Europe’s panicked response to the shift in Washington’s priorities raises a number of intriguing questions, not least why its leadership was so ill-prepared for the second coming of Donald Trump.

One of the most circulated images from his first term showed a peeved but defiant US president, arms crossed, seemingly being berated by European leaders led by Angela Merkel at a G7 summit in Canada. The body language was not dissimilar to that of Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his discomfiture in the Oval Office at the end of February.

Ukraine is by no means the only bone of contention between the Trump administration and Europe, but it is currently the biggest one. It’s easy to forget that the Biden administration leapt to Ukraine’s defence three years ago with considerably greater alacrity than much of Europe, with Germany restricting its initial offer of assistance to a shipment of helmets. The biggest exception was Britain under Boris Johnson, who became something of a mascot for the Ukrainian resistance – and has been accused of helping to thwart an early Kyiv-Moscow peace initiative.

Keir Starmer has lately stepped into Johnson’s boots, warmly receiving Zelenskyy in London after his hostile reception in Washington, promising to marginally increase Britain’s defence budget by reducing the UK’s already meagre foreign aid, and offering troops for an eventual peacekeeping mission in Ukraine as part of a “coalition of the willing” — a toxic term, given it was first deployed in the context of the disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003 — provided the US offers a “backstop”.

Other European nations offering unstinting support to Ukraine’s military effort place almost equal reliance on American backing. Hardly any leader has dared to directly challenge Trump or any of his consiglieri, despite the strongly Atlanticist incoming German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, acknowledging the need for European independence from the US, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, claiming that the “free world” needs a new leader.

The frequent repetition of illusory notions such as the “free world” and the “rules-based order” reflect a........

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