President Donald Trump's public admonition of diplomatic efforts with North Korea regarding its weapons program has left many experts and officials baffled about the White House plan for resolving tensions with Pyongyang.

Trump tweeted Sunday that he had told Secretary of State Rex Tillerson he is "wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man" – the president's nickname for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. That tweet, which referred to Tillerson as "our wonderful secretary of state," was followed by another in which he said: "save your energy Rex, we'll do what has to be done!"

The message appeared to undermine Tillerson, who reportedly has a rocky relationship with Trump, and it has sowed further confusion in China, South Korea, Japan and North Korea, according to experts, and raised questions about whether the U.S. remains a reliable partner to help bring about peace.

"If you think that experts in Washington are confused and uncertain about U.S. policy toward North Korea, imagine trying to read the tea leaves from afar, be it Seoul, Tokyo or Pyongyang," says Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation who previously served as the CIA's deputy division chief for Korea.

Klingner says his colleagues in South Korea and Japan remain puzzled about Trump's intentions for North Korea and particularly fear what might happen next as a result of the administration's actions, either purposely or inadvertently. Their concern "is higher than I've seen it before," he says.

Former President Richard Nixon once famously employed a strategy of having himself portrayed to hostile leaders as irrational and unpredictable, but it's not immediately clear what the motivation is for Trump's actions.

"Whether this is a good-cop, bad-cop strategy or, as some articles allude, Trump wants to have the Nixon 'Madman Theory' in order to increase leverage, or it's just erratic policy where you just have differences between the president and his senior advisers, all of that is unclear," Klingner says.

The effects of the strategy could be immediate, regardless of whether it was a misstep or a ploy to increase leverage over North Korea, with some experts wondering whether, against the backdrop of the bellicose statements, routine military exercises could escalate out of control.

The U.S. conducts regional exercises annually with allies, mainly South Korea and Japan, which routinely stir up fierce rhetoric from Pyongyang and prompt its mobilizing its own military in response. The exercises have been the centerpiece of a Chinese and Russian "freeze for freeze" proposal calling on the U.S. to discontinue them in exchange for North Korea's ceasing its nuclear missile tests. Both sides have rejected the idea.

Abraham Denmark, a former top Pentagon official for Asian issues, tweeted Sunday that the president's posts could be "interpreted as dismissive of diplomacy, and as indicative that he prefers conflict."

Trump's rhetoric could "change the context of U.S. military demonstrations," Denmark added, "and raises the potential for miscalculation."

Further complicating the situation is the seeming disagreement among top White House officials on how to proceed. National security adviser H.R. McMaster said last week that North Korea must accept international inspections before any talks can take place. Tillerson then told reporters traveling with him to China over the weekend that he was already engaged in dialogues directly with North Korea through as many as three channels. It's unclear whether he was referring to established talks known as Track 1.5 or to secretive back-channel communications. His staff later downplayed the significance of his remarks.

As for whether the administration should pursue diplomacy with a regime that appears to believe nuclear weapons are its only guarantor of safety, some with experience dealing with North Korea say it's always worth a try and is better than the alternative.