Donald Trump, still no more than a candidate for the US presidency, may soon hand his friend, Vladimir Putin, victory over Ukraine. This would be incredible if one were not used to such outrages. Did anybody imagine, before Trump’s emergence, that a man who tried to overthrow the result of a presidential election would be the Republican candidate in the next one?

Last August, the Biden administration asked Congress to provide funds for Ukraine, disaster relief and strengthening control of the southern border. This was designed to achieve bipartisan support. Trump opposed it, because he wanted to ensure Joe Biden’s failure. Obedient to their master, Senate Republicans failed to pass the bill. But the Senate did in the end pass one that would give assistance to Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel and the civilians of Gaza. That then got stuck in the House of Representatives. This is because Trump’s poodle, Speaker Mike Johnson, refuses to put it to a vote, knowing that it would pass and fearing, it seems, that Trump would punish him by trying to prevent his re-election to the House in November. Like most strongmen, Trump prizes loyalty above everything.

As Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic noted in a recent column, “For outsiders, this reality is mind-boggling, difficult to comprehend and impossible to understand.” So it is. But it is vital to do so, because it tells us something profound about events in the country that has been the leader of the west since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.