It’s a safe bet that no leader outside the United States is following its current election more closely than Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy – and with good reason. If Kamala Harris wins the US presidential election in November, she will almost certainly continue Joe Biden’s policy toward Ukraine, but if Donald Trump returns to the White House on 20 January, he could cease military support for Ukraine, meaning it would eventually run out of the weaponry it needs to resist Russia.

Or Trump could continue arming Ukraine for a while, but as a segue to a settlement – ideally one presided over by him. During his speech accepting the Republican party’s presidential nomination, Trump vowed to end the war in Ukraine. In a phone call with Zelenskiy the next day, he pledged to achieve a “just peace”, but Kyiv has good reason to fear that he would, at a minimum, allow Russia to retain the Ukrainian territory it holds and also shut Nato’s door on Ukraine.

As Trump sees it, arming Ukraine does not serve any important US national interests and pumps billions of dollars into a war it cannot win, wasting money that should be spent on pressing needs at home and parrying genuine threats abroad. In his eyes, Russia is not among the latter, and China, which he regards as the principal foe, ought to be the focus.

The people often mentioned as candidates for top foreign policy posts in a second Trump........

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