection of government dysfunction.

Unfortunately, it's also a great gift to American adversaries.

Our enemies pay attention to our failings and make policy in response.

First off, distractions give adversaries time and space to advance their agendas. While our enemies know Trump would (probably) react to a major challenge (China invading Taiwan, for example), distraction degrades the attention of U.S. leaders to lower-level challenges.

Still, that's a big problem. In international politics, big changes are often shaped by a succession of persistent small actions. Just consider what Iran has done and is doing in Iraq and Lebanon, or what Russia has done and is doing in Ukraine. Effectively dealing with these issues takes intelligence briefings, diplomatic outreach and coordinated strategy. All those things take time. Domestic distractions are diverting Trump's time.

Second, adversaries will assess the administration's dissensions by gauging personalities within the administration. Here, it's not so much who is arguing that matters, but how one administration official is arguing with another. By recognizing whether an official is predisposed to open confrontation, or to media leaks and concealed intentions, or any other stratagem, U.S. foes can better manipulate those officials.

Personality matters. Former President Barack Obama wasn't simply weak on foreign policy because of his lack of resolution, but due to the dichotomy between his stated words (''red lines'' etc.) and his lack of follow-through (acquiescence to aggression). U.S. adversaries similarly assessed the psychology of Obama's advisers.

When, for example, Obama's national security guru, Ben Rhodes, gave his 2016 monologue to the New York Times, he showed Americans something that was already known abroad. Namely, that Rhodes' belief in Obama's brilliance meant he underestimated the cumulative consequences of challenges to American power.

Third, incompetence in the Trump administration, or at least the perception of it, reinforces the impulses of anti-American ideologues. Countries like Iran (via its theology of expansionary Khomeinism), North Korea (via its hermit-Stalinism) and groups like the Islamic State (via its Salafi-Jihadist imperialism), believe the U.S. is structurally flawed. They despise our relative social liberalism, our binding of politics to democratic order and law to a secular judiciary, and our economic success.

U.S. power mostly deters adversaries against attacking us. But where our enemies see U.S. officials focused on infighting before American interests, their pre-existing prejudices are reinforced. They sense that American-led international order is far less important to this administration than, say, the George W. Bush administration.

In turn, these enemies are given motivation to strike. The underlying principle here is simple. Imagine you own a business. Would you rather compete with an experienced, stable business or a confused, divided business?

Trump needs to get his house in order. The challenges facing the U.S. are too great and too time sensitive to excuse administrative internecine warfare. If he fails to unite his team, Trump will find a world made more dangerous. Such a world will savor shallow wit for the president's legacy.

Tom Rogan (@TomRtweets) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a foreign policy columnist for National Review, a domestic policy columnist for Opportunity Lives, a former panelist on The McLaughlin Group and a senior fellow at the Steamboat Institute.

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