Tom Nichols

Opinion contributor

Here’s the good news: We are not yet in a crisis with North Korea. That is, we are not facing an imminent threat of hostilities against the United States or its allies. Kim Jong Un's relentless march toward a long-range nuclear missile is picking up speed, but we still have time for diplomacy.

The bad news? When that day comes, perhaps sooner than we expect, the Trump administration might not be up to the job. If this is a dress rehearsal for a real crisis, then this team is not ready for opening night.

The president’s strategy has been to threaten Pyongyang — apparently unbeknownst to his advisers — with “fire and fury,” along with taking to Twitter to brag about how he has single-handedly restored the American nuclear deterrent to its strongest point ever. (This is something of a head-scratcher, since the U.S. arsenal is actually smaller than it has been at any time in recent history, and it was President Obama, not President Trump, who signed off on a trillion dollar modernization of strategic forces that is still underway.)

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Even on a good day, the administration’s foreign policy is characterized by disarray at best and incoherence at worst. Defense Secretary James Mattis is a voice of reason, but he is far from the scrum over at the Pentagon. Rex Tillerson, in theory, is the secretary of State, but in reality he is practically invisible in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy — usually coming in later (as he did with the "fire and fury" line) to do what little diplomatic damage control he can manage.

And then there is the war against national security adviser H.R. McMaster, conducted by people who know very little about things such as national security. America’s enemies are no doubt paying careful attention to the shameful spectacle of alt-right bloggers and smear artists acting as proxies for a White House faction determined to remove a man of McMaster’s ability and reputation.

This would be less disturbing were it not for the fact that Trump apparently takes those outlets seriously, including hiring the man who ran one of them to work in the Oval Office. The new chief of staff, retired general John Kelly, seems to be making a run at imposing order on the West Wing. Hopefully, one of his top priorities will be to create an orderly national security advising process without this kind of sniping and sabotaging by dilettantes and ideologues.

The reassuring exception is Nikki Haley, ambassador to the United Nations, whose foreign policy, at least rhetorically, is a model of clarity compared with what comes out of the White House. And credit where it is due: The Trump administration’s North Korea sanctions move passed the Security Council unanimously, which is as much a testament to Haley’s skills as it is to the exhaustion of the international community’s patience with the weird Kim regime.

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Unfortunately, U.N. ambassadors are often the clearest voice in foreign policy precisely because they are so far from Washington and have so little power. Samantha Power always had a better foreign policy than Obama, but she was pointedly overruled on key issues such as Syria and sent back to Manhattan to make excellent but useless speeches. And who even remembers John Danforth, who said he was not close to George W. Bush and quit his U.N. post after Bush passed him over for secretary of State?

In a few years, Pyongyang may well be on the verge of testing a nuclear-armed missile. At that point, we will be in an actual crisis, with little time to make a decision, drowning in data of uneven quality and the voice of a panicked public roaring in our ears. At that point, it will be time to turn off Twitter and drop the showmanship. It will be time instead to listen to the voices of serious men and women, whose options will invariably be a choice among least bad alternatives, all of which will involve the loss of human life.

Will the Trump White House be ready?

Tom Nichols, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College and an adjunct professor at the Harvard Extension School, is the author of the new book The Death of Expertise. The views expressed here are solely his own. Follow him on Twitter: @RadioFreeTom

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