Donald Trump’s big crisis is in Venezuela

There’s a nice Annette Idler item at the Monkey Cage on what’s at stake in Venezuela that answered some questions I’ve been thinking about as a non-specialist.
Call me naive or a foolish optimist, but I suspect that the most likely end to the North Korea “crisis” is that it will fizzle out. Yes, Donald Trump is capable of irrational actions and North Korea may be as well, but certainly on the US side, all the sober, sane folks in government are on alert and fighting hard to make sure nothing too irrational happens. Nor am I really especially concerned that Trump will turn over the keys to the nation to his Russian friends. Sure, there are legitimate concerns, and things could go wrong fast and with horrible consequences, but there are very strong forces pushing away from disaster, too.
No, Venezuela is the kind of thing I think is highly likely to go wrong during a Trump presidency. As far as we know, there is basically no one minding the store at the State Department, and to the extent the rest of the national security portions of the government are functional, they are overtaxed with, well, keeping Trump from doing foolish things. A situation not obviously at crisis levels could easily be almost ignored.
Or, to put it another way: Normal presidencies have a process in place in which important policy questions are brought to the president—not just security briefings, but domestic problems as well. Just the need to present the president with serious briefings forces the White House staff and various agencies and departments to figure out what’s important and what’s not, to find potentially viable courses of action for the president to consider, and to be prepared in case the president asks tough questions in either an initial briefing or down the road. Good presidents won’t just passively absorb briefings; they’ll challenge the information and the options they’re being presented with, reinforcing the need for everyone up and down the line to do their best work.
Does anyone think any of that is happening in this administration?
Under those circumstances, even the most serious people are going to slack off a bit out frustration, and those who are less dedicated are going to ease up entirely. Why put in the work if the president is going to ignore serious briefings in favor of his happy packet and whatever nonsense he picks up from spinning the cable news dial?
And if that happens, then the danger of mishandling (mostly through inattention) all sorts of problems can rise rapidly. Some of those problems may turn into real crises of their own; others will just do low-level damage (or at least initially low-visibility damage), at least for a while.
The truth is that every president lets some of this happen, especially new and inexperienced ones. But I strongly suspect that it will happen more, more often, and across more policy areas with Trump than has ever been the case before.

—Bloomberg