Letters | 27 October 2016

Bear baiting

Sir: I couldn’t agree more with Rod Liddle’s exposé of western politico-militaristic hypocrisy (‘Stop the sabre-rattling’, 22 October). We’ve already poked the Russian bear way too hard — unnecessarily so. What Rod could have also highlighted was that Nato has spread so far eastwards that it’s a blessed surprise the next world war hasn’t already started.

It almost did in 1962 when Khrushchev tried to move nuclear missiles into Cuba. The same principle applies to what ‘we’ are doing now — frontline, aggressive technologies, nuclear-implied, established in the old Soviet states of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and even Poland. In Moscow, the memory of 20 million dead Russians and their cities razed to the ground by the Nazi war machine is still fresh. How can anybody be surprised that Putin has drawn a line in the sand with regard to Kiev and Sebastopol becoming American fortresses? In his mind he is ultimately defending his country — no different from John F. Kennedy. Moreover, the Chinese are in full accord with him. If I could wave a wand to bring back Nixon to calm it all down, I would. As Mr Liddle illustrates, it is a real worry that we have nobody capable of proper realpolitik at the moment.

J.B. Cowper

Maidenhead

On the bright side

Sir: Matt Ridley’s article ‘Climate of ignorance’ (22 October) brought back memories of the climate-change debate 15 years ago. As someone professionally engaged in translating climate-change science to a corporate audience in the early 2000s, I was able to record some of the results of the Third Assessment Report of the International Panel on Climate Change; to wit, that increased atmospheric CO2 levels were expected to significantly increase agricultural productivity. Strangely, these positive impacts of greenhouse gas emissions were, to my knowledge, ignored by the media and other commentators at the time.