America has spoken. Its friends in Europe are raising half a cheer. If diplomacy permitted candour most of Washington’s partners in the Nato alliance would admit they had hoped the US midterm elections would deliver a much bigger thumping to president Donald Trump. These days, they take what they can get.

Fewer than two years into Mr Trump’s term, the extraordinary has become the unremarkable. Not so long ago Europeans were fairly clear about the hierarchy of threats to their continent. The belligerent unilateralism of the US president’s America First foreign policy has since buried the old certainties.