It is established that, on international affairs, the Donald Trump crew is stumbling around in the dark.

The immediate question is how much furniture gets overturned and crockery smashed before they find the light switch.

President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have bumbled into a stalemate with Russia over Syria.

Tillerson, who has some experience in dealing with Moscow in his former role as head of ExxonMobile, should have made it clear to Trump that attempting to bully Russian leader Vladimir Putin is always counterproductive.

In the face of Trump’s demands that Moscow abandon its support for Syrian President Bashar Assad because of his use of chemical weapons, Putin was bound to push back. His hold on power hinges on delivering three falls or a knock-out to anyone who challenges his authority. The floor is littered with people who misjudged Putin — most of them far mightier oligarchs than Trump.

So it was no surprise when Tillerson was met in Moscow on Wednesday not by a cold shoulder, but by hostility and abuse. Putin was relatively mild, saying only that the relationship with Washington had “deteriorated.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was more pointed. He greeted Tillerson with the observation that he looked forward to their talks because Trump’s foreign policy in general, and towards Syria in particular, is a mystery: “Extremely ambiguous and sometimes contradictory.”

A senior Russian official put it more colourfully, saying “primitiveness and loutishness are very characteristic of the current rhetoric coming out of Washington. We’ll hope this doesn’t become the substance of American policy.”

The outcome of Tillerson’s pre-Moscow meeting with fellow foreign ministers of the G7 group of industrialized countries — a lack of anything like a consensus on how to deal with Russia — suggests that some (perhaps all) of Washington’s closest allies agree with this assessment.

Just how much Trump is motivated by “primitiveness and loutishness” may become evident in the next few days.

The next crisis on Trump’s fumbling path is North Korea and its determination to build a nuclear weapon that can hit the U.S. This is potentially a far more dangerous collision than Syria for the United States and its Asian allies.

A U.S. naval battle group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, is steaming to within striking distance of North Korea, just as the Pyongyang regime prepares to celebrate two major anniversaries. It is highly likely that in this climate, those celebrations will include affirmations of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs — aimed in part at seeing what happens when Trump is provoked.

A military parade is expected in Pyongyang on Saturday to mark the 105th anniversary of the birth of the regime’s founder, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. Called ‘The Day of the Sun,’ it is the most important public holiday on the North Korean calendar. Kim is the grandfather of current North Korea leader Kim Jong-un and in 1998 was declared “Eternal President of the Republic.” (One of North Korea’s few charming idiosyncrasies is that it has a post-mortem president.)

Beijing has always blanched at the thought of U.S. troops patrolling the other side of the Yalu River. That anxiety could turn to revulsion with someone in the White House as unpredictable and self-obsessed as Trump. Beijing has always blanched at the thought of U.S. troops patrolling the other side of the Yalu River. That anxiety could turn to revulsion with someone in the White House as unpredictable and self-obsessed as Trump.

Trump has raised the stakes already following his inconclusive meeting Chinese President Xi Jinping last week. In tweets this week Trump repeated his assertion that “North Korea is looking for trouble” and that Beijing has the ability and responsibility to force Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program. “If China decides to help, that would be great,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday. “If not, we will solve the problem without them!”

This, if nothing else, establishes President Trump as the first world leader able to succinctly define his own ignorance in 140 characters or less.

Kim Jong-un has already said that Trump’s decision to rain cruise missiles on a Syrian airfield last week proves that North Korea urgently needs the deterrent of its own nuclear missiles. Trump brandishing the USS Carl Vinson and its protective shield of two guided-missile destroyers, a guided-missile cruiser and submarines is only going to reinforce Kim’s view.

The big danger is that Trump might actually try to use the Strike Group.

It is to be hoped that Trump’s military advisors — people he clearly trusts far more than his diplomats — will make it brutally clear to him that the chances of eradicating North Korea’s nuclear program with a surgical missiles strike from the Carl Vinson group are nil.

Worse than that, any attempt at limited military action against North Korea will almost certainly prompt Kim’s regime to launch an all-out war. Pyongyang has been warning its citizens of an imminent attack by the U.S. for over 60 years. If the real thing happened, the response would be almost automatic.

Forget North Korea’s still rather crude and impractical nuclear weapons. Its conventional forces — one million regular troops, 600,000 reserves and six million paramilitary forces, plus a massive inventory of conventional weapons — are enough, as it has often said, to turn South Korea’s capital Seoul (a mere 60 kilometres from the border) into a “sea of fire” within minutes.

Japan is also within range of Pyongyang’s missiles, as are U.S. military bases in both Japan and South Korea.

Washington’s allies in Seoul and Tokyo are already very worried about what Trump’s ignorance, unpredictability and almost complete lack of strategic forethought may mean for them. The Japanese navy will accompany the Carl Vinson strike force through Japanese waters, but this is more of a traditional courtesy to an ally rather than a military coalition.

The unease is, of course, particularly intense in Seoul, which could be fried to a crisp if Trump goes off half-cocked. It doesn’t help that South Korea is in the middle of a political crisis. President Park Geun-hye is being impeached and elections are due on May 9.

Most polls show opposition Liberal leader Moon Jae-in is likely to win. Both he and the other leading candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, believe in pursuing diplomacy with the North rather than war.

Both advocate what is known as the “sunshine policy” of easing tensions by fostering links with Pyongyang through people-to-people exchanges and investment, which the North desperately needs. The long-term aim is a carefully managed reunification of the two Koreas, which were divided at the end of the Second World War.

It is that question of unification of the Korean Peninsula that troubles Beijing. China doesn’t like Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program any more than anyone else, and is North Korea’s only significant ally and economic partner. Beijing is already applying some United Nations trade sanctions, imposed because of Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development programs.

Chinese state media reported on Wednesday that, after a phone conversation between Trump and Xi, Beijing warned Pyongyang that it will cut off oil supplies to North Korea if Kim tests a nuclear weapon as part of ‘The Day of the Sun’ celebrations.

Beijing could shut down the North Korean economy almost entirely and compel Pyongyang to abandon its weapons programs. What stops Beijing from doing so is the fear that the Kim regime would collapse, and that there would be a chaotic reunification of the two Koreas — with Seoul and its U.S. allies coming out on top.

Beijing has always blanched at the thought of U.S. troops patrolling the other side of its Yalu River border with North Korea. That anxiety could turn to revulsion with someone in the White House as unpredictable and self-obsessed as Trump.

In the end, it’s only Beijing that can edge Kim into giving up his nuclear weapons and missiles. For that to happen, Kim needs to have confidence that Trump won’t try to oust him, and that Beijing will have his back if Trump goes postal.

That’s a difficult case for Beijing to argue convincingly with Trump in the Oval Office. So it is to be hoped, for everyone’s sake, that Trump finds the light switch soon.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.