It’s known as the National Prayer Breakfast. Every US President since Dwight D Eisenhower has taken part in this gathering of the political, social and business elite that is now an annual networking event in Washington DC.

Last Thursday it was the turn of the newly elected president Donald Trump to act as keynote speaker. Trump’s speech was not unlike that made at his inauguration ceremony. This time though it wasn’t just America that was presented as being in chaos and meltdown, but the entire world.

Trump spoke of the brutalisation of “peace-loving Muslims”, the “threats of extermination” against the Jewish people and “genocide against Christians,” of beheadings by the terror group Islamic State.

“Not since the Middle ages have we seen that,” Trump told his audience as he described the “unimaginable violence” perpetrated in the name of religion.

Trump’s speech was an apocalyptic vision tempered only by his typically hubristic assurances.

“The world is in trouble, but we’re going to straighten it out, OK?” Trump insisted to the assembled guests. “That’s what I do. I fix things. We’re going to straighten it out. Believe me.”

Just how many of the guests took Trump’s reassurance to heart is anybody’s guess. Doubters among them could have been forgiven.

Barely two weeks into his presidency Trump, despite his assurances to the contrary, rather than "fix things" has done untold damage to global relations.

Far from straightening out the world, it is now a place far more uneasy and troubled than it was before he took office. Perhaps the most telling response to Trump's rage against the world came from European Council President Donald Tusk who called the new president an existential threat to Europe.

This weekend the chaos and uncertainty Trump has created was once again evident as Seattle federal judge, James Robart, issued a temporary nationwide block on Trump’s ban on travellers from seven mainly Muslim nations. Those countries are Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Judge Robart’s ruling is a major challenge to the Trump administration, and means that nationals from the seven countries are now able - in theory - to apply for US visas. Of course Trump then vow to overturn the legal ruling, describing Robart as a "so-called" justice whose "ridiculous" opinion "essentially takes law-enforcement away from" the US.

Despite Trump's comments, in this instance at least America’s domestic legal and political checks and balances system did its job - but overseas it’s an altogether different matter.

“Americans who reject Mr Trump will, naturally, fear most for what he could do to their own country. They are right to worry but they gain some protection from their institutions and the law,” observed a leader comment in The Economist magazine. “In the world at large, however, checks on Mr Trump are few. The consequences could be grave,” the article concluded.

Already a number of US commentators point to the fact that where Trump could have started a foreign policy revolution he has instead triggered a foreign policy revolt.

“If you are a loyal Trump supporter, and especially someone who embraced him because you thought he would deliver a smarter, more self-interested, more restrained, and above all more successful foreign policy than his predecessors, you should be disappointed and deeply worried,” wrote Stephen M Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard University in Foreign Policy magazine.

Walt went on to explain how Trump’s presidency could have reaffirmed his opposition to military interventions and “nation-building.” How Trump could have begun a carefully phased disengagement from Afghanistan and articulated the strategic logic for better relations with Russia or returned US Middle East policy to a more “hands-off, offshore balancing approach.”

Instead, Trump and his seemingly anarchic strategy chief, Stephen Bannon, have chosen to pick fights and dish out thinly disguised threats. Nowhere last week was this more obvious, than in Trump’s haranguing of Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull on the phone, over a refugee resettlement deal.

The deal whereby the US would take 1250 refugees who still languish in immigration camps on Nauru and on Manus islands now hangs in the balance.

Not content with hanging up on the Australian leader, Trump and his team only compounded their diplomatic disaster in a subsequent press conference.

During his daily press briefing, spokesman, Sean Spicer, at various points referred to the Australian prime minister as “Trunbull” and “Trumbull”, and warned that all the refugees would be subjected to Trump's “extreme vetting”, leaving questions over how many, if any, of the 1250 refugees would actually end up in the US.

It takes a seriously incompetent foreign policy team to mess up the way the Trump administration did with Australia one of the US key allies. Australia after all, is a country that is technically 'more loyal' than Britain having fought at America’s side in Korea and Vietnam, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is also one of the “Five Eyes” (FVEY) alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US that have long since been bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement for joint cooperation in signals, military and human intelligence.

But Australia of course is not the only target of the Trump administration’s ire. “They picked another pointless fight with Mexico, mostly because Trump can’t admit what is obvious to all: if that stupid wall ever gets built, Americans will have to pay for it,” pointed out international relations professor Stephen M Walt.

According to some Mexico watchers, should Trump’s proposed border wall ever actually be built, then by the time the last brick is laid, it’s a fair bet that someone more antagonistic toward the US will hold power on its southern side.

That person could be Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, which thanks to Trump, looks increasingly likely. The politician known locally as Amlo is the early frontrunner in Mexico’s 2018 presidential race. While voting is admittedly still some way off, the momentum on Amlo’s side is palpable.

Amid a spasm of national outrage, voters are increasingly sympathetic to the cries of a radical outsider who promises to end a relationship of "subordination" to the US and rebuild the domestic economy.

To put this in context, Trump, with his brash pledges to rewrite Nafta and hit Mexico with the bill for building the wall, has created the perfect climate for an anti-Trump movement and leader south of the border.

“Winner of today’s US Mexico dust-up: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador,” Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer tweeted last week. “Hope Trump is looking forward to working with him.”

Americans north of the ‘wall’ may soon get to see for themselves what Amlo is made of. He is said to be planning a speaking tour of US cities with large immigrant communities, starting with Los Angeles on February 12.

Some say this “Hugo Chavez wannabe” - despite not being one of the “bad hombres” Trump has spoken of - could nevertheless spell political trouble for the US president.

Jose Cardenas, a former senior official at the State Department writing in the National Review has warned of likely disputes on what are hot-button issues for Trump. These include everything from border security, counter-terrorism, and drug-war cooperation to deportations and restricting Central American migration.

Quite clearly Trump's brief honeymoon from global affairs is over and his election has ended diplomatic business as usual. No one is quite sure what the neophyte president knows about the world or what he will decide on any given issue.

Some countries like Iran and Russia apparently have decided to find out, testing Trump’s mettle. Not that the Trump administration itself has been shying away from a showdown with Iran

Already Trump has almost tweeted the US into a war with Iran - which is now “on notice” from his administration - after Tehran test fired a medium-range Khorramshahr missile last weekend.

“Should have been thankful for the terrible deal the US made with them!” tweeted Trump. “Iran was on its last legs and ready to collapse until the US came along and gave it a life-line in the form of the Iran Deal: $150 billion.”

In short Trump is gunning for a fight with Iran. His bellicose approach is already evident. It matters nothing to Trump that the US has produced more Islamic State jihadists fighters than Iran has. Trump’s imposition of a blanket travel ban and new sanctions will primarily target ordinary Iranians.

All this of course appeals to Trump’s wealthy Arab allies notably Saudi Arabia. Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, is well known in Riyadh. As head of Exxon Mobil before taking office, he visited the Gulf as recently as November. “He’s as friendly to Saudi Arabia as it gets,” said one diplomat quoted in The Economist.

Curiously enough - or perhaps not - Saudi Arabia like Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, two other Sunni countries, was not targeted by the US freeze on visas. Riyadh most likely saw the travel ban as re-establishing the isolation of its chief adversary, Iran, and other Shia dominated states.

“Trump’s administration sees Iran as part of the problem, unlike the Obama administration, which viewed it as part of the solution,” noted one veteran Saudi commentator, Abdulrahman al-Rashed.

Trump’s sabre rattling and pressurising of Tehran will also please Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who was forever critical of the Obama’s administration’s rapprochement with Iran.

Short of taking the US to all out war with Iran, perhaps the most dangerous aspect of Trump’s behavior towards Tehran is that it only plays into the hands of the country’s political hardliners, particularly those who want to show that the president, Hassan Rouhani, was wrong to find peace with the West.

“We are working day and night to protect Iran’s security," head of Revolutionary Guards' aerospace unit, Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency yesterday. “If we see smallest misstep from the enemies, our roaring missiles will fall on their heads,” he added, matching the fighting talk coming out of Washington.

Most likely Trump’s first battleground with Iran though will be played out in Yemen, against the Iranian backed Houthi rebels already engaged in fighting there. To counter Iran’s proxies, the administration is considering ramping up drone strikes, deploying more military advisers and carrying out more Special Forces raids.

Washington like the UK have already played a role in the Yemeni civil war, supporting the Saudi-led bombing campaign against Houthi rebels for the past two years that has resulted in massive civilian casualties.

“There’s a desire to look at a very aggressive pushback” against Iran in Yemen within the administration, a source advising the Trump national security team told Foreign Policy magazine’s chief national security correspondent Dan de Luce last week.

While US officials say they are determined to show Iran that there is a new sheriff in town, it’s still unclear whether the new sheriff can lay down the law.

And speaking of Trump laying down the law on the foreign policy front, that brings us to the question of Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.

If Iran’s test firing of a ballistic missile last week was gauged at sounding out the new US administration, then Russia’s ratcheting up of the war in eastern Ukraine was perhaps aimed similarly at testing Trump’s mettle.

Ever since Trump spoke to Putin for an hour last Saturday on the phone, there has been a significant increase in violence around the Ukrainian industrial hub of Avdiivka.

While it’s unlikely that Trump gave Putin the green light for operations, since the two leaders spoke 19 people have died as separatists shelled the town of 20,000 with repeated rounds of Grad multiple rocket systems and artillery fire.

How things have changed since the Obama presidency, when such incursions would have brought swift condemnation, calls for Russia and its allies to return to ceasefire agreements, and an escalation of US and European sanctions against Moscow.

In Europe there has been vocal concern over the escalation in violence but almost nothing said from Trump’s White House.

Could it be that Ukraine finds itself in the unenviable position of being seen by Trump as collateral damage in his desire to improve relations with Russia?

Should Trump and Putin come to some deal over Ukraine, the implications are obvious not least for transatlantic unity. Policy analysts point to sanctions agreed between Obama and German chancellor Angela Merkel as one of the key strategies that helped stop Russian advances in Ukraine.

Should Trump and Putin have an arrangement over Ukraine then there are other dangers too. Colin Kahl, who was intimately involved in managing the Ukraine crisis in Obama’s White House, says Ukraine might feel “abandoned” and so Ukrainian nationalists take matters into their own hands, deepening the spiral of violence.

Whether it’s alienating allies or picking new and unnecessary fights the Trump approach to foreign policy thus far has been ominous. “Our adversaries, from the Islamic State to Beijing to Iran, have been handed powerful new arguments with which to embarrass, delegitimise, and undermine America’s image and reputation,” says professor Stephen M Walt of Harvard University.

“In just two weeks Trump has squandered a genuine opportunity to put American foreign policy on a more solid footing and has managed to unite and empower opposition at home and abroad in ways that would have been hard to imagine a few months ago.”

During his National Prayer Breakfast speech last Thursday, Trump told his audience how the world is in trouble and how he was going straighten it out. Right now the US president is as much part of the problem as he is the solution.