No poodle
From Dr Jeremy Stocker Sir: If John Laughland (Tutin the poodle', 9 October) is to claim 'relentless US expansionism' and 'the West's appetite for [Russian] servility', he needs to demonstrate rather more convincing evidence than the conspiracy theories we are offered.
To deal with just a few of his strategic misjudgments: US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty does not 'render the Russian nuclear deterrent useless'. No American defence system will be capable of countering the hundreds of nuclear missiles remaining in Russia's inventory. It is not true that the accession of the Baltic states to Nato 'puts the West's military arsenal within 40 miles — and a few seconds — of St Petersburg'. Just which Nato weapons capable of covering that distance in that time does Mr Laughland believe are positioned in Estonia'? (Real answer: none.) To cap it all, to suggest that a (not unrealistic) CIA intelligence assessment predicting a possible break-up of Russia could itself encourage such an event is absurd. That type of influence lies well beyond the wildest fantasy of any spook, in Washington or elsewhere.
Does the British Helsinki Human Rights Group (of which Mr Laughland is a trustee) have nothing better to say about either Russia or the (apparently monolithic) 'West"?
Jeremy Stocker
Centre for Defence and International Security Studies, Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
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