President clumsily shows he has no strategy for Putin

Donald Trump's blundering nuclear rhetoric reveals a lack of policy when it comes to handling Moscow, says Keir Giles

- Keir Giles

US president Donald Trump claims to have ordered a redeployment of nuclear submarines in response to threatening language from Moscow. Predictably, the US and global media have reacted excitedly, without always stopping to consider what, if anything, has happened – and why.

As with Trump’s other comments on Russia, the vague statement raised more questions than answers. Trump claimed he ordered two nuclear submarines (without specifying whether that meant nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered) to be positioned “in the appropriate regions” (without explaining why they would have been somewhere inappropriate to start with).

All of which came in response to a taunt containing a reference to The Walking Dead and a laughing emoji on social media from Dmitry Medvedev, once president of Russia but now enjoying a public persona more akin to a court jester.

Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, seems confident that Medvedev is “not a relevant player in Russian politics”, and yet his trolling has supposedly triggered a change in American nuclear posture. As with so much else in Trumpworld, the explanation probably lies elsewhere.