Just who has the demented, insane leaders?

IN his column ‘‘Russia: the really dangerous leaders are sane’’ ( ODT 8.4.23) Gwynne Dyer says that the (supposed) ‘‘crazies of Russian politics’' bizarrely claim victimhood — ‘‘the evil West made us do it’’, he derisively imagines them saying.

But, despite the sarcasm, and as anyone paying even moderate attention should know by this time, the Americans have been aiding and abetting CIAsponsored ‘‘colour revolutions’’ and coups such as that of the Kyiv Maiden to advance Nato right up to the borders of Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 despite promises made to Gorbachev at that time.

Finally, having groomed it since at least 2014, Nato has poised the Ukraine like a dagger at the heart of close neighbour Russia while providing it with arms to make civil war on its own, Russianspeaking, population in the Donbas (does this last not remind one of a more recent situation in Palestine?).

As for Medvedev, whom Dyer says is one of the ‘‘dangerously sane’’, issuing ‘‘bloodcurdling but implausible threats about using nuclear weapons on (Russia’s) enemies’’: these are not just threats but cold, objective policy.

Russian nuclear doctrine lays down that it will not be the first to strike but that it will strike with everything once it detects a Western nuclear attack on the way.

That is simply the logic of the nuclear era and always has been — the logical inevitability of Armageddon — and so, also, the counterlogic of deterrence, with the unstated but obvious corollary that even the use of smaller tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield will lead quickly and inevitably to the final, mutually suicidal exchange.

Mr Dyer might consider writing a column entitled, ‘‘USA: the really dangerous leaders are demented'’. Jack Pritchard

Palmerston