Is Trump about to betray Ukraine?

Even if Harris wins, the danger remains that some European states want to call it quits.

Britain’s Chamberlain seals the fate of Czechoslovakia in 1938

If Donald Trump wins the US election on 5 November, there is a high chance that he will attempt to force Ukraine into a deal which, in return for peace, pledges Kyiv to permanent neutrality and the loss of its sovereign territory.

If so, that will be America's equivalent of the 1938 Munich Agreement between Britain and the Third Reich.

Munich forced Czechoslovakia to cede a critical chunk of its territory in return for a peace that lasted just six months, after which it was dismembered by Germany, Poland, Hungary and the Nazi client state of Slovakia.

The Agreement was hailed not just as creating "peace in our time" by its British signatory Neville Chamberlain, but "the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace".

I have little doubt that, should Trump strong-arm Kyiv into this semi-surrender, it will be sold to us in the same way by an army of online fascists and left-Putinist influencers.

And even as reluctant European capitals throw up their hands in resignation at a Trump-led betrayal, they will console themselves with the idea that the capitulation at least "buys time" for their own rearmament.

Let's be clear. Any amount of time for European rearmament, bought through the subjection of a nation of 40 million Ukrainians to enforced geopolitical neutrality and disarmament, is a bad bargain. It will signal - not just to Putin but to Hamas, Iran and the People's Republic of China - that the era of American principle and global engagement is over.

And absent regime change in Russia, it will buy time only for Putin to spread the tentacles of hybrid aggression into the Balkans, the Black Sea and beyond - while rearming his forces with inventory from China.

For this reason, on top of many others, I am praying that American voters reject Trump, and that the US legal system can resist the clearly signalled onslaught on the legitimacy of the result should Trump win.