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    Joe Biden’s last-gasp missile decision is momentous for Ukraine – but Putin will retaliate | Simon Tisdall

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    US president Joe Biden’s last-gasp decision to permit Ukraine to fire western-made, long-range missiles at military targets deep inside Russian territory runs the risk of triggering a sharp increase in retaliatory sabotage, such as cyber and arson attacks on Britain and its European Nato partners.Vladimir Putin, who ordered the full-scale, illegal invasion of Ukraine 1,000 days ago tomorrow, has long warned that Kyiv’s expanded use of US-, British- and French-made missiles would be viewed by Moscow as an act of war by Nato, and could trigger catastrophic consequences. Now Putin’s bluff, if it is a bluff, is being called.Much the same may be said of Keir Starmer and the EU. A joint statement by G7 leaders, coinciding with the 1,000-day landmark, pledged “unwavering support for Ukraine for as long as it takes”. Starmer reiterated that commitment en route to this week’s G20 summit in Brazil. Exactly what it means in practice may soon be harshly tested.Biden’s decision is welcome, if overdue. Amid grinding Russian ground advances, EU feuding and Donald Trump’s unpropitious re-election, the war has reached a critical juncture, militarily and diplomatically. The outcome is in the balance as the scales momentarily tip towards more death and destruction, then back towards some form of Trump-imposed land-for-peace sell-out.Russia has the advantage at present. But Kyiv will not and must not give up.Biden was slow to give the missile go-ahead, despite months of pressure from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has argued, with good reason, that Ukraine is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. Russian airfields, military bases and command centres that are used to mount almost daily, lethal missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s cities and energy infrastructure are out of range.Biden’s tardiness was the product of an excessive caution that has seen the US drag its feet on supplying new weapons from the start. If Ukraine had been armed in 2022 with all the tanks, air-defence systems, missiles and fighter aircraft it has subsequently, belatedly been given, it might not be struggling as it is now.But his hesitation was reportedly reinforced by a recent classified US intelligence assessment. It warned that Putin could respond to the use of the US long-range army tactical missile system (Atacms), and the similarly capable Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles, AKA Scalp-EG, on Russian soil, with attacks on the US and its allies.Direct, overt Russian armed retaliation against European military bases or territory seems unlikely, although tensions with Poland and other “frontline” Nato countries are running high. Dark threats by Putin cronies such as former president Dmitry Medvedev about using nuclear weapons are dismissed as rhetorical fearmongering.Instead, the intelligence finding suggested, Russia may step up covert, deniable sabotage: cyber, infowar and arson attacks of the type it has undertaken in recent years. This would allow the Kremlin to impose a cost, especially on wavering Nato members such as Olaf Scholz’s Germany, while avoiding all-out east-west war.The GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, and other state organs are said to have been tasked by Putin with preparing asymmetrical responses for exactly the circumstances that are now unfolding. The overall aim: to alarm and disrupt western societies and publics.The GRU is notorious in Britain for carrying out the non-Ukraine-related Salisbury poisonings in 2018. In March this year, it was linked to arson at a warehouse in east London supposedly used to supply Ukraine. Attacks on a factory in Poland and non-military targets in Latvia and Lithuania are also attributed to the GRU. In May, Donald Tusk, Poland’s prime minister, said 12 people had been arrested for beatings, arson and “acts of sabotage on commission from Russian intelligence services”.These may have been mere practice runs. Kaja Kallas, former prime minister of Estonia and newly nominated EU foreign policy chief, says Moscow is waging a “shadow war” on Europe. Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, warns that Russia may target energy producers and arms factories. Europe needed a coordinated approach, Kallas said. “How far do we let them go on our soil?”Nor is the threat confined to land. Last week, in the latest in a series of incidents, a Russian spy ship – officially classed as an “oceanographic research vessel” – was militarily escorted out of the Irish Sea. Its unexplained presence there and around UK coasts has renewed concerns about the security of critical undersea infrastructure, including pipelines and internet cables linking the UK, Ireland, Europe and the US.Described as the latest attempt to probe western defences and vulnerabilities, the incident followed an investigation in Nordic countries last year into suspected Russian state-led espionage ops. Spy ships disguised as fishing vessels were being used to plan future attacks on windfarms and communications cables in the North Sea, it said.However Russia responds – and the initial Kremlin reaction on Monday was wait-and-see – Biden’s decision challenges Ukraine and the European Nato allies, too. Having pressed so hard for so long, Zelenskyy must prove that the missiles make a difference. US officials are sceptical they can change the course of the war. EU officials in Brussels hope they will.What Biden appears to hope is that long-range strikes on North Korean troops newly deployed in Russia’s contested Kursk region will deter Pyongyang from further involvement. That seems improbable, too. Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s ostracised dictator, is Putin’s new best bro. He’s not noted for a caring attitude to human life.With Trump’s advisers threatening a de facto betrayal of Ukraine, Europe’s leaders, including Starmer, must put their money, lots of it, and their weapons where their mouths are – and help Zelenskyy maintain the fight, even without US hardware and financial backing, if need be.The problem is that unity of purpose, and resources, are lacking. Scholz broke with most of the EU last week when he phoned Putin for a chat. The chancellor (who continues to refuse to supply Germany’s Taurus long-range missiles to Kyiv) said he was pursuing peace. But it looked like weakness with snap elections brewing, and it angered other leaders. “No one will stop Putin with phone calls,” Tusk snarled. “Telephone diplomacy cannot replace real support from the whole west for Ukraine.”The “whole west” means France, too. But President Emmanuel Macron, having spoken frequently and passionately about the vital importance for Europe of defeating Russia, now appears to be temporising about actually letting Kyiv fire French missiles. Will Starmer give a green light, or will he also get cold feet?With Ukraine burning, Europe divided, and Biden two months away from oblivion, it’s little wonder that Putin, with a host of dirty tricks up his sleeve, thinks he’s winning the Ukraine missile crisis.

    Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More

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      Think you know how bad Trump unleashed will be? Look at the evidence: it will be even worse | Jonathan Freedland

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      Are you ready for Trump unbound? You may have thought the former and future president was already pretty unrestrained, not least because Donald Trump has never shown anything but brazen disrespect for boundaries or limits of any kind. And you would be right. But, as an earlier entertainer turned president – and Trump combines the two roles – liked to say: You ain’t seen nothing yet.That’s because the 47th president will enter the Oval Office free of almost all constraints. He will be able to do all that he promised and all that he threatened, with almost nothing and no one to stand in his way.To understand why, it pays to start with the nature of the win he secured on Tuesday. He did not eke out a narrow victory on points, as he did when he squeaked through the electoral college in 2016. This was a knockout that has Trump on course to bag every one of the battleground states and to be the winner of the popular vote, the first Republican to pull off that feat in 20 years. All of which enables him to claim what he lacked in 2016: an emphatic mandate.But even that is to understate the transformational nature of this election. Trump won big and everywhere: gaining ground in 48 of the 50 states, in counties rural, urban and suburban, across almost every demographic, including those groups such as Hispanic voters, who were once reliably Democratic. “The 2024 election marks the biggest shift to the right in our country since Ronald Reagan’s victory in 1980,” according to Doug Sosnik, a former political adviser in Bill Clinton’s White House.What drove that red wave was the same anti-incumbency mood that has toppled governments all over the democratic world, including in Britain. And it is not too hard to explain. Americans are still feeling the hangover of the inflation shock that followed the Covid pandemic. Any conversation with a Trump voter, and I had many this week, would rapidly turn to high petrol prices and unsustainable grocery bills.In that climate, the impulse is to kick out the party in charge. This week, that basic urge proved stronger than any misgivings about Trump. Throw in fear of migrants and the accusation that Democrats are the party of the liberal coastal elites, in thrall to the progressive fringes and out of touch with ordinary people – both sentiments expertly inflamed by Trump – and you have the ingredients for a crushing defeat.The result is that Trump will have control not only of the White House, but also the Senate and most likely the House as well. Admittedly, Republicans had majorities on Capitol Hill when Trump took office eight years ago too, but here’s the difference. Back then, there were at least a few moderate, Trump-sceptic Republicans in Congress ready to defy the president. Not now. Trump’s hold on what has become the Maga party is total. There are next to no John McCains to give Trump the thumbs-down this time, certainly not enough to cause him trouble. What he wants, he’ll get.Which means he can nominate whoever he likes to all the key posts, knowing his yes-men in the Senate will give him the confirming nod. Last time, he felt pressure to appoint responsible adults to his cabinet or to head federal agencies, officials who then went on to dilute or even thwart his wilder schemes. This time he can surround himself with true believers, including the apostles of the notorious Project 2025 plan that Trump disavowed during the campaign but which he is now free to implement – thereby ensuring a full-spectrum takeover by Maga loyalists of the machinery of the US government.It’s no good looking to the supreme court to act as a restraining hand. Thanks to Trump, that bench now has a six-to-three rightwing majority, and it has already issued the blank cheque he craved. In a July ruling, the court granted the president sweeping immunity for his official acts. The threat of legal jeopardy that once hovered over Trump will melt away. To his delight, the multiple criminal cases against him are set to be suspended, on the principle that a sitting president cannot be indicted.What, then, will be left to hold Trump in check? It won’t be fear of losing the next election: he’s constitutionally barred from running again (though you wouldn’t bet against him testing that limit too). The conventional media will do their best, but if the Trump era has shown us anything, it’s that the information ecosystem of the US is changed utterly. Fifty years ago, if three broadcast networks and a couple of east coast newspapers declared the president a crook, that president was finished, as Richard Nixon learned to his cost. Now, the mainstream press can reveal the most damning evidence about Trump and it goes nowhere. His supporters either never hear those revelations – because they get their news from Trump-friendly TV and social media channels – or, if they do, they flatly dismiss them as lies. We truly live in the age of “alternative facts”, and that gives Trump enormous freedom. He could do heinous things in office, or simply fail as president, and tens of millions of Americans would never know about it.The prospect of Trump unchecked is not merely an offence to abstract notions of democracy. It poses multiple dangers, all of them clear and present. To take just one, there is nothing to stop the old-new president making good on his promise to put the anti-vax fanatic and conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr in charge of public health. If that happens, there are already warnings that polio or measles could return to afflict America’s children.Or consider the climate. In Salem, Virginia, last weekend, I heard Trump hail the glories of “liquid gold”, meaning oil, leading the crowd in a chant of “Drill, baby, drill”. He promised to extract oil from the last pristine wilderness in North America, Alaska’s Arctic national wildlife refuge. Joe Biden had moved to preserve it; Trump will send in the rigs. That will accelerate yet further the climate breakdown, a crisis that was unmistakable that day in Salem, where the temperature reached a weird 26C in November.Trump is now free to abandon Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s wolves, free to make Nato a dead letter – which it will be the day Trump is sworn in on 20 January. We know that Trump has contempt for Nato’s core principle of mutual defence. Without that, the alliance falls apart. Yet there is no one to stop him.Ultimately that task will fall to the Democrats. Except they will soon wield no formal power in Washington. I asked one seasoned hand what practical tools the party had to restrain or even scrutinise Trump, given that they will soon lose their current ability to launch congressional investigations and convene official hearings. The answer: “They can hold press conferences.”For now, Democrats are turned inward, engaged in a round of recriminations as competing factions blame each other for Tuesday’s disaster. That process is inevitable, but the longer it goes on the more it helps Trump, by removing one more check on the power he will soon wield.We know how Trump wants to rule because he has said so, telling a Fox News interviewer he would be a dictator “on day one”. We know which leaders he admires because of the way he gushes over Putin, Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The assumption had always been that these fantasies of his would remain just that, because of the institutional checks and balances that fetter an American president. But when Trump renews his oath on 20 January, those restraints will look either badly frayed or entirely absent. He will be Trump unbound, free to do his worst.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist More

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      Biden to speak at Nato summit in high-stakes press conference – live updates

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      Hello and welcome to our coverage of the Nato summit in Washington DC, where all eyes will be on Joe Biden this evening as he steps up to the lectern and answers questions from journalists in a critical test after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump a fortnight ago.Biden is scheduled to begin speaking at 6:30pm EST to close out the three-day Nato summit in his first solo news conference in eight months, amid growing calls for him to step aside his Democratic party’s presumptive nominee.The US president’s performance tonight will be closely watched by his aides and advisers, who have reportedly been discussing how to persuade him to leave the presidential race, as well as the Trump campaign who reportedly want him to stay.We’ll stream Biden’s press conference here and bring you more news coming out of the Nato summit.Earlier today, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was asked about his meeting with Joe Biden at the White House.Biden was “on good form” and went through serious issues at pace during their first bilateral talks, Starmer answered.The British prime minister said his personal view, having spent almost an hour in private talks with Biden and attended a dinner for Nato leaders at the White House, was that the US president was mentally agile.Asked in a round of broadcast interviews whether criticism of Biden was misguided, the prime minister said:
      Yes … my own personal view is he was on good form. I was very keen obviously to discuss Ukraine, but there were many other issues that we got through.
      Downing Street said Starmer had not raised the issue of Biden’s health or his future plans in their meeting, but reporters asked him about media speculation that Biden could have early dementia symptoms. Starmer said:
      No, we had a really good bilateral yesterday. We were billed for 45 minutes, we went on for the best part of an hour. We went through a huge number of issues at pace, he was actually on really good form.
      Joe Biden did not hear any concerns from world leaders during the Nato summit regarding his health or re-election campaign challenges, the White House said.The White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said leaders instead offered “a drumbeat of praise for the United States, but also for President Biden personally for what he’s done to strengthen Nato”, Associated Press reported.Biden was praised not just for his time as president but for his decades in politics, Sullivan said.Sullivan, who helped prepare Biden ahead of the disastrous debate performance, said he did not “have concerns” about the president’s health, adding:
      He said he had a bad night.
      Hello and welcome to our coverage of the Nato summit in Washington DC, where all eyes will be on Joe Biden this evening as he steps up to the lectern and answers questions from journalists in a critical test after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump a fortnight ago.Biden is scheduled to begin speaking at 6:30pm EST to close out the three-day Nato summit in his first solo news conference in eight months, amid growing calls for him to step aside his Democratic party’s presumptive nominee.The US president’s performance tonight will be closely watched by his aides and advisers, who have reportedly been discussing how to persuade him to leave the presidential race, as well as the Trump campaign who reportedly want him to stay.We’ll stream Biden’s press conference here and bring you more news coming out of the Nato summit. More

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      Biden’s position tenuous amid reports campaign secretly testing Harris’s popularity

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      Joe Biden’s position appeared shaky on Thursday, amid reports that his aides and advisers were discussing how to persuade him to leave the presidential race while his own campaign was secretly testing Kamala Harris’s popularity, suggesting it was preparing for that very scenario.With the US president scheduled to face journalists at a potentially pivotal news conference marking the end of Nato’s 75th anniversary summit, two separate New York Times reports suggested his efforts to keep his candidacy afloat were close to foundering.The Times reported on its website that his campaign’s analytics team was quietly testing the strength of Harris, the vice-president, among voters in a match-up against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.Biden has consistently argued that he has the best chance of beating Trump, citing polling evidence.A separate report suggested that unnamed longtime aides and advisers to the president had become convinced in recent days that his campaign to beat Trump in the election was doomed and were trying to find ways of persuading him of their argument.The story was met by denial by the White House and the Biden campaign, which respectively called it “unequivocally not true” and “patently false”.But the picture of diminishing support for the president even within his own camp was further strengthened by an NBC report suggesting that three people involved in his re-election campaign had written off his chances.“He needs to drop out,” the network’s website quoted one Biden campaign official as saying. “He will never recover from this.”The glut of damaging stories followed a number of Democratic party members calling on him to step down and as senators from the party prepared to meet key members of Biden’s staff at the White House to air their concerns about his electability following last month’s disastrous debate performance with Trump.On Thursday afternoon, three more House Democrats called for Biden to withdraw, Greg Stanton of Arizona, Ed Case of Hawaii and Brad Schneider of Illinois.Schneider said in a statement: “I fear if he fails to make the right choice, our democracy will hang in the balance,” while Stanton posted a statement on Twitter/X effusively praising Biden’s record and his character but saying he should step aside as the nominee amid the need to save US democracy from the “existential threat” of Donald Trump.The Nato-related press conference set for Thursday evening was seen as crucial as a test to compare Biden’s performance with the dire one he displayed in the debate, followed by a less than convincing performance in a TV interview with ABC the following week.The event is the kind of unscripted set piece that Biden’s staff stand accused of shielding him from, and any repeat of the calamitous debate display could turn the steady trickle of public calls for Biden to stand aside into a flood.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSome of Biden’s most loyal acolytes at the top of the Democratic party have issued less than full-throated statements of support in recent days.Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, who has repeated the mantra “I’m for Joe” throughout the crisis, was reported to have signalled openness to having the president replaced at the top of the presidential ticket.Axios reported that Schumer had been taking close account of the feelings of party donors and fellow senators in the 12 days since Biden’s meltdown in the 27 June debate, when he plunged the viability of his candidacy into doubt by abjectly failing to defend his own policies or counter Trump’s lies.“As I have made clear repeatedly publicly and privately, I support President Biden and remain committed to ensuring Donald Trump is defeated in November,” Schumer said, in comments that fell short of a ringing endorsement. On Wednesday, Peter Welch of Vermont became the first Democratic senator to publicly tell Biden to step aside. Nine members of the House of Representatives have already done so.“He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not,” Welch wrote in a Washington Post opinion piece.The president retains the support of Democratic governors, senators in the vital swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, the Black Congressional caucus, key progressive House members including Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and many others.But the meeting between senators and Biden staff on Thursday will take place against the backdrop of backstage manoeuvring. The former House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, added pressure on Biden on Wednesday by telling MSNBC that it was up to the president to decide and “we are encouraging him to make that decision”. Behind the scenes, Pelosi has reportedly told Democratic Congress members that Biden cannot win the election and should step aside, according to Politico.She has also reportedly encouraged Democrats in swing districts threatened with losing their seats in November to do whatever is necessary to defend themselves, including calling on Biden to stand aside, while suggesting to others in safer districts that they should approach the White House directly with their concerns.Crucially, she is also said to have advised members to wait until the end of today’s Nato gathering before going public. Some Congress members were understood to have drafted statements, ready to release as soon as the gathering of international leaders left Washington.A fresh Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll showed 56% of Democratic voters agreeing that Biden should end his campaign, against 42% who said he should stay put – a finding that undermined the president’s assertion that the effort to oust him was led by “elites” in the party.Biden has held fewer news conferences with journalists in his three and a half years in office than any president since Ronald Reagan.A previous press conference at the White House in February to counter criticisms by Robert Hur, a special prosecutor who criticised the president’s “poor memory”, backfired somewhat when Biden referred to the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, as “the president of Mexico”. More

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      European leaders use Nato summit to sell military alliance to US voters

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      European leaders at the Nato summit in Washington are focused on explaining to ordinary American taxpayers that the military alliance is worth the money, as the issue of burden-sharing has become a political football for both parties in the US – and threatens to become a serious stumbling block for the alliance should a second Trump administration come to power.“There is a debate in the United States that the US are doing a lot to support Ukraine and Europe is not doing enough. If you look at figures, it’s actually a different picture. Europe is doing more than the United States: the financial support, military support we all have provided so far has been enormous … We are taking the security and defense seriously,” said Edgars Rinkēvičs, the president of Latvia, during a speech on Tuesday alongside former CIA director Leon Panetta and the Estonian defense minister, Hanno Pevkur. “It’s also very important to explain to the American public.”In background briefings, European officials have said they have been concerned with political turmoil in the US and Europe. The US was among countries that pushed back against a multi-year financial pledge for military aid to Ukraine – in part because of the bitter fight in Congress over the Ukraine supplemental bill.“We think that this is essential to signal that Europeans are taking a greater burden of their own security,” said another European official ahead of the summit. “And it’s an important message to Ukraine, to Russia – but also for domestic audience. Here in DC, we are aware of the sensitivity of that topic, and I think you can expect a lot of strategic communication on that next week.”European officials are balancing concerns over the growing Russian threat in Ukraine and the political sensitivities that could further divide the alliance.“We also understand that the ordinary people, in Latvia or the United States or somewhere else, sometimes do care more about economy, social issues, internal security, and we should take those concerns seriously and address them in the same manner that we are addressing the high geopolitical issues,” said Rinkēvičs.Polling has shown that views on Nato are subject to a partisan divide in the US, and that the alliance has become steadily less popular among Republicans in the past year. According to the Pew Research Centre, just 43% of Republicans have a positive view of the alliance, down from 49% who said the same in 2023.European leaders have taken different tacks, with some talking points seemingly tailored toward the Republican candidate as well. “Nato is a club, and when you have a club rules, then you respect the rules, and you expect that everybody will also respect the rules,” Pefkur, the Estonian defense minister said on Tuesday. “So Trump is a golfer, so when you pay your fee, in the golf club, you can play. Doesn’t matter how big is your wallet. So when you pay that fee, you can go to the golf course and play.”In a speech at the Hudson Institute on Tuesday, the Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, said that he supported Nato but that he would press European leaders on fulfilling a pledge to spend 2% of GDP on defense. He also tied national security to US border security, once again reinforcing how Nato policies have become subsumed to domestic US politics.“Nato needs to be doing more,” he said. “Not all Nato members have reached their current commitment. It may even need to be closer at a level during the cold war. But if we’re all going to enjoy a future of peace and prosperity, we all need to have skin in the game.”Critics have said that the US is going through a period of isolationism. “On a tectonic level, our allies should understand that there is a usually isolationist instinct in this country,” said Representative Jim Himes, a senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee. “And it emerges from time to time, when economic conditions here are not good,” or after moments of disenchantment like the Iraq war. “We are in that isolationist moment and it’s not just Donald Trump.”Others describe it as restraint. Trump is not the only one calling for the US to withdraw forces and resources from Europe, leaving Europeans to take on the burden of defending themselves. Several liberal foreign policy analysts have been calling for years for a switch to American restraint when it comes to US military projection, especially in Europe.“It is in the interest of a transatlantic alliance to shift the burden toward Europe and transition over, a decent period, maybe about a decade, toward European leadership of European defense with the United States moving to a supporting role,” Stephen Wertheim a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a leading advocate for restraint.Wertheim was one of dozens of foreign policy experts who wrote an open letter published in the Guardian urging Nato leaders not to invite Ukraine to become a member.“It could also be counterproductive insofar as Russia believes that Ukraine is advancing down this bridge to Nato membership, Russia gains an incentive to prolong the war so that that moment never arrives, so that Ukraine never crosses that bridge on the other side.” More

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      Biden’s health and threat of a second Trump term loom over Nato summit

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      As European leaders and top defense officials from 31 Nato countries descend on Washington next week, all eyes will be focused firmly on Joe Biden, whose faltering performance at last month’s debate has added to concerns about the country that some Europeans already described as their “unpredictable ally”.The US president has hoped that his leadership at the summit will rescue his campaign against Donald Trump amid concerns about his age and mental acuity. In a primetime interview on US television this week, he said: “And who’s gonna be able to hold Nato together like me?… We’re gonna have, I guess a good way to judge me, is you’re gonna have now the Nato conference here in the United States next week. Come listen. See what they say.”But in private conversations, some European officials and diplomats have expressed concerns about his “shaky” public appearances and worries about the high likelihood of a second Trump term. Several foreign officials questioned whether Biden would remain in the race through next week.“You can’t just put the genie back in the bottle,” said one European diplomat of the questions concerning Biden’s age. “It is one of the big issues [around the summit].”Officials who normally focused on security policy said they would pay close attention to Biden’s behaviour during his public appearances at the Nato summit, including a speech in the Mellon Auditorium on Tuesday and then meetings with the other member and partner countries on Wednesday. Some expressed confidence in his team, including Jake Sullivan, US national security adviser, to manage major crises, but said that the question of Biden’s political future had taken a toll.Several foreign officials said that Biden’s slump in the polls would compound problems from this year’s bruising fight in Congress over the $60.8bn in military aid to Ukraine and make it less likely for the administration to take bold action.“The issue with his age has become a major concern … a distraction from other real issues [for Nato],” said a European official. One administration official told the Washington Post that the summit has “gone from an orchestrated spectacle to one of the most anxious gatherings in modern times”.US officials have insisted that Biden is mentally acute, especially pointing at his handling of national security issues such as the Russian war on Ukraine.A long piece detailing concerns about Biden’s mental state in the New York Times included aides describing his forceful warnings to Benjamin Netanyahu not to launch a massive counterattack against Iran as an example of his good health.“Look, foreign leaders have seen Joe Biden up close and personal for the last three years,” said a senior administration official. “They know who they’re dealing with and, you know, they know how effective he’s been.”But that article also said that G7 leaders were concerned about Biden’s physical condition, quoted a European official who said Biden was sometimes “out of it”, and quoted two officials who struggled to say they would put Biden in the same room as Vladimir Putin.“I’ve heard multiple times [US officials] talking about how he’s very sharp,” a European official told the Guardian. “But he can’t be great just part of the time, he needs to be on his game all of the time.”Some have gone public with their concerns. “They certainly have a problem,” said Polish prime minister Donald Tusk after last week’s debate. “Yes, these reactions are unambiguous. I was afraid of that. I was afraid … in the sense: it was to be expected that in a direct confrontation, in a debate, it would not be easy for President Biden.”Especially following the debate, many European diplomats are bracing for a second Trump administration. The former president has openly flirted with the idea of pulling out of Nato and personally harangued members of the alliance who failed to reach a 2% spending benchmark. He has also indicated that he may withhold further aid to Ukraine.Since early in the campaign, European diplomats have sought to understand Trump’s policies, sending envoys to his campaign or conservative thinktanks like the Heritage Foundation who have produced voluminous briefings about what a second-term Trump administration’s foreign policy could look like.But Trump’s foreign policy vision remains unclear, they said, subject to his own whims, and will likely be decided at the last minute. (In a surprise on Friday, he disavowed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, often touted as a 900-page road map for his administration’s agenda, saying he “had no idea who they are”.)skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You meet a lot of people who will tell you that they know what Trump is thinking, but no one actually does,” said one European official.Ahead of the election, officials from Nato countries have sought to “Trump-proof” military aid by having the alliance take over coordination of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group from the US. European countries have also pushed for language in a final Nato communique that would proclaim the “irreversibility” of Ukraine’s accession to the alliance.“On managing the unpredictability of the US ally … again, it’s not new,” said a European official. “It’s clearly a sentiment which is shared among European allies, that we need to be prepared for the unpredictability of the US ally.”In a policy brief, Camille Grand, a former Nato assistant secretary general who is now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that leaders should prepare to “defend Europe with less America”.“Even setting aside the outcome of the US presidential election this year and the need to Trump-proof Europe, there is a fundamental and deep trend in US security policy that suggests Europe will have to become less reliant on US support for its security,” he wrote.Planners want to avoid a repeat of last year’s summit in Lithuania, when Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy tweeted that the lack of a timetable for the country’s accession to Nato was “absurd” after learning of last-minute discussions between other leaders.“The US team has been making absolutely sure that there wouldn’t be too many or any open issues at the summit to avoid what happened in Vilnius,” Grand said in an interview.“It’s meant to be a smooth summit and a celebration and an opportunity for Biden to shine, then I guess what the European leaders will be watching in light of the debate is, how is Biden? Is he truly leading? So they will have an eye on him, but I think they will all, at least most of them … rather be in the mood to strengthen him than the opposite.” More