Now we have him turning his back not only on Ukraine, but on all his NATO allies, and since America dominates NATO, it makes European nations look utterly defenceless. This is complete madness. The leader of the free world, as the American president is often called, doesn’t seem to believe in the free world. It's not even clear he believes in his own country and its interests. It’s not clear what he does believe in. Maybe his survival of an assassination attempt has convinced him he’s God’s chosen one and he can now do anything he likes. This isn’t even how he behaved last time. Then he often said foolish things. Then he played fast and loose with the truth, but his rule seemed reasonably predictable and level-headed. Now, we might see more stability in some of the more eccentric Caesars!

There are two questions here: how long will the American Congress put up with this increasingly odd behaviour, and how quickly can Europeans build some sort of alliance to restore defence credibility?

For the former, although Trump has ensured the Republican Party is packed with his own supporters, one trusts most of them will be concerned by his increasingly erratic behaviour. However extreme ones views, there is a clear point where one begins to question the sanity of a leader’s actions. Even staunch supporters must reach a point when they begin to question what they are supporting. Trump’s views have not shifted slowly over time. They seem to have changed far more quickly than most of his supporters would expect, and that must leave them shocked and reeling too. Will they continue to support him along party lines, or will they come together as houses and take action to steady the ship? Perhaps things have to remain really odd for a bit longer before drastic measures are called for, but there is a distinct possibility they will at some point realise something must be done. I do not know what processes the American constitution provides, but it was drawn up very carefully and there will be mechanisms for deciding when checks and balances swing to a point where a clear re-balancing is needed.

For the latter point, it is unfortunate European leaders apparently did not see the danger of putting all their eggs in the American basket. International policies are always subject to change, perhaps not as suddenly as this, but the idea that because America was our ally it would always be so was a little naïve. We should have realised no single ally can be relied upon in such a critical issue as national security. Why did we do it? In the past it was probably the other way round. The Soviet Union had its sphere of influence in the Warsaw Pact, and the United States had its sphere in NATO. It probably suited America to be a bigger contributor than everyone else because that guaranteed the subservience of the other nations. As recently as 2003 the reason Tony Blair could not admit the folly of the second Iraqi war when many of his countrymen could was possibly that he did not feel free to resist America’s intentions when our own defence depended on their reciprocation. Maybe the “free world” was always just the American Empire. Now the Imperial Power seems to be declaring independence, leaving us struggling to fix our broken defences before we are attacked.

Is this where we are now — where we were in 1938? Then we had to build our forces up in just a year while the media were subdued with the call of “Peace in our time” even as Chamberlain prepared for the war he privately knew was inevitable. Had he really believed he had achieved peace the Spitfires would not have been built. They were. Now, we have to build their like, but weapons are far more advanced now than they were then, and the expense is astronomically higher. Maybe we need Ukraine to show us how to make effective weapons cheaply, as they have been forced to do.

One thing looks grimly certain; just because Tony Blair went to the aid of America 22 years ago does not mean Trump would honour Article 5 if a European country evoked it today. NATO looks broken and we must find something else quickly.

But that is today. Who knows what we will see tomorrow?