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Donald Trump's latest moves on the international stage are all about muscle-flexing.

He is a man who views the world almost exclusively through the twin prisms of projecting strength and leveraging weakness.

Books about his time as a New York real estate tycoon remark on his instinctive ability to take advantage of opponents using these dynamics to gain the upper-hand in negotiations.

Stories from inside the White House refer to the same tactics.

One recurring story is that he prefers the people around him to operate in a perpetual state of confusion and rivalry.

He believes that in such circumstances the strongest emerges victorious, but the other benefit is that as everyone around him scrambles to work out what is going on.

Mr Trump becomes the centre of gravity, the person to who everyone turns for favour, reward, direction and orders.

He is far from the first president, or powerful person, to understand this crude version of influence.

The difference is that this leader of the free world is willing to use it to take astonishing risks in order to get what he wants.

This includes escalating the risk of armed conflict with Iran by threatening to "end" it via Twitter.

It also includes isolating and damaging Huawei at a time when he is attempting to come to an agreement on tariffs and trade with China, a global power.

The "chaos merchant" approach may be because Mr Trump is more disinhibited than we realise.

It might be a function of his inexperience.

Or it may be what happens because from his point of view its got him this far and there is little point trying to fix what isn't broken.

Whatever drives this behaviour, the outcomes are the same; a world sprinting to keep up with an unpredictable president who is playing by his own rules.

This is not just a by-product of the way Mr Trump operates, but the entire point.