The salvos started with U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley announcing what sounded like a red line that would lead to a preemptive U.S. strike on the regime of Kim Jong Un.
“If you see him attack a military base, if you see some sort of intercontinental ballistic missile, obviously, we’re going to do that,” Haley told NBC News. Those remarks caught senior U.S. defense officials unawares. The Trump administration had previously kept details deliberately vague, saying only that all options are on the table if Pyongyang steps out of line…
Multiple defense officials told The Daily Beast that they weren’t expecting Haley to signal to the world what might trigger an armed American response. There’s a daily phone call between the different U.S. agencies to align or share messages, but this never came up, one of them said. All of the officials spoke anonymously to discuss the confusing cacophony of administration comments.
The lack of coordination is similar to the comedy of messaging errors over the location of the U.S. Navy’s Carl Vinson battle group, which is now on its way to the Sea of Japan, and the lack of coordinated information response to the use of the largest bomb ever dropped by the U.S. in Afghanistan.
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