What don't we know about the Novichok attack?

Perhaps it's time for Theresa May to tell all of us what she told the EU the other day. The intelligence titbits she revealed to the EU convinced all of them to support the UK in its fight with Russia over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. For those not on the need-to-know list - ie the general public - we are pretty sure Russia was behind the nerve agent poisoning for the following reasons: Novichok, the nerve agent, is a military substance only ever made in Russian laboratories as far as we know; the Russian KGB/FSB have done this before, they have a whole department that creates the nastiest poisons for operational use against people their president has on a hit list (the hit list is an educated presumption on my part); the Alexander Litvinenko case wasn't the first poisonining on British soil linked to Moscow, but the similarities with the Salisbury attack are stark and believable; Putin has publically threatened with a grim end anyone who betrays the Motherland. All these ingredients add up to a very convincing case. But Mrs May knows more than this. MI6 and/or MI5 have come up with some tasty intel which has made her even more sure than us lot that Moscow/Putin is guilty. After Moscow's totally outrageous expulsion of another 50 British diplomats, on top of the 23 already told to leave, it's time for the UK prime minister to reveal at least part of the secret intelligence which she acquired from her spymasters. Is there something so devastating - like definite proof of Putin's signature on the plot - that she has absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Moscow is to blame for the Salisbury poisoning? If so, why is she still trolling out the same phrase about it being most likely that Russia is guilty. A court of law would never convict on the phrase "most likely" or "probably". The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming but is that enough to get a conviction? Well, of course, we don't yet have any individuals under suspicion - apart from Putin - so the court of law scenario does not yet apply. But a dramatic piece of intelligence disclosed in a statement from the PM in the House of Commons would help the public to get to grips with this appalling incident and might turn the screws on Moscow. It's a risk. It's always tricky to reveal secret intelligence in case it points the finger at sources. But there will come a time when we will need to be told. At present it looks like a long long police investigation ahead of us and a never-ending diplomatic war. At least Yulia is getting better but I am assuming she knows nothing about the circmstances that led to her falling unconscious on a park bench next to her father.

Tit-for-tat-for-tit-for-tat

Once the Cold War was declared over - about 50 times over a period of ten years! - the old game of tit-for-tat should have been scrapped for ever. It was always pointless anyway. After the initial impact and stern statements from respective governments involved, things sort of got back to normal and eventually the number of spies/diplomats/chauffeurs/cleaning ladies increased again without too much fuss. Now that we are in the 21st century version of a Cold War, tit-for-tat has returned in full glory. Again, it's all pointless, almost childish. Countries playing boo to each other. But will it come round full circle with everyone ending up friends again? No, I think not. While Putin or anyone like him rules Russia, we're never going to be friends again. Ever. Biological warfare in any form if state-directed requires a lasting punishment until guilt is acknowledged or the accused perpetrators are handed over. Putin is never going to admit to anything, and Sergey Lavrov, the lugubrious foreign minister, just says what his master tells him to say. That means the tit-for-tats are going to go on and on until there's no one left to expel. Hey, that sounds a good idea! No Russian plutocrats buying up every pile of bricks in London. No spies trying to blackmail UK defence company executives into giving away secrets. That would be great news for MI5. They could then concentrate on watching suspected terrorists and no longer have to drive around the country following Russian spies disguised as English gentlemen. Less fun for the MI5 watchers but the more surveillance teams can focus on Isis fans the better for us all. Bye bye Ruskies, no more Fortnum and Mason Christmas hampers, no more drinkies at Brown's Hotel or White's, no more lunches at the Gay Hussar, no more skulduggery in Hyde Park, back to Moscow the lot of you. Some hope!

The Great Novichok Mystery

The police are now convinced that the main "delivery" of the military nerve agent Novichok that destroyed the lives of Sergei Skripal and his daughter occurred on the handle of the front door of their house in Salisbury. But there are so many unanswered questions if that's true. If the deadly nerve agent was literally smeared onto the handle, how the hell was it done? Was the perpetrator wearing special gloves, where are the gloves now, did it involve an attacker wearing any other kind of protection, is there someone in this country even now dying of nerve agent sickness that no one knows about because it's too risky for him/her to go to hospital? Did it happen in the early hours of the morning, when everyone was asleep, and no one noticed a man/woman dressed in a chemical suit approaching the front door of the Skripal home? If the attacker was only wearing gloves, could he or she have inhaled the fumes from the Novichok? In other words, when the perpetrator set off from, let's say, Moscow, with his nerve agent kit, what were his instructions? How did he/she get the stuff on board a plane, was it in a diplomatic bag or was it stuffed into a suitcase in the hold? If so, has the plane been checked for Novichok traces, and his/her fellow passengers and the crew and the baggage handlers the other end and Customs etc etc. It's endless. The police appear to be obsessed with locating where the bulk of the nerve agent ended up - ie the front door - and are now going to interview everyone in the area!! But surely they have done that already. Why aren't they working backwards to see where and how it could have come into the country? That's assuming the Russians don't keep a permanent supply in a safe in the embassy in London. Heathrow should be the number one area for checking - all Moscow flights from a certain date. Someone brought the stuff into the UK. There is no other explanation. When Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned with Polonium-120, it was put into a teapot and the ex-FSB officer drank it when it was poured into a cup in the Millenium Hotel in Grosvenor Square. But that investigation, although long and complex, was relatively easy for the police because they had two suspects from the beginning. They could trace their movements and at the same time trace evidence of Polonium-120 all over the place. One of the suspects poured the remainder of the killer agent down the sink in his hotel bathroom. This time there are no suspects. All the police know is that the biggest concentration of Novichok has been found on the front door of the Skripal home. But there is no video of a man/woman approaching the door with thick gloves on. Until they discover how the nerve agent was brought into the country, the police are going to get nowhere in finding the culprit or culprits.

What are Kim and Xi really up to?

Now we know for sure that it was Kim and Xi having nice little chats together in Beijing, the big question is: what exactly is Kim Jong-un up to, and also what exactly are Kim and Xi Zinping up to together? What is their scheme? What do they want at the end of the summit with Trump? One thing it won't be is a denuclearised North Korea and the status quo in South Korea. If Kim is going to give up being a nuclear power - he NEVER will - he will want a huge amount as a quid pro quo, something along these lines: NO nukes in South Korea, NO US nuke umbrella for South Korea, NO US defence pact to defend South Korea from North Korea, a promise from Washington in writing NEVER to attack North Korea, and if there is to be any denuclearising on North Korea's part it will be phased over a period of, say, 25 years. I think Kim will be so insistent that he gets what he wants that if Trump starts the summit chat by saying North Korea must get rid of all of its nuclear weapons immediately before anything else is even considered, the summit will be over in a matter of hours. It will be followed by a joint statement from Pyongyang and Beijing condemning Washington for demanding unacceptable terms. It will be important for Trump and his advisers, especially John Bolton who will be itching to get his hands on Kim's nukes, to realise that North Korea now has a huge nuclear weapons industry. There are masses of buildings, underground and above ground, is Kim going to bash them all down for the benefit of the world community? Oh no!! Kim has achieved what he wanted. He is a nuclear mafioso. He has completed the onerous task begun by his grandfaher and father and now wants to play a star role on the world stage. He has plenty of cards in his hand and he believes he can basically tell Trump what to do. Now this is fantasy of course, even with Xi Zinping with his appalling oily smile behind him. He is the nuclear kid on the block whereas Trump, God help us, is the Big Cheese nuclear godfather with enough of the stuff to annihilate North Korea, Russia and China all in one go. Moustacheod Bolton will want to get this message across to the Rocket Man on Day One. But Kim is by no means empty-handed, and with his handful of nukes - 20-30 - and an impressive array of long-range ballistic missiles, and his friendly nuclear neighbour, he could put Trump on the spot. Trump will have to give something in return, but if he gives too much in all the excitement, the whole of America's security strategy in Asia could go topsy-turvy. No wonder President-for-ever Xi looks pleased with himself.

Brief encounter Beijing-style

It's wonderful that in this day and age when everyone knows everything because it's on Facebook or Yahoo or Fox News, a short fattish bloke with an instantly recognisable haircut can climb unseen onto a long armoured train, travel a pretty long distance and end up in Beijing and then step down onto a platform and get whisked away in a black limousine and nobody knows for sure who it was, whether it was HIM or what he was doing exactly. I'm talking about Kim Jong-un of course. Some newspapers claim to know for sure that it was the North Korean leader who was on the train. Did they perhaps talk to the train driver or the Chinese stationmaster at Beijing? I doubt it. They wouldn't talk on pain of some dreadful death. It's all supposition. But surely, it must have been Kim because why else the fancy train and the mystery. It's a great tradition for North Korean leaders to travel to Beijing by train. It's part of the North Korea folk lore. Ergo, or Yinci as they say in Chinese, it was Kim training off to the Chinese capital to have a chat with the new All-Powerful- Leader-For-Ever Xi Zinping. Presumably to get his orders from the Mighty Xi for the upcoming summit with John Bolton, sorry, Donald Trump. I was not a fly on the wall or zai qiang shang fei, as they like to say in Mandarin, but I'm pretty sure the Omniscient Xi will have had one piece of advice for the Rocket Man. "Play hard ball". Or "Da yingqiu!" So Mr Trump/Bolton/Pompeo, in May you will face a man who has been on a long train journey who knows he has Xi's back. Advice to Trump and co: "Da yinqiu!" Just like it takes two to tango - haven't a clue what the Chinese for that is - it also takes two to play hard ball when it comes to nuclear summitry.

Will Russia get the message?

Unfortunately, with six more years in power ahead of him I doubt Vladimir Putin will have missed any sleep over the mass expulsion of Russian "diplomats" from the US, UK and Europe. It sounds a big, big punishment for Moscow for the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter. But actually when you look at the numbers it isn't that harsh at all. The US is the exception with 60 Russian diplomats expelled. Well done Trump and Mike Pompeo. That is proper support for an ally. But Europe's support is absolutely minimal. In words they back UK totally. They all agreed it was "most likely" Russia was behind the poisoning. Actually let's call it biological warfare because dozens of people were affected apart from the two Russians. But in terms of kicking Russians out, the impact from members of the EU is so limited it will hardly be noticed. Two here, three there, one there and none at all from Greece, Portugal and Austria. Pretty pathetic really. Putin won't be bothered by the EU, but he will be seriously irritated by Washington. Sixty diplomats!! That's bold from Trump. But will Putin be so shocked that he backs down and agrees there is a small chance Rusia was behind the outrageous attack in Salisbury? No, of course not, because if he does, then he will lay himself open to international condemnation and calls for much tougher punishment. So it looks like we will get a series of tedious and pointless tit-for-tat expulsions, sanctions and other measures until the only sanction left will be to break off diplomatic relations. That still might have to happen, but no one really wants that because Russia and Putin are part of this world and we need to talk to them. All will depend on the next step taken by Putin.

Anyone but Russia is to blame

Moscow has now fed into the stratosphere every possible alternative for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the lovely city of Salisbury. First of all, of course, they are not to blame. They had nothing to do with it, neither Russia nor Russians. Never mind that the nerve agent Novichok is/was only ever made in a Russian laboratory. Among the myriad of stories coming out of Moscow about who was to blame their favourite one seems to be that the Porton Down chemical defence establishment just down the road from Salisbury had had Novichok leaking out in one way or another. So under this scenario, a little bit of Novichok seeped out and hunted down the former Russian double agent and his daughter and somehow crept into their soup or coffee or front door. We had the chief executive of Porton Down telling the world on the BBC that there was no possibility any nerve agent could have leaked out because he ran a very tight ship. Sorry, but that begs a number of questions. Does Porton Down have stocks of Novichok to make sure there's an antidote in case of a Russian biological warfare attack? If not, then why not say so? And even if they do - but don't want to tell us - why did the chief executive not say in the interview, "this is all a load of rubbish because even if there had been a leak of any type of nerve agent which there wasn't and never could be, how come only Skripal and daughter and those anywhere near him got poisoned." So, Moscow central, this alternative answer to the Novichok poisoning is totally not credible. The nerve agent was used to target a particular individual - a man who had worked against his country and sold secrets to British intelligence. In the words of any lawyer worth his salt, there is motivation, there is access, there is capability, there is previous. Prima facie, Moscow is the culprit. Not Porton Down. All the other alternatives put about by Russia are also interesting but fiction. Who else in the whole wide world would want a Russian double agent dead as a warning to other putative Russian double agents or defectors? Belgium? I'm joking. Now Moscow is being accused by America's top commander in Afghanistan of colluding with the Taliban by arming them to fight the American-led coalition. That word "collusion" gets around doesn't it? General John Nicholson, the military chief, says he has evidence of collusion. Russia says this is a fairytale, claiming the only effort being put in by Moscow in Afghanistan is aimed at forging a peace settlement. Like in Syria perhaps!!? I blame Trump. Ever since he spouted the words "fake news", Russia and in particular his "friend" Vladimir Putin, have used the same words to dismiss every accusation made against them.

Trump's Bolt-On strategy

Last week it was a rumour, now it's fact. John Bolton is the new US National Security Adviser. Even though Donald Trump is supposed to hate Bolton's thick circus-clown-like moustache, the president obviously likes the former UN ambassador's style. So Bolton, toughest of tough hawks, has been bolted-on to Trump's foreign policy, a voice of bellicose aggressiveness. The US in his view should be planning a war with North Korea and Iran. What worries me is where now will be the voice of calm inside the White House? With McMaster ousted, that leaves General John Kelly as chief of staff but how long will he survive? With Mike Pompeo at State and Bolton as national security adviser, who is going to have the courage to whisper into the president's ear, "No, Mr President, don't go down that path, don't listen to Bolton, he's an idiot." I can't think of anyone, except possibly Jim Mattis at the Pentagon. There's the sassy Nikki Hayley, US ambassador to the UN, but she's not often in the White House and I can't see her mouthing off against Bolton. Jared Kushner could possibly have been a sensible voice - at least he's a different generation from the Moustachioed One - but he seems to have lost both credibility and access to the Oval Office. So Trump who never exactly listened to reason, will now be surrounded by totally like-minded megaphone personalities. Is this the right combination to elicit a meaningful deal with Kim Jong-un or is the North Korean leader going to shy away from doing business with such a triumvirate - Trump/Pompeo/Bolton? There is no way of knowing but Kim will be coming to the summit in May with a nagging thought in the back of his mind. Bolton was all for starting a war with North Korea and that might spoil the occasion. Or maybe it will persuade Kim that taking on the US is a suicidal venture. It's very dfficult to predict. In general, though, having Bolton back in a powerful position is not good news.

Facebook rules the world

It used to be the thinking that if the government/police/health service/car tax license people etc all knew about your personal details such as bank account, address, age, family etc etc that was acceptable in this day and age. Only criminals need worry. So if you're a respectable citizen without even a speeding fine to your name, all is great and fine. Then along came Facebook and all the other social media organisations and suddenly everything that you thought was closely guarded is now open to the world, including gangsters, fraudsters, scammers, hackers, hijackers, pollsters, strangers, relentless companies selling their wares, governments trying to buy your votes, schemers, enemies and anyone else you can think of. Privacy is a thing of the past. Now you wonder whether "they" - whoever they might be - know so much about you, you could wake up one morning and find your bank has been emptied, your novel manuscript has been stolen, your brand new Jaguar has been replaced by an old jallopy and your two-storey house has been turned into a bungalow. This is all exaggerated of course but I suspect most people will understand what I mean. As someone who recently has been targeted by the most alarming scammer penetrating my laptop I have become less sure of the nice feeling that. provided I behave lawfully in all I do, I can carry on my life without disturbance. Facebook has a lot of explaining to do after the scandal of the Cambridge Analytica firm's ability to exploit 50 million American Facebook addresses to try and sway the US presidential election in 2016. So now Trump won thanks not just to the Russians but also to the social media platform that we all love and use.

Trump in gagging mood

So Trump wants all his closest aides in the White House to sign a silence document, keeping all matters connected to their work - especially gossip, tittle-tattle, rumours, unbelievable fly-on-the-wall Oval Office stuff - confidential for ever. He is furious that his chat with Putin and all the amazing detail about how he ignored advice NOT to congratulate the newly reelected Russian president appeared the next day in the Washington Post. Basically ever since Trump became president, the leaks from insiders have been so plentiful the main newspapers have enjoyed scoop after scoop after scoop. Someone - or perhaps they all are - with top security clearance is leaking like a kitchen colander. The advice to Trump not to congratulate Puin must have come from HR McMaster, his national security adviser. So did he leak it when his president deliberately flouted his advice? If so, he is finished! Trump now wants all his staff to sign confidentiality agreements. What a state of affairs. He must be worried that in addition to the continuing leaks to the newspapers, sacked or resigning officials will rush into print, with steamy memoirs. I bet that will happen anyway. Trump won't be able to stop it even if his multitude of lawyers threaten prosecution. I have to say I sympathise with Trump to an extent. A president has to trust his chief aides not to go the newspapers every time there's a bust-up in the White House. It's hugely damaging for the whole administration and potentially could be a serious breach of national security. Of course presidents sometimes leak themselves or get someone to do it for them to make sure the right gloss is put on a story. But leakers trying to undermine the president is, generally speaking, damaging for the presidency and for the country. How Putin must be laughing his socks off.

Is Stephanie Clifford a storm in a T-cup?

Pundits in Washington are beginning to say that Stephanie Clifford, otherwise known as Stormy Daniels, could be the one to force Donald Trump out of office rather than Robert Mueller. In other words, a sex scandal rather than Russia collusion scandal. Well I don't believe that for a moment but it's an interesting argument. Certainly Stormy with her curvacious shape is making headlines most days but without any details about what it was like to be with Trump. Please lawyers on both sides of the Stormy fence save us from any detail. Does anyone seriously want to know what she and Trump - allegedly - got up to if they had an affair as she claims? Not even Melania, in fact especially not Melania, would want to know the graphics. Sex could bring a president down but not Trump, unless there is any evidence that he treated her badly. But the allegations refer to a situation before he was president. It's not like he has been caught behind the door in the Oval Office with this woman or with any woman. And, of course, there is a precedent for this sort of behaviour in another era which I won't raise here. So whatever Stormy Daniels comes up with if she ever makes it onto "60 Minutes", we will all be able to make a judgment abut Trump's behaviour. But it's not going to end with an impeachment. That I can guarantee. So it's a question of whether Mueller is going to be the one with the impeachment or enforced resignation card up his sleeve. If Mueller takes another year to complete his investigation he is going to have enough words, condemnatory or not, to fill a blockbuster best seller. But as I have said before, while a number of Trump accolytes will end up in prison, Trump himself will survive. Probably. But maybe there really is more to this drama than even the New York Times and Washington Post have revealed so far. Just maybe there is a spectacular scandal waiting in the wings. I only say this after reading and rereading the extraordinary tweet written the other day by John Brennan, Barack Obama's CIA director. This is what he wrote: "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude and political corruption becomes known, you will take yur rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe (the sacked deputy director of the FBI), but you will not destroy America...America will triumph over you." I haven't checked every history book but I venture to say that that is the most devastating comment about a sitting president ever made by a former director of the CIA. What does Brennan know that we don't know? Will he ever reveal it? Every American has a right to know.

How to deal with Putin

Has anyone anywhere fathomed how to deal with Vladimir Putin? Being rude to him or insulting Mother Russia is definitely not going to help. So both Boris Johnson, the UK Foreign Secretary, and, especially, Gavin Williamson, the UK Defence Secretary, have failed that test. Ever since it became pretty clear that Russia was behind the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal, the Russian double agent, and his daughter, both Boris and Williamson have thrown down the gauntlet with Putin personally, unlike their boss, Theresa May who has voiced strong comments but in language carefully selected. Williamson in particular chose the downright rude path. Russia should shut up, he said. As a result, Moscow turned on its most sarcastic rhetoric at Britain's newest and youngest defence secretary. So what is best? Actually, I am afraid to say that I don't think Putin cares one bit what anyone in the UK says. He knows that even if he personally ordered the FSB to assassinate Skripal, it will never be proved. First, because no one inside Russia would dare to reveal such an order, and second, because even if the international chemical weapons organisation, now in the UK, confirms that the nerve agent could only have been made in a cetain laboratory in Russia, Putin can still say it has nothing to do with him. He is already calling the accusation, stupid, false, fantasy, rubbish. Or "lozhnyy musor" in Russian. He is definitely NOT going to change from that position whatever the British police and MI5 come up with over the next few weeks. He is an old KGB master, he was taught to lie under all circumstances. Like all great liars down the centuries, Putin believes in only one truth - that whatever he says or does is how it is. It's Moscow truth and if it doesn't fit in with Western truth, it matters not. The other important thing to remember about lies is that once the lie is uttered it is never going to be replaced by the truth. The lie becomes the truth. Trump understands this. Anything that doesn't go along with his version of events is either false or fake news. It's simple really. I think the only way to deal with Putin is to treat him the way he is treating the whole of the UK - with disdain. We don't want a new Cold War, that would be dangerous. But how about a Disdain War. Send Putin to Coventry as we Brits like to say. In Engish-speak that means cold-shoulder him. Don't insult him (Mr Williamson take not). Treat him with the disdain he deserves. In the British Empire days we Brits used to be good at that!

How not to sack people

Judging by accounts in the Washington papers the manner in which Rex Tillerson was fired was pretty disgraceful, unedifying and humiliating. But I presume that's how Trump liked it. The conversation between firee and fired went something like this: General John Kelly, White House chief of staff, makes a call and reaches Tillerson when he is engaged in the toilet trying to come to terms with a serious stomach bug picked up during his African tour. There's no pleasanter way of putting it. Kelly, fully aware of what Tillerson was doing because he joked about it later, warned the then secretary of state that Trump was planning to fire him. Tillerson's response is not known but in between griping tummy pains it can't have been: "Oh never mind, excuse me while I finish....." Two days later Mr Nice Man Trump tweets - of course tweets - that Mike Pompeo is going to do a great job at State and thank you Rexie Baby, you're fired". Terrific PR, stupendous human resources. Trump didn't have the courage to let his secretary of state go to his face but did it through social media. The toilet scenario was just another way of rubbing it in. Poor Tillerson. He really wasn't cut out for the job of chief diplomat and clearly he was hopeless in pushing the State Department cause at the White House. But he still deserved a little more respect. Trump is not the first president to sack people, of course, and not the first one to make wrong judgements about appointees. For example, Admiral Dennis Blair was appointed by Barack Obama to be his first director of national intelligence. But unlike so many of Obama's closest officials, Blair was not a mate. He didn't know Obama, he wasn't part of his campaign team. He ended up being totally undermined by people junior to him who were closer to Obama and made their own recommendations to Obama about security and intelligence matters without even discussing it first with Blair. He was in an impossible position and felt like a stranger whenever he was in the White House. It was cruel to watch. It wasn't long before he was out. But this is the way the White House is. If you're not a crony of the president it's difficult to survive, and even then there's no guarantee of longevity. Remember what happened to Steve Bannon. But the Tillerson sacking will go down as one of the most callous exits from government. He was graceful in his departure, saying how honoured he had been. But everyone knows what he was really thinking, and he is still probably suffering from stomach cramps poor man.

Russia versus the West - like old times.

The scariest bit of news today is that Russia has apparently managed to gain a digital "hacking" foothold into America's energy systems and could cut off US power just like that if it wanted to. This is how powerful and deadly Russia has become. Not nterested in developing warm and friendly relations with the West, Russia - ie Vladimir Putin - is turning itself into World Enemy Number One and has made preparations to undermine our very existence - turning off the energy taps here, killing Russian double agents with military nerve agents there. Do the ordinary Russian voters really grasp what the Kremlin is doing in their name and if they do, do they care enough to vote for Putin's opposition candidates in Sunday's election? It looks like the answer is: they don't care what Putin is up to on the world stage. They like having someone tough in the Kremlin and, presumably, they believe what Putin, Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, and the other Kremlin cheerleaders are saying about the West's "provocations". Perhaps they like Putin against the rest of the world. They always did like powerful leaders. There were even some who were so put off by Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russian leader with a smiling face who got on well with western governments, that they wanted Brezhnev back!! Can you imagine? So Putin will sail through the election on Sunday and get himself six more years at the helm. If it's true that his hackers have their tentacles around America's energy supply networks - and perhaps around Britain's too - he is literally in a position to blackmail the West. He has already said he could cut off Russian gas supplies to Europe. This man with the medically stretched face and crocodile eyes is now showing his true colours. Kicking out two dozen Russian spies from Britain is just not going to make any difference.

The rise again of the neocons

There is a terrible rumour doing the rounds in Washington that the archbishop of neocons, the heavily moustachioed John Bolton, former wildman US ambassador to the United Nations COULD become the next national security adviser if Lieutenant-General HR McMaster gets fired, as expected. God help us. He is a true blue radical conservative who sat nice and easy with the likes of Dick Cheney in the George W administration. He is the great intervenionist and would like the US military to be sent hither and thither to get rid of nasty regimes. If he is appointed, there will be three of America's most powerful people determined to scrap the Iran nuclear deal: Trump, Mike Pompeo soon to be at State, and Bolton. They all hate the nuclear deal negotiated under the Obama administration. Bolton says what he thinks and will bend Trump's ear to do all kinds of things even the president might not want to do. Iran will be top of Bolton's hitlist. And of course, Bolton would be in the key job to tell Trump what to say to Kim Jong-un. It won't be pleasant!! When Trump was elected and was musing about who to appoint to the top jobs, John Bolton's name came up then. Trump indicated he thought Bolton was someone he should have around him. But then he announced his cabinet and there was no Bolton. Phew, that was a relief! But Trump must have had Bolton in hs mind all along and was just waiting for his moment. McMaster has done his best to advise and contain but I should imagine he can't wait to get back into the military. He is still an active service officer, and Jim Mattis at the Pentagon will find him a good job I'm sure. But replacing McMaster for Bolton is like changing your pet dog from a retriever or labrador to a rottweiler or pitbull terrier. My God, America's foreign policy is going to turn sharp right. Only General John Kelly will be left to try and calm things down. But the White House chief of staff is probably for the sack as well, judging by Trump's present mood. All I can say is, I hope the rumours about Bolton are untrue, but somehow I doubt it.

Did Theresa May really consider a cyber attack on Russia?

Who was the bright spark who put cyber warfare on the UK prime minister's list of retaliatory responses to Russia's suspected nerve agent attack in Salisbury? Britain is supposed to be a responsible and moral and lawful member of the international community. You can't go around launching cyber attacks even if the provocation from Moscow is undeniable. A cyber attack on the Kremlin would probably have led to a swift and devastating cyber attack from Putin's boys. Then where would we be? A digital war with Russia? Someone in Whitehall whispered to the newspapers that a cyber attack was a possible punishment being considered. So every front page thundered with the news. I doubt it scared Moscow but I thought it was foolish anyway. Once you start down that road suddenly every government turns to cyber warfare instead of measured responses. I assume Theresa May was happy to let the papers speculate about cyber warfare but then went for the obvious option - kicking out Russian spies posing as diplomats in London. She has selected 23 for some reason. In 1971, Edward Heath expelled 105 Russian spies from London. This was because MI5 had told the government that the then Soviet embassy was so stuffed with spies they were falling over each other. Now that really told Moscow. Mrs M may have to be a bit tougher than just expelling 23. But no cyber warfare please.

The rise of Pompeo

I don't know why Trump waited so long.He has been tired of his secretary of state for months. Rex Tillerson had been selected for the State Department job because Trump thought as a hgh-powered oil executive who was pally with Putin he would be a tough cookie and would support all his favourite hates,like the Iran nuclear deal. But Tillerson chose to use diplomatic language, not the rhetoric of war and he became an embarrassment to the president. Trump told him nothing, not even that he was about to make the most dramatic decision of his presidency, his on-the-spot decision to accept the offer of talks with Kim Jong-un. Tillerson was in the dark. Can you imagine Obama not telling Hillary Clinton that he was about to make a huge announcement on foreign policy, or George W Bush not warn Condi Rice first before making a Big Statement. So Tillerson is out and Mike Pompeo, a big man with very Trump-like views, steps up into his post. From the dark games of the CIA to the world arena of diplomacy. Pompeo hates the Iran nuclear deal as much as Trump does. He has stated publically he thinks, sorry knows, Iran is cheating on the deal by doing things they claim they're not doing. I can see a Trump/Pompeo assault on Obama's nuclear deal and even if it is not torn up - which it can't be because there are five other big-power signatures on the agreement - there's going to be some furious Trump/Pompeo rewriting or adding to try and keep Iran in check for longer than the ten-year period in the deal and also to do something about the Quds Force, the special forces element of the Revolutionary Guard which stirs up trouble for Washington wherever it operates in the Middle East and elsewhere. Pompeo will not pull any punches, unlike Tillerson who has been as quiet as the quietest church mouse. It's going to be a rumbustious time. Poor old Tillerson disappears back into obscurity. It was reported he was not told why he had been sacked. But then he didn't need to be. He knew Trump had gone off him like a bad egg.

Reporters' lives at risk

Unquestionably journalism can be a dangerous profession. Reporters hunting down corruption or delving into government connections with Mafia organisations are literally putting their lives on the line for their job. The most horryfing current case is that of Jan Kuciak, a Slovakian reporter who had been investigating suspected corruption links between the government of Slovakia and an Italian mafia mob. He was getting too close to the truth. He and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, were killed. The appalling case mirrors the killing of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had also been investigating high-level political corruption. She died in a bomb explosion in Malta in October. No matter how determined these two respective governments appear to be in finding their killers, the inevitable suspicion remains that the reporters were finding corruption tentacles all the way to the top. Then,of course,there was the desperately traumatic case of Kim Wall, the Swedish journalist who went on board a home-made submarine to write about its designer and never emerged alive. She,too, was murdered and the designer Peter Madsen is facing trial for her death. Hundreds of reporters have died doing their job. The majority have been killed covering wars. There is no safe way to cover a war, unless from the comfort of a hotel miles from the frontline. But then that is not war reporting, that's pretend war reporting, and I know of cases where this has happened. When I covered the war in Bosnia in the 1990s, there was one reporter from an American provincial paper who sat all day in the British army media office in Vitez, central Bosnia, and just rewrote press releases. No doubt he made it sound like he had faced bullets and mortar rounds. But the vast majority of reporters and photographers who I have come across in war zones covered conflicts with professionalism, courage,tenacity and daring. Reporters of all nationalities have died in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Syria and in many other conflicts in the last 20-30 years. Reporters who investigate government corruption and links to mobsters are like their compatriots in war zones. They are risking their lives for the big story. I was always told that it is never worth risking your life for a story. But that's not the way you think as a frontline reporter, whether in a war zone or in a gangland environment. You assess the risks, of course, but if you thought there was a very real possibility you could be killed that very day and stayed safely at home, the great stories would never be written. Jan Kuciak and Kim Wall and all those who have died in wars doing their job as reporters,I salute you.

Trump on a bandwagon

Trump is probably really enjoying his weekend basking in the sunshine of newspaper headlines over his North Korea gamble. And judging by remarks today by Jim Mattis, his secretary of defence, he might be planning another foreign adventure. President Bashar al Assad, the normal-looking, decent-seeming, academically qualified, well-married monster of a dictator responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of his own people, has reopened his chlorine chemical wapons cupboard to hit targets in eastern Ghouta in the Damascus suburbs. There have been numerous reports of men, women AND children being rushed to hospital suffering from breathing difficulties and burns. The locals say it's chlorine or something similar. Mattis, in his quiet way which is so sounded effective, gave warning that Assad would be extremely unwise to use chlorine in his air attacks on eastern Ghouta. He also had a message for Moscow: either you are incompetent or you are allowing Assad to use chemical weapons. Or, I guess it's possible that Assad is doing it without Russia's knowledge or authority but this scenario seems most unlikely. Whatever the situation, Mattis appears to be warning Assad that if he uses or continues to use chlorine-filled bombs, his commander-in-chief is going to order another strike against a Syrian-regime airbase, like he did last year. A flurry of Tomahawks would give Assad a bloody nose and another surge in adrenalin for Trump. A promised deal with Kim Jong-un AND a bashing of Bashar, all in the period of around a week would give Trump a helluva boost and send signals around the world that the US is back in the globe-influencing business. If he's not going to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea's nuclear facilities, then hitting Assad sounds like a fair alternative! So watch this space - a terrible cliche but kind of appropriate in Trump's current triumphant mood.

The spy codenamed Forthwith

There is something wonderfully British about the revelation that Sergei Skripov, the Russian GRU military intelligence officer and double agent now in critical condition after being poisoned with a nerve agent, was codenamed "Forthwith" by his MI6 handlers.It is also comforting that MI6, otherwise known as the Secret Intelligence Service, is still in the serious game of recruiting agents to spill other nations' secrets. MI6 has always been good at recruiting secret agents. While the US for years depended more on signals intelligence (Sigint), the good old British spies from their Vauxhall Cross headquarters in London have prided themselves on their abilities to provide human intelligence (Humint), meeting agents on street corners wearing a Homburg hat and carrying a Harrods shopping bag. Or wearing no hat, if the "meet" has to be suddenly scrapped for fear of hostile surveillance. Spy tradecraft is a great art and it's also fun, strictly in the sense of disguises and secret "drops" and messages hidden in trees or under false rocks. The latter was used by MI6 in Moscow for some time until the FSB (KGB) cottoned on and looked under the rock! Forthwith was plucked from some MI6 codeword book for agents and, rightly or wrongly, suggests that Agent Skripal was a pretty good spy. I am indebted to my Times colleague Ben Macintyre for the Forthwith revelation and for further details about how Skripal was recruited, all of which appear in a story in The Times today. Recruiting in the spying business is done in many different ways, but there are three classic methods: first, the "walk-ins". You might think that this is the easy one, a potential spy comes into the British Embassy in Madrid or Paris or Berlin or wherever and says he wants to see the MI6 representative to offer his services. Actually it's not necessarily as easy as being offered something on a plate. The first instinct is suspicion. Could it be trap, a bluff or double bluff? But walk-ins are great if they turn out to be bona fide. Second, there's the financial spy. He's fed up being poor in Moscow and fancies going to a Chelsea football match and living in a Cotswold cottage. So when it become clear to MI6 watchers that he might be a target for recruiting if a lot of lolly is splashed around, the move is made at an embassy cocktail party or some other social event. Agent Forthwith was one of these. Third, there's the ideological spy. He hates communism, socialism, Putinism, whatever it is, and wants to live in a free society. Oleg Gordievsky, the most famous double agent working for MI6 in the last 40-50 years, was an ideological double agent. I met him after he was brought secretly to Britain when Moscow suspected he was a double agent. I did wonder how he safe he would be living in the UK as a defector. I met him in the upper floor of a famous restaurant in Soho in London. I was wearing a smart dark blue suit. He was wearing a wig and a false beard. Yes, the spying game is fun, but also, as Agent Forthwith has discovered, potetially extremely life-threatening.

A bad and spectacular week for Trump

I think the world is beginning to get the measure of Donald Trump. There are bad days, there are very bad days and then there are spectacular days. So this week has seen the lot really. The announcement that he was definitely going ahead with steel and aluminium import tariffs made the vast majority of the world angry and bewildered. Even Liam Fox, British international trade secretary who is the most pro-America minister in the cabinet, made clear his disapproval and dismay. Then out pops the spectacular: Trump agrees to meet with Kim Jong-un. That is so Trump. Blast the hell out of the North Korean leader for months, call him every name under the sun, and then announce a get-together in which both men presumably will share tea and biscuits and chat about saving the world. Total about-turn. But it's Trump all over. Big brutal waving of the military stick and then charm and smooching. Well, if it works, good for him and good for his style of diplomacy. If it doesn't work, at least he had a go. Is Trump the man to force Kim Jong-un to consider giving up his nuclear weapons? Well, I doubt he'll do that, as I blogged yesterday, but Trump and his admiration for reality TV shows just might be the right personality to confront Kim Jong-un. Trump won't mind meeting him whereas Obama would probably have squirmed at the thought of sitting down in the same room as the bouffant rocket man. Or is that unfair on Obama? So let's give Trump the benefit of the doubt. He's a showman and so, too, to a certain extent is Kim Jong-un. Let them play and see what happens.

What can Britain do to Russia?

The government of Theresa May has a tricky problem ahead. No, not Brexit this time. What will happen next if prima facie proof is found of Kremlin involvement in the nerve agent attack on double agent Sergei Skripal and Yulia, his daughter? So far one possible threatened response sounds embarrassingly weak: stopping UK VIPs from attending the football World Cup due to take place in Russia in the summer. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, and Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, have both pledged to take appropriate and robust action against anyone involved in the dastardly attack in Salisbury, whoever it is and wherever they are. Well, of course they must say that. But in reality, if the evidence-chasing pinpoints the blame on the Russian government, it is difficult to see what the UK government can do that would significantly punish Putin and co. Putin will deny any knowledge or involvement and he can't ever be charged even if the evidence is regarded as pretty conclusive. Freezing Putin's assets abroad would make the Russian leader sit up and take notice but Britain can't do that on its own. It would require international support. However good Scotland Yard and Wiltshire police are over the next few weeks in investigating this crime, the would-be assassins have fled and their trail may be impossible to uncover. The World Cup will still go ahead and England will be there playing in Russian football stadiums. And by then President Putin will have been reelected for another six years. So unless Boris Johnson and Amber Rudd have a secret scheme up their sleeve, Britain's response to the nerve agent attack will make little real difference.

Will Kim Jong-un denuke?

Is it really possible that North Korea will this time actually negotiate to denuclearise? We've been here so many times. Every president since Bill Clinton has been made the same promises by Pyongyang and every time the regime has then reneged on the deal, blasting off another long-range ballistic missile or carrying out a nuclear test. In 1994 - 24 years ago - President Bill Clinton thought he had signed an historic deal to end the nuclear crisis with North Korea. Washington and Pyongyang signed the Agreed Framework under which North Korea's nuclear programme would be frozen and relations between the two countries would get back to normal. The US also promised to help build two light-water reactors in North Korea to replace the nuclear plants which were capable of producing fuel for bombs. But the deal was never fulfilled, there were long delays and problems in Congress. The historic deal collapsed. The only encouraging thing about the Agreed Framework was that it showed negotiations with North Korea were possible. Since then, there have been other attempts at freezing North Korea's nuclear programme but to no avail. And here we are in 2018 with a North Korea on the verge of becoming a fully-flegded nuclear weapons power. So how seriously do we take Kim Jong-un's offer to talk to the US about denuclearising - genuinely denuclearising, ie scrapping his dream of having nuclear weapons big enough and long-range enough to hit the US? Is it possible that the North/South Korean family affair at the Winter Olympics has turned his head and he now wants love and peace and stability and America as a partner? I very seriously doubt it. I wish I could believe that the young leader has come to his senses and has realised that he is pushing his country towards some sort of Armageddon unless he backs down. I really wish I could. But I can't. Why go to such lengths to develop and test a nuclear missile programme if only to give them all up in return for food and American tourists? It all sounds hopeful, and even Trump said he thought Kim Jong-un was sincere. But I'm too sceptical and cynical, after so many years of blatant breaches of every international mandate, to believe that the North Korean leader has becme transformed by the Great Snow Charm Offensive. I'm sure there will be meetings, secret and otherwise, American envoys will go back and forth, but Kim Jong-un is playing a cunning diplomatic game and we would be wise not to be fooled.

Russian deja vu in Salisbury

The reach of the Kremlin is limitless. Everyone so far is tiptoeing round the possibility that the hand of the Kremlin was behind the bizarre poisoning of a Russian double agent and his daughter in Salisbury, Wiltshire, a city more famous for its wonderful cathedral than visitors intent on assassination. Sergei Skripal, former colonel in the Russian GRU intelligence service and a spy for Britain's MI6 for years, must have known that eyes have been watching him ever since he was plucked from a Russian prison and flown off to Britain in the last spy swap eight years ago. Why his would-be assassins waited all this time to carry out their nefarious deed is difficult to know. But you can be sure there's a big message there somewhere. If it turns out that this is another Litvinenko situation - Alexander Litvinenko, former Russian federal security service (FSB) spy murdered with Polonium-210 poisoning in London in 2006 - then Moscow is telling the world, "We really don't care about your laws, we will do what we want when we want if it's in the interest of our great motherland". As I blogged only yesterday, who is around these days who is capable of stopping Vladimir Putin from getting his way? Certainly, if there is a Russian link to the attempt on Colonel Skripal's life, Moscow must feel that Britain is an easy place to carry out such deadly operations. I can't recall this sort of open outrage happening in the US. This is a highly CCTVd country, so with any luck, the poisoning perpetrators will be unmasked but you can bet any links back to Moscow will be shrouded in a tangled web of denials. The Kremlin has already offered its full cooperation in investigating this "tragic" incident. One intelligence source said to me that even if a Russia link was proven it did not necessarily mean that it was the president himself who ordered it. In other words it could have been someone lower down the chain who maybe thought it would be a good idea to get rid of Colonel Skripal to please Putin, especially with him running for reelection on March 18. Perhaps like the four knights who stormed Canterbury Cathedral and murdered Archbishop Thomas Becket in 1164 after they had overhead King Henry 11 cry, "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" No, I doubt it, too. There is probably very little that happens in Russia without the prior say-so of President Putin. Indeed, after the investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the coroner involved in the case, Sir Robert Owen, stated that the Russian president was "probably" responsible for giving the order. Probably is both a big word and a weak word, so there was never any proper closure to the case, despite the naming of the alleged poisoners. Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has already tentatively linked the Litvinenko poisoning to the Salisbury case. So then the UK government has to decide how to respond. Poor Theresa May, this is the last thing she wants in her in-tray.

Who is going to stand up to Putin?

The presidential election in Russia will take place on March 18. The result is already known. Vladimir Putin will win another six-year term, taking him to 2024 when he will be 71. Trump may or may not be president of the United States at that stage. Probably not. Whether he is or not, who is going to stand up to Putin in his next six-year administration? So far, Trump's Russia-collusion battle has prevented him from making friends with the Russian leader, and the result is that Putin has seized his moment to be as tough and as belligerent as possible. His thinking, I guess, is, "there's no chance of being on good terms with Washington so I might as well be as provocative as I can to throw down the gauntlet now in preparation for when an American president, either Trump or someone else, is prepared to do battle with me or woo me". So, after his reelection this month, I reckon Putin will enjoy a few glory years of building a big military machine, nuclear and conventional, while Washington disappears into further political chaos. Confusion and chaos in Washington is sweet music to a man who enjoys total power in his own country. Trump does not and will never enjoy total power Putin-style and right now the White House is such a mixed-up assortment of personalities, all desperately wondering what on earth they are doing from day to day, that it's a wonder any decisions are made. Last week Putin showed off all his latest nukes and boasted of beng able to send missiles round the world and back again, trying to cause more fear and dismay in Washington. Well, people like Jim Mattis at Defence and Mike Pompeo at the CIA won't have been fooled by that. Russia is probably a long way off from putting these weapons into service and one does wonder, why does Putin want a cruise missile that can go anywhere in the world. Who does he want to hit? But the whole point of Putin's showing off last week was to demonstrate to Trump that he, the president of Russia, can do what the hell he likes - economy-willing - while the president of the United States is stuck in a kind of political anarchy. So I ask again, who is going to stand up to Putin over the next six years?

Trump replies to my blog haha!

It's not true of course. I'm sure Trump doesn't have the time nor the inclination to read my daily blog, athough the large majority of my readers are in the United States. But a week ago I blogged that Trump would look with jealousy at the news that Xi Zinping, his Chinese counterpart, was hoping to become president for life and that it might put ideas into his head. Watch out America, I said. Well, last night in a knockabout speech at a dinner in front of a bunch of journalists, Trump mused about the Chinese leader's ambition which had been leaked prematurely by the official Chinese news agency (oops, they are sooooo dead). The governing Chinese communist party is due to make a ruling, abolishing the current two-term limit for Xi, at a meeting later this week. These are Trump's words: "He's now president for life. He was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we will have to give that a shot some day." You see? I told you so. I just knew Trump would have thought of that. OK, it was part of a jokey address in which he had fun mocking Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, and Jeff Sessions, his "by his fingertips" attorney general. But you know what they say about jokes? There's always a serious message in there somewhere. So, my wonderful American friends, prepare yourselves for President-for-Life Trump! Only joking.

Trump shows his steel

Trump's abrupt 25 per cent tariff on imports should have taken no one by surprise. He said he would do it during his campaigning as part of his America First policy. Certainly, Carl Icahn, one of his billionaire buddies and a former adviser, wasn't taken by surprise. He sold millions of steel-linked shares a week before the Trump announcement from the White House, according to the Washington Post. A very smart and prescient move I would say. He sold more than $31 million worth of shares in a company that makes cranes at $32-$34 a share, the paper said after checking the official share filings. After the Trump announcement the shares in that company dropped to $26 a share. I wonder how many other smart investors did the same. I make no other comment. Except to say it looks like many of Trump's advisers were totally against the foreign steel import tariff but he ignored them because he thought tariffs would be beautiful and easy and terrific and would be welcomed by every steel company in the US, never mind that the rest of the world is in uproar and threatening retaliatory tariffs on all kinds of things. This is called a trade war in normal parlance but Trump thinks a trade war will be fun and that the US will win win win. In other words America First is beautiful, and allies and trading partners can go hang. We should expect nothing less from a president who is slowly ticking off the promises he made during the election campaign. If one of his main White House economic advisers, Gary Cohen, resigns, as seems likely, I doubt Trump will worry too much but he might find it incredibly difficult to persuade anyone to replace him. As General John Kelly so perfectly put it when asked how he got his job as White House chief of staff, he replied: "God punished me."

No Hope at the White House

Resignation speeches are always wonderful to hear when anything but the real reason is given. Hope Hicks, the incredibly young director of communications at the White House and a long-time devotee of Donald Trump, explained that she had decided to leave her job because she thought she had accomplished everything she could in her role and that there was never a perfect moment to resign. That statement comes right off the dusty shelf of readymade resignation explanations. It's almost as common as the one that says he or she wants to spend more time with his or her family. Hope Hicks couldn't use that one because she is only 29. You have to be at least 50 to come up with that one. So she went for the "I've done everything I came here to do" resignation cliche. General John Kelly thought she was the smartest 29-year-old around in the White House. It sounds like he will miss her. Almost as much as he misses his former close aide, Rob Porter who turned out, allegedly, to be a one-time wife-beater. He resigned last month. Kelly was very sad to see him go. So, too, was Hope Hicks, who is "romantically linked" to him. So, no more, "see you in the office, darling." Except that now Hope has also resigned, the two of them can plot their future together without the encumbrance of having Trump breathing down their necks. Hope Hicks was Trump's fourth communications director in 14 months which is some going. By all accounts she was terrific at standing up for Trump but not particularly forthcoming when communicating to the press. Indeed, she was known as a bit of an enigma, keeping to herself and speaking to the media as infrequently as possible. Mind you, that's what the Washington papers said. The truth is probably that she had selected reporters she spoke to off the record in secret phone calls. I have no proof of that but after working as a foreign correspondent in Washington for three years I do know how the White House crew works under all administrations. They are the worst leakers of the lot, sometimes giving away genuine classified information to some favoured reporters. Just jealousy on my part, of course. Being a "foreign" journalist no one in the White House whispered secrets to me and I never expected it, but was always flabbergasted when the New York Times or Washington Post splashed a story that patently broke every official secrets system in the book, such as the NYT story about how the US and Israel had planted a virus called Stuxnet into Iran's nuclear programme. Terrific story but what a betrayal of a secret intelligence scoop. So farewell Hope Hicks, may your future be bright. As for the White House, it is now officially Hopeless.

Putin's new nukes

Vladimir Putin, like Donald Trump, likes a good show, and by golly, did he have one today! He stood before the nation and delivered his annual address, focusing much of it on a new array of fancy, exotic nuclear missile systems to scare the living daylights out of the US. "Look what I've got, so don't underestimate me," he as good as said. Certainly, if the weapon systems really do exist and really do do what he claims they do, then the Russian rocket scientists have been busy over the last few years. In Putin's case, it IS rocket science. The Russian leader was clearly enjoying himself, backing up his speech with glorious sci-fi-type videos of missiles wooshing all over the world. Impressive but also rather infantile. We know Putin is spending as much money as the wavering Russian economy allows on rebooting the military, and he has a fixation on nuclear missiles because that enables him to claim that Russia is a military superpower which has to be respected. Trump, of course, is doing the same, continuing the nuclear modernisation progamme begun by Barak Obama. But Trump hasn't yet spoken to the nation with Whizz Bang stuff going on on a screen behind him. I suspect that's what he will do next, perhaps after his planned military parade. Meanwhile, Putin has stolen the limelight with his prototype nuclear-powered missiles that can fly around the globe without limit. A cruise missile that is powered by a nuclear reactor!! Really? Is that possible? I hope the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) is keeping up with this development because if it's true, the Americans will have to do the same - a missile with a nuclear warhead one end and a nuclear power plant at the other. This is arms racing at its worst, but there seems to be no way round it. With relations between Moscow and Washington at such a low ebb - and who would have believed it after Trump's initial charm offensive with Moscow? - there is absolutely no chance of two sensible leaders getting together at a summit and talking about arms restraint and missile cutbacks. Gone are those days, although, so far, the treaty limits that exist already are being adhered to - apart from what appears to be a blatant breach of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty by Russia with their too-long-range cruise missile. Today it's all about military macho power and that is potentially dangerous for all of us. Putin made it clear he would be ready to use nuclear weapons if he had to. At the age of 65, Putin seems to have a new lease of life. But then he knows he will win the next election for a further term as president and throwing a few nukes around, even if only on video, is a helluva easy way to remind the Russian people that he's the boss.