Story highlights Juliette Kayyem: Trump's problematic "team of rivals" stems from Flynn's failure to lead national security transition

Kayyem: Cabinet may well already be at war with the national security team -- mainly Flynn

CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem is the author of the best-selling "Security Mom: An Unclassified Guide to Protecting Our Homeland and Your Home." She is a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School, a former Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security in the Obama administration and founder of Kayyem Solutions, a security consulting firm. On the latest episode of her national security podcast (The SCIF), Kayyem explains what President Trump's cabinet picks say about his security policy. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN) As President Donald J. Trump's national security team falls into place, there has been much focus on the substance of what some are calling a "Trump Doctrine" that emerged during his inaugural speech: America First. The phrase itself is controversial, evoking memories of WWII's America First Committee and its anti-Semitic founders, and as specific policy it is vague.

But now that Trump is governing, slogans need to be implemented. And a dynamic is playing out within his Cabinet (and Cabinet-in-waiting) that is worthy of attention.

The confirmation hearings of Trump's three confirmed Cabinet members -- Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and CIA Director Mike Pompeo -- as well as his nominees for Secretary of State (Rex Tillerson) and even US Ambassador to the UN (Nikki Haley) were largely uncontroversial except in one important regard: They all expressed fundamental disagreement with basic tenets of Trump's campaign and foreign policy strategy.

Whether it was approaches to Russia, a border wall, climate change, NATO or torture, the nominees seemed to care little about how at odds their opinion was to those of the White House strategists. This suggests the cabinet may well already be at war with the national security team -- mainly National Security Advisor Michael Flynn -- from the outset.

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Call it a new "team of rivals." The term, made famous by Doris Kearns Goodwin's book about Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, originally described how Lincoln put his enemies and political adversaries into powerful positions in his administration to keep them close and tie their success to his. In some measure, notably the appointment of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Obama did the same thing.