The aspirations for Donald Trump’s first trip abroad as president are as grandiose as anything he has done in the White House – with the same perilous gap between rhetorical flourish and the likely real outcomes.

Later this month, the president will visit the homes of the world’s three biggest monotheistic religions – Saudi Arabia, Israel and Rome – on a tour billed as a new beginning in the struggle against extremism, before attending a Nato session in Brussels and a G7 summit in Sicily.

Trump’s predecessors over the past four decades have begun their foreign travels locally, shoring up relations with the immediate neighbours, either Mexico and Canada.

Just over a hundred days into his presidency, Trump has already burned those bridges, or at least set fire to them, picking immigration and trade fights as a means of placating his core voters. A visit across the northern or southern borders would mean confronting mass protests, drawing attention to his unpopularity in much of the world.

In contrast, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican City all provide some insulation from unrest. But they also offer the impression of doing something huge, in line with Trump’s image as a mold-breaker and deal-maker. There could be no bigger deal than to somehow bring together the world’s three great monotheistic religions – and, while he is in the region, slicing through the knots of the 70 years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the same time, which he said on Wednesday “may be not as difficult as people have thought over the years”.

The optimistic spirit infused the administration officials giving briefings on the travel plans. They described the first stop along the way, Saudi Arabia, where there will be a gathering of Islamic leaders, as a breakthrough event.

“The purpose of meeting is really to bring together all the different countries and all the different religions in the fight against intolerance and to defeat radicalism,” a senior official said. In particular, the aim will be to forge a common front against the Islamic State and al-Qaida, as well as the spread of Iranian influence.

“We want to unify the Arab world around these objectives,” the senior administration official said.

From Saudi Arabia, Trump will go to Israel, where the reported site for his main event will be the Masada, an ancient fortification where Jewish rebels held off a Roman siege for a year in the first century AD before a mass suicide.

If true, it is a problematic choice of venue, as its symbolism is controversial inside Israel. For some it represents steadfastness, but others argue the rebels were the religious extremists of their day.

The Israel visit is expected to be combined with a stop in the occupied territories hosted by the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, possibly in Bethlehem.

There is a large element of showmanship behind the advertised goal of the presidential trip. There are no new initiatives in the pipeline and no sign that the problems of the region have suddenly become more amenable to resolution. The Israelis and Palestinians have seldom been further apart on the fundamental issues dividing them: the spread of settlements, the future of Jerusalem and the ultimate outcome of two sovereign states.

In the Gulf, the monarchies are still backing extremists abroad while trying to fend them off at home. In Syria, the professed twin aims of the Trump tour – fighting Isis and containing Iran – are frequently in conflict. Focusing on one tends to strengthen the other. It is a dilemma the Obama administration spent more than four years agonising over, giving tentative backing for more moderate opposition caught in the middle.

The Trump White House has shown no inclination to go further down that same path, but has no new direction to offer. Deeper cooperation with Russia in an anti-Isis campaign collided early on with the reality that Russia is not fighting Isis and that the brutality of the Assad regime makes it an impossible ally.

In the absence of a new strategy, White House aides have focused on the unconventional personality of the new president, as disruptor-in-chief, implying that if the wheel is going to be reinvented, it will at least be a Trump wheel.

By this point in his presidency, Obama had visited nine countries. Trump has yet to leave the US once. But a senior official argued would trip would “reverse what has been a trend of American disengagement from the world and some of its biggest problems”.

While the immediate White House aims appear largely presentational, Trump’s hosts stand to gain strategically by his visits.

“Under the Obama administration, Israel and Saudi Arabia had a tense relationship with Washington, and both now see a chance to improve it,” Daniel Byman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said. He pointed out that both countries were disturbed by Obama’s embrace of the Arab spring and are reassured by the relegation of human rights as a priority in the Trump administration’s foreign policy. “They share a view that they would like have a United States in its historical role of working together with traditional allies in the region.”

For his part, President Trump can at least hope to undo some of the damage to his international reputation done during the campaign and his first weeks in office. Making his first foreign trip to the home of Islam’s holiest shrines is a counterweight to the signature policy of his presidency so far: his efforts to impose an entry ban on refugees and travelers from six Muslim countries. And in Rome, he can try to make his peace with Pope Francis, who Trump described as “disgraceful” for having criticised his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border.

However, a bid to make an early splash in a region that has been a graveyard for the ambitions of other would-be statesmen will always be fraught with the risk of making things worse.