Steve Yetiv is the Louis I. Jaffe Professor of International Relations at Old Dominion University and author of National Security Through a Cockeyed Lens
China. North Korea. Islamic State. Russia. Iran. NAFTA. From Toronto to Beijing, Washington to Paris, fears are mounting that the Trump administration's mistakes will hurt the world's economy and security.
Donald Trump is powerful, cocksure and inexperienced and he seeks to buck the status quo, which raises the stakes.
And the U.S. National Security Council appears to be in some turmoil, especially with the resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn for his contacts with Russia and the controversy over the appointment to the NSC of senior Trump adviser Stephen Bannon.
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Adding to the confusion are criticisms that Mr. Trump and his advisers discussed how to respond to North Korea's recent nuclear missile test without going to a secure location at Mr. Trump's Florida club.
But whether the Trump team fails or succeeds will depend in part on how it makes decisions, once the dust settles. And we should all, media included, encourage sound decision-making practices.
At bottom, the Trump team needs to formally weigh the costs and benefits of options for dealing with problems ranging from China's trade practices to North Korea's missile tests to the North American free-trade agreement. That might sound simple, but leaders too often neglect it, as did John F. Kennedy during the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco and President George W. Bush in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Such decision-making promotes big-picture thinking and concern about unintended consequences. That is important for any leader but especially for Mr. Trump, because he seeks to challenge the status quo rather than to reinforce it. Such a strategy makes his potential for creating unintended consequences especially high. If he were a status-quo leader, there would be less to worry about.
Mr. Trump also needs to ensure that his inner circle feels free to question his ideas and approaches, even if that may run against his personality. That will make members less likely to pursue their own agendas without clear vetting.
Mr. Trump needs to empower a leader such as Defence Secretary James Mattis to play devil's advocate in group meetings. Mr. Trump should even skip some decision-making meetings before rejoining them later. That will let his inner circle debate options more freely. Then-president Kennedy successfully employed such an approach in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Such a decision-making process can help check Mr. Trump's overconfidence by presenting competing ideas and also help avoid one of the most deadly threats to good decision-making: groupthink. Following the leader uncritically is a recipe for big trouble in any government.
To avoid the blunders of past administrations, it also helps to listen carefully to underlings in the various departments of government. Doing so is especially vital for Mr. Trump who, in sharp contrast to previous Republican presidents such as George H.W. Bush, lacks knowledge of world affairs. The United States has smart, dedicated people across the foreign policy, intelligence, and national security establishment who are too often ignored. Are they being carefully queried about the world's hot spots?
As dedicated as these people are, their respective departments across government have sometimes failed to co-operate and share intelligence. That problem made it harder to deter the 9/11 attacks and to handle numerous other crises in history, including the 1979 Iranian revolution under president Jimmy Carter. The Trump team should try to avoid such rivalries, which brings us back to the NSC.
The NSC co-ordinates policy between the State and Defence departments chiefly but also among other agencies, and needs to function effectively. Will Mr. Flynn's replacement promote good decision-making?
Of course, some administrations have been disorganized with the right hand not knowing what the left is doing and have made policy on the run. The first weeks of the Trump administration also raise that concern. Decision-making procedures may be a partial antidote, even as basic as that sounds.
Mr. Trump also needs to avoid personalizing international politics. Psychologists refer to a phenomenon called the "fundamental attribution error" where we blame people instead of situations. Leaders don't like to be humiliated and one wrong tweet could complicate U.S. foreign relations. Again, formal strategy sessions can lay out approaches that may minimize independent tweeting.
Sure, people will say that Mr. Trump and his team won't pursue such decision-making. Maybe. But Mr. Trump hates failure, and presumably his team does not want to stumble in the high-stakes arena of foreign affairs. Perhaps the Flynn affair is a wake-up call.
In any case, all leaders should be questioned about how they make decisions, regardless of how much we think they will listen, because we will all pay if they falter.