The resignation of a U.S. national security adviser after only over three weeks in the job is unprecedented and it is a harbinger of something deep in the water.
Michael Flynn's quit amid revelations that he misled Vice President Mike Pence about his phone calls with Russian ambassador uncovered the chaos facing the new Donald Trump administration, U.S. experts said.
"It was an unprecedented development" for a national security adviser to be forced out just 25 days into Trump's presidency, Nora Bensahel, an expert at the School of International Service of the Washington-based American University, told a telephone briefing on Tuesday. "We never heard anything like that before."
Flynn's sudden ouster on Monday night was triggered by last week's disclosure that he discussed Washington's sanctions on Moscow during at least one December phone call with Russia's ambassador to the United States before Trump took office on Jan. 20.
The retired lieutenant general was serving as a member of Trump's transition team then.
But in particular, he misled other officials about the conversations, including Vice President Mike Pence, who came out and strongly supported him in public comments, Bensahel said.
Flynn maintained for weeks that he had not talked about U.S. sanctions in his contacts with the Russian ambassador. He later admitted that the topic may have come up.
"It seems that Flynn is unable to establish or operate a policy process at the National Security Council (NSC)," Gordon Adams, professor of international relations at the American University, said at the briefing.
"I think the issue broader and general in Flynn is really an issue of chaos, disorganization, and amateurship in the national security wing of the White House," said Adams, who was a senior White House official for national security budgeting in the Bill Clinton administration and also served on Barack Obama's transition team.
Flynn's dismissal "betrayed a severe chaos in Trump's White House," he added.
There is always tension between the White House and the agencies, which is usually managed through inter-agency process, he said.
"The NSC has been foundering in chaos for the last three week. There is no solid substantial inter-agency process in place to deal with the differences in points of view," he said.
Adam raised concerns about the dysfunction of the Trump administration. He believed that the Trump versus the bureaucracy scene was likely to continue.
Jordan Tama, assistant professor who specializes in the politics, processes, and institutions of U.S. foreign and national security policy making at the American University, echoed that "there are not just tensions between the agencies and the White House, but also within the White House."
There are clear tensions between those who "go along or fit with Trump' s unusual approaches to politics and management" and some others who are more conventional politicians like Vice President Pence, said Tama, who served as a national security adviser to Obama's 2008 presidential campaign.
Tama believed "there will be continuing tensions there, whether people who are more political professionals are able to establish more regular process in running the government."
"This White House is clearly not normal," Adams said. "They come out so fast, like a blizzard of destruction going on in terms of the way the White House deals with domestic and foreign policy issues."
"Under that circumstance, the bureaucracy to play a role, through leaks, through side conversations, in countering the chaos in the White House is likely to be enhanced," he said.
