“People say Donald Trump’s strength is that he thinks outside the box. But that is not right. He does not even know what the box is.” The remark by a senior British politician with decades of experience dealing with US presidents reflects a nervousness not just about the random unpredictability of the incumbent of the Oval Office, but also the chasm between Trump’s apparent lack of interest in the ties that bind the transatlantic alliance and the precious regard with which they are still held in London.



That British nervousness becomes more acute in the face of a daunting Trump triptych next month: a Nato summit on 11-12 July, a Chequers bilateral with Theresa May on 13-14 July, and, rounding off his trip to Europe, a summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on 16 July.

Officially Britain remains relaxed about the Putin-Trump meeting, saying summits between Russian and US leaders are quite normal, but the possibility of a rapprochement between Russia and this president makes British nerves jangle. The UK, through choice and circumstance, has been the western power most hostile to Putin, and now risks finding its position badly undercut.

May after all has used her personal influence to urge her fellow EU leaders to maintain sanctions over the Russian annexation of Crimea. In a speech on Wednesday in Copenhagen, the British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, waded into “the relentless Russian aggression across Ukraine, and its ceaseless campaign of disinformation”.

Inside Nato, the UK has been at helm of the effort to counter Russian aggression on the borders of Europe, sending 800 troops to Estonia.

British intelligence, formally and informally, has also dug up detail on how Russia has tried to interfere in western elections, including the 2016 US presidential election.

Overall, the UK insists from soundings with the US national security adviser, John Bolton, in London on Monday that Trump is not about to press the reset button with Russia and leave the UK in the lurch.

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British officials say they are broadly happy with the Nato agenda, which includes endorsing reinforcement of Nato’s eastern flank against Russian aggression and reforms to the alliance’s military command structure, to take account of the Russian threat in the high north.

Britain knows there will be Trumpian protests over Europe’s freeloading on defence, but say Trump’s commitment to Nato was settled more than a year ago when Jim Mattis, the defence secretary, first came to Europe. The system around Trump gets him to do the right thing, even if it is sometimes touch and go.

But the fear is that the Trump-Putin summit will echo his summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. Will he make an impulsive gesture that blindsides Europe, or will he be impatient at the Nato and May meetings, just as he was at the G7 ahead of his bilateral with Kim?

The way in which Trump tore up the G7 communique in a tweet left diplomats shocked, realising they were in unprecedented territory.



The fear is that away from the protesting Brits, he will feel moved to a offer Putin a personal gesture over Syria, disarmament, Nato expansion intelligence co-operation or even sanctions. “We don’t know. We have learnt we cannot know,” one diplomat said.

The British advice to its European counterparts is to try to compartmentalise each issue, and take each on its merits, rather than constructing an overarching narrative that relations between Europe and the US are breaking down.

But it is a mark of the UK’s concern that Tony Blair, often billed as an apologist for American presidents, felt moved to use a speech at Chatham House this week to urge Trump to reassure Europe that he saw the continent as more than an export opportunity.