Viewed from Europe, the US’s failure to defend the people of Ukraine against Russian aggression is the greatest and most consequential of a host of recent American betrayals. It’s not just the sickening subservience shown to Vladimir Putin, an indicted war criminal and mass killer. It’s not only the victim-blaming and bullying of Kyiv into making concessions. It’s not even Donald Trump’s crass attempts to monetise the war and milk the misery of millions for Nobel glory, while undercutting Nato allies and trampling sovereign rights.

What really shocks, and hurts, is the sheer bad faith shown by a country that Europeans always counted a friend. As the 18th-century English gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe noted, “few circumstances are more afflicting than a discovery of perfidy in those whom we have trusted”. To echo Trump’s dark warning after he was rebuffed over Greenland: Europe will remember.

As the full-scale war Putin launched in 2022 stumbles into its fifth bloody year this Tuesday, Europe, like Russia, is in deep trouble. Yet so too is the US, though Trump and his mouthy muppets, Marco Rubio and JD Vance, don’t realise it yet. Most Europeans now regard their foremost partner as unreliable, even a foe. US global influence and leadership is fading fast, to gleeful China’s huge advantage. Everywhere, autocrats rejoice, as do Europe’s advancing far-right parties.

“The question of how this war is going to end is actually an existential question for Europe,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of this month’s Munich Security Conference. “It will determine – in more ways........

© The Guardian