Nine months is a long time to hold your breath. The identity of the next US president won’t be known until 6 November, but already the prospect of it being Donald Trump has America’s allies clenched in strategic suspense.
In European democracies, the fear is existential. For 75 years, their security has been guaranteed by the North Atlantic treaty, which Trump scorns as a bad deal for the US. At a rally over the weekend, the former president boasted of having encouraged Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to countries that weren’t, in his view, paying their Nato bills.
