There’s something faintly undignified about a president of the United States being goaded by a minor Russian official into making nuclear threats on social media.
But that’s exactly what President Donald Trump has now done by ordering the repositioning of two US nuclear submarines, allowing himself to appear rattled by the hollow saber-rattling of Dmitry Medvedev, an outspoken but long-sidelined former Russian president.
In a series of bombastic posts on social media, Medvedev, who has styled himself as a virulent anti-Western critic in recent years, slammed Trump’s soon to expire deadline on Russia for a peace deal in Ukraine, saying that each new ultimatum was a “step towards war” – not between Russia and Ukraine, but “with his own country.”
The US president should remember “how dangerous the fabled ‘Dead Hand’ can be,” Medvedev wrote, in a provocative reference to Russia’s Soviet-era automatic nuclear retaliation system, which can initiate the launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles if it detects a nuclear strike.
Trump’s own secretary of state, Marco Rubio, played down the Russian’s recent posts, pointing out that Medvedev isn’t a decision-maker in Moscow anymore. It is a view shared by many Russians, for whom Medvedev is widely seen as politically irrelevant, with little authority, let alone the power to launch a nuclear strike.
