Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations yesterday was tough love, minus the love. Its leitmotif was a full-throated and oft-repeated extolling of sovereignty, which he described as not only his duty to champion for America, but also a corrective for what ails the UN.

The President spoke the hard truth about the threats posed to the world by Rocket Man’s North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and even Russia in Ukraine and China in the South China Sea. It could be a Trump Doctrine’s defining blueprint.

Unless, that is, two things now occur: First, will the President be countermanded, or otherwise undercut, by his own subordinates? And second, will his forceful rhetoric be unaccompanied by the deeds needed to actualize it?

The President’s past tolerance of such behavior has not only undermined him, it has emboldened the adversaries he rightly castigated yesterday.