A climb down, however, will be far worse than Obama’s abortive red line in Syria, as bad as that was. Trump will have shown, once and forever, that he is a blowhard tapping out empty threats on Twitter. On his watch the United States can and will be defied with impunity. And again, what remains of American credibility pretty much anywhere will vanish.

Against such large stakes, the humiliation of one more senior staff or cabinet member may not seem like a big deal. But it is. Tillerson has to quit. His boss has publicly and mockingly stripped him of his credibility as the chief diplomat of the United States. As an envoy, he is useless, because he will speak only for himself and the tiny embattled coterie of aides that surround him. Having taken a pickaxe to the department entrusted to his care, his departure would do the battered State Department some good, as well as enabling him to salvage what remains of his dignity.

But Tillerson may very well stay on, as others have until Trump has decided that it’s more fun to kick them out than simply to kick them. If he does remain, it will be yet another sign of the collapse of self respect among those who are now willing to serve in senior positions in government. Dean Acheson or George Shultz would never have tolerated such treatment; neither would Condoleezza Rice or Madeleine Albright. And not one of them would have let desperation to cling to office delude them into thinking that patriotism motivated and justified their tolerance of the president’s swinging boot.

What will be left are men and women with pliable spines (if they had them to begin with) or those, such as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who are natural sycophants, willing to parrot whatever absurdity the reality television star for whom they work ordains. No one will be immune from the test of character that would lead someone with self respect to tell the president, “This is intolerable. I quit.” It is a puny test at that. None of those facing it risk financial loss, physical peril, or jeopardy to their spouse or children by acting with a backbone. But it is a safe bet that most of them will fail it, ignominiously.

An administration is not just a president, but a vast team, led by a score or so of senior officers of the government. What the Tillerson test may reveal is what a pathetic group most of them are. And the surrender or war over Korea that may follow will be but one part, however distressing or bloody, of the price this country will pay for a government administered by moral weaklings and lickspittles.