US Vice-President Mike Pence speaks at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Monday. Credit:AP Mattis then flew to Baghdad, to contradict the boss – again. Despite Trump's oft-stated desire to steal Iraq's vast oil reserves, even suggesting another invasion, the defence secretary promised that Washington was not going to commandeer the oil. And despite Trump's executive order ban on Iraqis entering the US, the thousands who had risked their lives by working for the US, Mattis said, would be allowed into the US. Meanwhile, Arab capitals didn't know what to make of the fate of the two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. On Wednesday, Trump said he was not committed to what had been a corner stone of US Middle East policy for decades; but at the UN headquarters in New York, his ambassador Nikki Haley insisted that Trump had been merely "thinking out of the box [and] " we absolutely support a two-state solution. Vice President Mike Pence was in Brussels, asking the Europeans to pretend they had not heard all Trump's anti-EU, nationalist stichk, because, "Today it's my privilege, on behalf of President Trump, to express the strong commitment of the United States to continued co-operation and partnership with the European Union".

US Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, second from right, is greeted by US Ambassador Douglas Silliman as he arrives at Baghdad International Airport, Iraq, on Monday. Credit:AP And high on Pence's to-do list on his return to Washington was a meeting with Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, to do more smoothing of Canberra's ruffled feathers after the madness of Trump's "worst" phone call with Malcolm Turnbull. And in a separate meeting with Bishop, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was to do a bit more smoothing. And the Swedes? So far no one in Washington has had time to wrap their head around damage control in the wake of Trump's unfounded claim at a rally in Florida on Saturday, that something terrible had happened in Sweden overnight Friday. Oh, and by the way, the country was a cot-case because its migrant communities were crime-ridden – which they are not. Jim Mattis speaks during the Munich Security Conference on Friday. Credit:AP There's a huge problem in all this double talk from Washington – who to believe?

Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, who was at a Munich security conference also attended by Mattis and Pence, spoke of the defence secretary as "the one island of stability". But Nasr went on: "The key is that nobody knows the extent of his influence. Right now, we're tight with trans-Atlantic unity, but who knows what to believe?" Mike Pence, left, and EU Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels. Credit:AP If Trump pre-emptively rattles the cages of the world, these contrary assurances from his saner underlings have an uncertain value; particularly because in making their pitches of comfort, none of them addresses a fundamental – why did Trump say what he said in the first place? Trump disparages the European Union and NATO; he's in love with Vladimir Putin and Russia; and he's all over the shop on the Middle East. But if his emissaries are to be believed, the US still sees itself as a deterrent to Russia and China; as Europe's staunch ally; and as an honest broker in the Middle East. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster says the US is exploring "a range of options" to respond to North Korea. Credit:AP

It's as though two administrations are working from two scripts – and that's scary. The best that can be said, is that a new normal is being worked out – or as a hopeful British defence minister, Michael Fallon, said at the weekend, "You know, new administrations, you know, can take time to settle down". US Vice-President Mike Pence, left, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Credit:AP Perhaps. But for now there is a dissonance that can't go on unresolved. The notion that this is a deliberate good-cop/bad-cop strategy offers little comfort, because Trump was running at the mouth on these issues before he had any good cops to perform the other side of a double-act that, for now, is reducing global diplomacy to a crapshoot. Not surprisingly, scepticism abounds despite, and because of utterances by the administration, congressional and think tank emissaries who travelled to Europe.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson meets with other foreign ministers to discuss Syria in Bonn on Friday. Credit:Getty Images "Let's put it this way, the discrepancy between the President's news conference [last Thursday] and the way his cabinet is trying to reassure Europeans couldn't be wider," Michael Werz, a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress, told The New York Times. Volker Perthes, the head of the German SWP policy research group, was as disbelieving. "Mattis speaks of 'defending the rules-based international order'. I hope he can explain this to his boss." US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis shakes hands with Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani in Munich on Friday. Credit:AP Donald Tusk, president of the European Council and a former prime minister of Poland, for one, was playing the glad game.

After meeting Pence on Monday, he explained his sense of reassurance in a statement, in which he said he had asked the vice president if Washington was committed to maintaining an international order based on rules and laws; if Trump was committed to NATO and to "the closest possible trans-Atlantic cooperation"; and if Europe could count "as always in the past, on the United States' wholehearted and unequivocal, let me repeat, unequivocal support for the idea of a united Europe". "In reply to these three matters," Tusk said, "I heard today from Vice President Pence three times 'yes'. After such a positive declaration, both Europeans and Americans must simply practice what they preach." Not all are convinced. "Of course European Union officials are happy to have Pence here, and they are happy about what he said, but that's not going to cancel out the deep and lingering doubt in many other European capitals about what the White House and President Trump actually want," Guntram Wolff, director of Bruegel, a Brussels think tank told the Times. "What Europe still has to do is to be prepared for the worst, and to try to work with partners around the world to support and defend multilateralism, and to do so without being antagonistic."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, casts Trump's erratic arrival on the world stage in alarmist terms. "The global order is in disarray. The world is sliding into significant disorder with no international structure capable of handling the kinds of problems that are likely to erupt almost simultaneously," he wrote in a weekend op-ed. Urging a clearly stated "Trump Doctrine", he argued that to date, the President had failed to formulate any significant, relevant statements about the global condition. Instead, the world had been left to interpret statements from Trump's team that, at times, were irresponsible, uncoordinated and ignorant. "A vulnerable world needs an America characterised by clarity of thought and leadership that projects optimism and progress. 'Make America Great Again' and 'America First' are all very well as bumper stickers, but the foreign policy of the United States needs to be more than a campaign slogan." Confirming his role as Trump's chief Republican critic, Senator John McCain shredded Trump's world view in a speech to the Munich conference – thereby accentuating the split personality of the new administration. "I know there is profound concern across Europe and the world that America is laying down the mantle of global leadership," he said.

"I can only speak for myself, but I do not believe that that is the message you will hear from all of the American leaders who cared enough to travel here to Munich this weekend. That's not the message you heard today from Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis. That is not the message you will hear from Vice President Mike Pence. That's not the message you will hear from Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly." Without mentioning Trump by name, McCain said: "[The founders of the Munich conference] would be alarmed by an increasing turn away from universal values and toward old ties of blood and race and sectarianism. "They would be alarmed by the hardening resentment we see towards immigrants and refugees and minority groups – especially Muslims. They would be alarmed by the growing inability – and even unwillingness – to separate truth from lies. "They would be alarmed that more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticising it as our moral equivalent." Therein lies the challenge. Much like the relationship between monkey and organ grinder, can Tillerman, Mattis et al be believed as they offer their version of truth amid the lies and crazy outpourings of the organ grinder in chief?