I think it's fairly reasonable to tweet condolences or important news. Twitter is widely used and as a government you probably want to spread information as quickly as possible.

Tweets are probably made along side more traditional forms of communication.

But Trump is just something else. The sheer lack of self control. This is not the behaviour of a leader of a first world nation or for that matter, an adult.

It certainly would not be the first war, unwanted by both parties, started by miscommunication. It's easily done. Imagine you and someone else are pointing guns at each other - did the other person's buddy just say 'shoot' or 'shucks'? Are you going to wait to find out? And what if your buddy says it - you probably want your buddy to think hard about what they say and to speak very clearly and slowly.

That's why diplomacy is a profession which requires great skill and expertise, and why escalation is rarely used as a tactic by the professionals. Flying bombers which could contain nuclear weapons near the other side's cities, for example, might make jumpy people pull the trigger. Radars, nervous radar technicians, and their nervous superiors do make make mistakes.

A surprisingly large number of wars do start with errors. Off the top of my head:

The destruction of the ship the Maine by the Spanish started the Spanish-American War, even though the ship likely wasn't destroyed by the Spanish.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Vietnamese attacked U.S. Navy ships. started the Vietnam War, even though there was no attack (it was radar error).

Iraq's WMD program and alliance with Al Qaeda started the Iraq War, even though there was no program or alliance.

> During those ten minutes, even folks at the Pentagon were wondering if Trump was about to announce a strike on a foreign power

Do you have a source you could provide for this?

I thought he was going for something along those lines, then somebody got through to him and so he ended it up with something nonsensical, hence the delay.