The Mysterious Case of the Missing Armada

Can reality TV explain why President Trump said he was sending an entire aircraft carrier group to North Korea when it was actually headed in the opposite direction? New York Times Friday, 21 April, 2017  The Mysterious Case of the Missing Armada  We need to talk about the armada.

Last week, President Trump said he was sending an aircraft carrier group to the Korean Peninsula to put pressure on Kim Jong-un to not further escalate his nuclear program.

"We are sending an armada,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network. “Very powerful. We have submarines, very powerful, far more powerful than the aircraft carrier, that I can tell you."  Although some lauded the decision as a show of Mr. Trump’s resolve, the announcement raised tensions in Asia, prompting fears that the carrier group might provoke North Korea to act even more aggressively, perhaps even sparking a war.

Except it turned out that the carrier group was, at that point, thousands of miles away and heading in the opposite direction, on its way to the Indian Ocean to take part in military exercises with Australia.

Whoops!

Reasonable people can disagree on whether sending the carrier group to North Korea is a good idea. But if Mr. Trump believed that sending the “armada” during a crisis would project resolve, then what does it project when he says on TV that the carrier is going one direction, but it turns out to be headed in another?

Foreign policy is about more than just the appearance of high stakes; The president needs to communicate what American goals are, and signal what he will and won’t do to achieve them. Adversaries rely on that information when deciding whether or how far to push the United States, and allies rely on it just as much when creating their own security policies.

When those signals are misread, the consequences can be severe. In 1990, Saddam Hussein’s misreading of the United States’ signals led him to think Washington would let him get away with invading Kuwait, for instance, and then a war had to be fought to sort it out.

That is why the missing carrier group was more than just an amusing flub. It provoked real concern in South Korea, which depends on the United States for its security, and now has to worry about whether Mr. Trump’s security commitments in the region are as solid as he claims.

But it’s also possible to look at the whole episode as an example of how Mr. Trump’s experience as a reality TV star is shaping the early days of his presidency.

When he was the star of “The Apprentice,” his job wasn’t to be a businessman, it was to play one on TV. It’s an open secret that reality shows are constructed and sometimes even word-for-word scripted by producers.

He was there to strike the right balance between charming and intimidating, to make a show of being bold and decisive while operating within the parameters set by his producers, and to provide the audience with entertaining drama —  not to actually do business stuff.

The aircraft carrier confusion hints that he may be treating his role as president the same way —  that he’s there to give the presidency the proper style and flair, and to present the right image on TV, while others behind the scenes do the real work of making decisions and executing policy. Seen through that lens, once he and his associates in the White House had gone on television to say the carrier group was heading to the Korean Peninsula, their work was done.

This has played out in other ways. Mr. Trump, for instance, has said repeatedly that he would demand that Germany compensate the United States for defending Europe. But he has taken no specific action to collecting the money supposedly owed. The performance, though consistent, hasn’t translated into policy.

And in fairness to Mr. Trump, every American president is to some extent a reality star. A very real part of the job is to make the rounds of a series of photo ops, podiums and state events, projecting an image of American power to viewers at home and abroad.

But the American president isn’t just a ceremonial head of state whose entire job is to make those kinds of public appearances. Mr. Trump holds the most powerful office in the world. And the consternation of allies like South Korea and Germany shows how much more there is to the role than image.