Would-be apprentices 'looking good and doing a great job'

If US president-elect Donald Trump was concerned by the clashing views that emerged from his cabinet nominees in the first days of Senate confirmation hearings, he didn't show it this week.

"All of my cabinet nominee [sic] are looking good and doing a great job," he tweeted early on Friday. "I want them to be themselves and express their own thoughts, not mine!"

But the sharp differences between Trump and his team on basic questions such as whether Russia is a partner or adversary raise the spectre of chaos as an untested chief executive prepares to assume the presidency.

Clashing cabinet secretaries are nothing new, analysts say, citing rivalries between Caspar Weinberger and George Shultz under Ronald Reagan, or between Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell under George W Bush. But the sheer number of differing views among Trump's appointees - and between them and their boss - along with the existence of rival power centres in the new White House, may herald a shaky start.

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"I'm a little bit afraid," said Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama administration Pentagon official. "It doesn't sound very coherent."

Possibly the most glaring discrepancies involve Russia. Trump and his future national security adviser, retired general Mike Flynn, appear eager to engage with Vladimir Putin. Yet the general Trump has picked to be defence secretary - James Mattis - on Thursday labelled Russia the chief threat to US security.

Differences also emerged on Iran, with Mattis saying the US should meet its treaty agreements, while Trump has called for the nuclear deal to be renegotiated. Mike Pompeo, the nominated CIA director, said he would refuse a presidential order to waterboard terror suspects despite Trump's avowed support of the practice.

Rex Tillerson, who is likely to be secretary of state, backed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Trump opposes, and said he favoured remaining in the Paris climate change agreement, despite Trump's assertion that global warming is a China-created hoax.

"This is just unprecedented. We've never seen anything like this," said Thomas McClarty, former White House chief of staff under Bill Clinton, who said none of his administration's nominees had displayed such open disagreement with the president's policies.

Asked about differences between himself and Flynn, Mattis said it would be unhealthy if a new administration began with a "tyranny of consensus", saying that instead, a cabinet should be a team of rivals, a reference to Doris Kearns Goodwin's book on Abraham Lincoln's cabinet.

Sean Spicer, Trump's nominee as press secretary, said on Thursday that Trump "is not asking for clones".

But much depends on the ability of a new president to establish a process for melding competing views into effective policies. Trump's habit of firing off policy statements on Twitter clashes with the careful policy formation process usually followed in the White House.

Eric Edelman, who served as under-secretary of defence for policy under George W Bush, said Trump appeared to have an informal approach that was less reliant on established staff and more on personal connections with a few advisers. The risk of not having a good formal staff system was that it would leave him "more open to the winds of fortune, or misfortune", he said.

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Mackenzie Eaglen, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said Trump appeared to be giving the nominees wide latitude to form their own opinions, even if the president-elect would have the last word. The differences "are more encouraging than worrisome", she said.

"He picked in most places highly qualified and competent people to take these jobs and I think he expects them to make policy in the absence of him having one."

On national security matters, Flynn's role will be critical. Experts point to Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser under George HW Bush, as a highly successful "honest broker" who fostered smooth decision-making.

By contrast, Henry Kissinger is said, under Richard Nixon, to have excluded the secretary of state at the time, William Rogers, from most decisions.

Another unknown is what influence members of Trump's inner circle, such as son-in-law Jared Kushner, counsellor Steve Bannon and chief of staff Reince Priebus, will have.

Concerns are not limited to foreign policy. On trade, commerce secretary nominee Wilbur Ross, economist Peter Navarro at the new National Trade Council, and Robert Lighthizer, the next US trade representative, will battle for supremacy.

Likewise, Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs power broker who will head Trump's National Economic Council, and Kushner are expected to have a say. Some already are forecasting a rocky start for the new team. "Everyone thinks they are in charge," said one Washington insider.