Why Donald Trump's election as US President would be real risk to European security

As Foreign Secretary David Lammy visited Kyiv, he stressed the UK’s commitment to “giving Ukraine what it needs to resist Russia's illegal invasion”. "Their fight for freedom, liberty and democracy is also a fight for British security, European security, and global security. With the US, we stand firmly with Ukraine, for as long as it takes.”

Accompanying him on the trip was his US counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said he wanted to hear directly from Ukraine’s government about “what we can do” to help.

However, in less than eight weeks’ time, the US could elect a president with a very different attitude to the “fight for freedom, liberty and democracy”. In the US presidential election debate with Kamala Harris, Donald Trump made clear his priority was not helping Ukraine to win – by repelling Russia’s invasion – but to end the war.

Trump has claimed he would do this, if elected on November 5, even before taking over from Joe Biden as president. This suggests he will try to force Ukraine to sign away vast swathes of their territory by threatening to withdraw US support.

Threatened ‘existence of Nato’

Ukraine’s hopes of joining Nato in order to ensure its security would also likely be dashed; if Putin is to be appeased, he would doubtless insist that this be ruled out. However, a Trump presidency also comes with the terrifying threat that he would remove the US from the alliance that has helped keep the peace in Europe for decades.

John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser, said last year that Trump had “threatened the existence of Nato” while in office, adding: “I think in a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from Nato.”

Such a move would leave the UK and France as the only nuclear-armed countries in Nato to stand up to Putin’s inevitable threats to use Russia’s vastly larger nuclear arsenal. If he triumphs in Ukraine, the Baltic states, Nato members, fear they will be next. Will we go to war with Russia to save them? If Trump wins in November, this is a question we may have to answer.