There's good reason to think the White House doesn't know what it's doing in handling a nuclear stand-off with North Korea that could end catastrophically.
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US President Donald Trump has been said to have 'miscalculated' in threatening to respond with "fire and fury" to any further threats to his country from the pariah state, but that might be too generous. It's more than plausible he didn't calculate at all.
His comments took his own administration by surprise and provoked only more aggression from North Korea, which vowed to finalise a plan to fire four missiles into the waters off the Pacific island of Guam, a United States territory used as a strategic base, to create a "historic enveloping fire."
That the US response to North Korean aggression is being led, and undermined, by a president who appears incapable of keeping to a nuanced, strategic response bodes poorly for the prospects of a peaceful resolution to this escalating conflict.
While Trump's rhetoric grows more violent, his secretary of state Rex Tillerson has softened the US' position, telling Americans they can sleep easy and stressing his country was working diplomatic channels. He claims that the path of diplomacy and sanctions is working.
But US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis appeared to echo his commander-in-chief's bellicosity, saying the combined allied militaries "now possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth", and that North Korea's military "will continue to be grossly overmatched by ours and would lose any arms race or conflict it initiates."
Whether or not the US is consciously emphasising its range of options in dealing with North Korea, it's escalating the situation and taking a major risk.
Sometimes wars start for no major reason at all. In the Cold War black comedy Dr Strangelove, a communications error and a rogue general brought on nuclear apocalypse. In the world of fact rather than fiction, historians say that statesmen blundered into World War I, and didn't know why.
In the North Korean stand-off, there are many moving parts that, through no fault of any single individual, could set off a chain of events leading to war. The White House needs to be a well-oiled machine in this unpredictable environment. Instead, its responses are getting more chaotic, inflaming the matter.
Cooler heads, discipline, and calmer, more rational language on the US' part would help take the world off the warpath. As frustrated as Trump is by the perceived unwillingness of China to rein in North Korea, the Middle Kingdom is essential to any peaceful resolution. In fact, the US alone will not be able to resolve this conflict. By using the rhetoric of war, and insulting China on Twitter, Trump is bullying and blustering his way through the problem. That may have worked in the world of New York property development, show business and US politics.
With North Korea, Trump's blunt instruments threaten to bring on a war that nobody wants.
