The diplomatic cleanup operation began early Wednesday, when Rex
Tillerson, the media-shy Secretary of State, gave a rare interview to reporters onboard his plane, over the Pacific Ocean, addressing the
incendiary comments his boss made on Tuesday about North Korea. “You
know, the U.S.A. and the international community, with respect to North
Korea, has actually had a pretty good week,” Tillerson said. “We had a
unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution that strengthens
sanctions against North Korea, with China and Russia joining us in that
vote. . . . What the President was doing was sending a strong message to
North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un would understand, because
he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language. . . . I think it was
important that he deliver that message to avoid any miscalculation on
their part.” Tillerson added that he hoped the entire world, including
China and Russia, would now be able to persuade North Korea to
“reconsider the current pathway they are on and consider engaging in a
dialogue about a different future.”

The former oilman could have left it there, but he took another question
about what had prompted Trump’s statement, in which he said that, if
North Korea continued to issue threats to the United States, it would
be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Tillerson
responded, “Nothing that I have seen and nothing that I know of would
indicate that the situation has dramatically changed in the last
twenty-four hours. And I think Americans should sleep well at night and
have no concerns about this particular rhetoric of the past few days. .
. . What the President was just reaffirming is that the United States
has the capability to fully defend itself from any attack, and its
allies, and we will do so.”

The Secretary of State’s intention seemed plain: to defend his volatile
boss and suggest that there was method behind his apparent madness, but
also to convey to the American public, and to the country’s allies, that
nothing fundamental had changed about U.S. policy toward North Korea.
The current approach is to ratchet up the diplomatic, economic, and
military pressure on Pyongyang, while leaving talks as a viable option
for the regime.

Tillerson didn’t explain how it was possible to issue a credible threat
to an adversary while also assuring everybody else that the language
used in making the threat was only “rhetoric.” But at least he made it
sound as if Trump’s statement were part of a thought-out strategy,
rather than an irresponsible outburst delivered off the cuff. As the day
progressed, however, that narrative started to unravel.

"The White House, including the national-security team, was unaware
President Trump was preparing to speak publicly about North Korea when
he did so Tuesday at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey,” the
Weekly Standard’s Michael Warren reported in a piece posted shortly after 8 A.M., Eastern Time. Later in the morning,
Glenn Thrush, of the Times, tweeted that Trump had not read his “fire and fury” from prepared notes, as some accounts had suggested, but, rather, improvised it on the spot. Soon after
that, Politico’s Josh Dawsey added, also on
Twitter, “ ‘Fire and fury’ from yesterday was not carefully vetted
language from Trump, per several ppl with knowledge. ‘Don't read too
much into it.’ ”

At that point, it was hard to know whether to laugh or cry. For months
now, one of the few reassuring things about the Trump Administration has
been the perception that, when it comes to foreign policy and national
security, Trump usually defers to the officials he refers to as “my
generals”: H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser; James Mattis,
the Secretary of Defense; and John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff, who was previously the head of the Department of Homeland
Security. But, in this instance, according to these reports, Trump was
freelancing on what many experts believe to be the most thorny and
dangerous issue he faces: North Korea’s nukes.

Neither McMaster nor Mattis was present in New Jersey when Trump made
his bellicose remarks. Kelly was there, and, according to Thrush, he was
caught by surprise when Trump made his comments. The news reports made
it sound like an Administration in chaos—the very impression that Kelly
was hired to dispel. The President had said one thing, and other
officials were telling reporters—and, therefore, the public—to discount
at least some of it.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Mattis issued a public statement from the Pentagon that seemed to echo some of Trump’s language rather than Tillerson’s efforts to downplay it.

“The United States and our allies have the demonstrated capabilities and
unquestionable commitment to defend ourselves from an attack,” the
statement said. "Kim Jong Un should take heed of the United Nations
Security Council’s unified voice, and statements from governments the
world over, who agree the DPRK poses a threat to global security and
stability. The DPRK must choose to stop isolating itself and stand down
its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The DPRK should cease any consideration
of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction
of its people.”

It is important to note that this language was a good deal more precise
than Trump’s statement, which had seemed to suggest that U.S. forces
might launch a preëmptive nuclear strike on North Korea in response to
mere verbal threats. Mattis, by contrast, made it clear that he was
talking about how the United States and its allies would respond to “an
attack” by Kim’s forces. That is a fundamental difference.

The Defense Secretary appeared to be responding to a report by
the North Korean state news agency, which said that the country’s
military was examining plans to launch a ballistic missile strike on
Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific that houses a huge military base.
Mattis’s statement didn’t stop there, though. “President Trump was
informed of the growing threat last December and on taking office his
first orders to me emphasized the readiness of our ballistic missile
defense and nuclear deterrent forces,” it went on. “While our State
Department is making every effort to resolve this global threat through
diplomatic means, it must be noted that the combined allied militaries
now possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust defensive and
offensive capabilities on Earth. The DPRK regime’s actions will continue
to be grossly overmatched by ours and would lose any arms race or
conflict it initiates.”

What was this paragraph meant to convey? There has never been any doubt
that the United States has the military capability to destroy North
Korea: Kim, we can rest assured, is well aware of this fact. He doesn’t
need Trump and Mattis to point it out to him.

Was the intended audience for this part of Mattis’s statement a domestic
one—or perhaps even Trump himself? In talking about how the President
had ordered him to insure the readiness of the U.S. nuclear forces, the
Defense Secretary seemed to be backing up a tweet that Trump sent out on
Wednesday morning, in which he said,
“My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear
arsenal.” He went on to claim—erroneously,
according to some fact checkers—that this arsenal “is now far stronger
and more powerful than ever before.” The last bit of Mattis’s statement
also seemed to be carefully phrased. Indeed, in saying that the military
forces facing Korea “possess the most precise, rehearsed and robust
defensive and offensive capabilities on Earth,” it appeared to be
translating Trump’s “fire and fury” line into Pentagon-speak.

In brief, Mattis seemed to be giving the Commander-in-Chief some cover.
Did the White House ask him to do this, or did he do it of his own
accord? As a strategic thinker, he perhaps considered it a necessary
step to preserve the U.S. government’s credibility. But, despite
Mattis’s intervention, the over-all impression that this day conveyed to
the world was, by now, a familiar one: this is an Administration that
sends mixed messages and spends much of its time trying to clean up
messes made by the President.