This is a long exerpt from today’s Foreign Policy Situation Report, a daily review of news. It’s one that I find very useful and worth keeping up with, especially these days.

By Paul McLeary

Same as it ever was. After a week of incendiary tweets and comments from President Donald Trump threatening war with North Korea and Venezuela, his cabinet and top military advisors did what they’ve grown accustomed to doing: moving past the noise emanating from the Oval Office.

“An attack from North Korea is not something that is imminent,” CIA Director Mike Pompeo said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation. Appearing later on “Fox News Sunday,” Pompeo went further. “I’ve heard folks talking about being on the cusp of a nuclear war,” he said, but there is “no intelligence that would indicate that we’re in that place today.”

Pentagon on the line. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Joseph Dunford, is in Seoul, South Korea to meet with officials and military leaders. He also took a more measured approach. “As a military leader, I have to make sure that the president does have viable military options in the event that the diplomatic and economic pressurization campaign fails,” he said. “We are mindful of the consequences of executing those options, and that makes us have more of a sense of urgency to make sure that we’re doing everything we absolutely can to support Secretary Tillerson’s current path.”

“We’re all looking to get out of this situation without a war,” Dunford said.

Cabinet pushes diplomacy. On Sunday night, an op-ed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and also urged a diplomatic approach:

“The U.S. will continue to work with our allies and partners to deepen diplomatic and military cooperation, and to hold nations accountable to their commitments to isolate the regime. That will include rigorous enforcement of sanctions, leaving no North Korean source of revenue untouched. In particular, the U.S. will continue to request Chinese and Russian commitments not to provide the regime with economic lifelines and to persuade it to abandon its dangerous path.”

FP’s Paul McLeary and C.K.Hickey worked up a map to pinpoint where U.S. missile defense and radar systems are in the Asia Pacific region.

Tough talk limits options. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen said over the weekend that Trump’s talk of “fire and fury” doesn’t help the situation on the Korean peninsula. “It’s an incredibly difficult, complex problem, and we have rhetoric, some very strong rhetoric, coming from both North Korea, as well as from the United States,” he said. “And that rhetoric, it seems to me, has taken away options or it’s reduced maneuver space, if you will, for leaders to make decisions.”

Another front. On Friday, president Trump also threatened Venezuela with military action, catching Washington off guard. Appearing on ABC News on Sunday, national security advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster was asked if he thought there was the possibility of U.S. military action in Venezuela. “No, I don’t,” he answered.