NATO will have to rethink that as well if they consider the US an unreliable partner.

Hopefully, this insanity ends in four years.

Well the US have been very clearly saying that NATO is pretty much dead.

And NATO-countries are very much considering the US an unreliable partner. Also it's interesting that you wrote "partner": 2 months ago people would have said "allies", now it's "unreliable partner".

if it only happened once I'd say the electorate made a mistake, which is part of liberal democracy

however they saw what happened (including the events of Jan 6th), and they did it again

so it's not a one-off, it's a pattern

the rest of the west would be foolish to treat this as anything other than a permanent new direction

The rest of the world turned right as well. In actuality, the entire world had a bad four years and voted out whoever was in power, regardless of the reasons or outcome. Also the US left ran an extremely bad candidate and they still had a strong showing; a real candidate might have pulled it off. We can only speculate though.

Well the rest of the world may have turned right, but their government did not threaten to invade less powerful allies (among many other threats) while staying really popular, did they?

Can you show me leaders of countries in the rest of the world who have been making nazi salutes while staying really popular, too?

Do you know that far right leaders from other countries have refused to appear next to far right leaders from the US after nazi salutes, because it seemed a bit too extreme to them?

Even if the insanity ends in four years (which is starting to seem increasingly unlikely tbh, does anyone still believe next elections will be smooth and fair?), the US will be considered an unreliable partner for much longer.

A reputation of reliability explicitly means not pulling tricks like these. If you do, it means you're unreliable.

NATO doesn’t have to rethink anything, NATO is an extension of EUCOM for all intents and purposes. That’s why the title of Supreme Allied Commander Europe goes to the same guy that runs EUCOM.

If people try to go back to the way things were in 4 years they're stupid. Trump threatens allies, nakidly goes after political enemies and makes 'jokes' about becoming a dictator and the people love it unless/even if it negatively impacts them.

Hell, Korea almost turned into a dictatorship in the last few months and Yoon still has a lot of support even after being found out and removed. Democracies are fragile and the only way I can see them surviving is if power isn't concentrated.

> If people try to go back to the way things were in 4 years they're stupid.

I don't know inside the US, but outside I'm pretty sure that it won't come back to the way things were 2 months ago. Not only Trump has broken stuff, but the US people too! The US people is still supporting Trump. The message sent to other countries is not "that was a mistake, we elected a crazy arse". The message is "we support that guy that threatens to invade our allies; if we had to vote right now we would elect him again".

The Europeans are very aware of such a threat. There is growing support for buying only domestically produced arms.