That the return of Trump to  the White House has dire implications for European security is widely recognised and much discussed. Ukraine deprived of American support will be forced into subservience to Russia, possibly leaving a free rump around Lviv but obliged to remain outside NATO  and the EU and to be disarmed and therefore, obliged to respect Moscow’s further demands, whatever they may be. Putin will move on to the next stage of his endless war against the West, cold, semi fredo or hot. Possibly the next focus will be Moldova, or demands  for a land corridor into Kalingrad (Danzig, anyone?), or campaigns about Russians in the Baltic states, or more underhand shenanigans in the Baltic Sea, or maybe the arrival of russian troops in Slovakia and  Hungary - by invitation, of course. What is absolutely certain is that Putin will be much emboldened by the arrival of Trump and NATO much weakened.

No doubt Ukraine's European allies will continue to support it even after American wothdr\wal.  But who are those allies? Not Turkey certainly. Hungary and Slovakia are pro Putin. In France, Germany, and Italy there are large and growing minorities up both left wing pacifists and right wing appeasers of Putin, the difference between the two categories not always clear. Only Britain, Poland, the Baltic states and Scandinavian countries are absolutely firm against Russian aggression. That makes the olds look very favourable to Putin, since unlike these European states he does not care about his casualties and does not care about the economic consequences for his own people and is also prepared to take enormous risks.

What I've not seen so far is any discussion about the impact of all this on deterrence theory. From nearly a  century a precarious  nuclear peace has been based on MAD, the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction. According to MAD, no nuclear country dares initiating nuclear war against another,  because even if they strike first, the other country may have  enough nuclear power left to wnsure the destruction of the aggressor  state. (This applies not just for the US versus Russia or China or North Korea, but also India versus Pakistan. It doesn't hold for Israel versus Iran until Iran becomes a nuclear force of its own but then Israel seems to be winning hands down using conventional force). Admittedly a number of world leaders including Putin and blank and Trump at the beginning of his first term,  have suggested they might in some circumstances consider first use. Nevertheless the nuclear peace has held.

The return of Trump to the White House casts  MAD in doubt. Trump's vice president is a vociferous  advocate of American isolationism. Trump himself has already threatened not to honour his NATO  commitment for countries who he thinks aren't spending enough on their own defence.

Imagine a Trump world in which the US has  withdrawn either formally or implicitly from his NATO  commitments, perhaps withdrawn troops from Europe, and Europe itself is much divided between pro and anti Russian states. Imagine pressure from Russia on the anti Russian states to give way,   including the UK –  and Putin hates the UK more than any other country. It might be about continued support for Ukraine or intervention in  Moldova or any other flashpoints of the kind of I’ve described. Suppose there in such circumstance Putin either openly or more likely implicitly threatens first use. We would then know that there was considerable doubt whether America would reply with a nuclear attack on Russia if Russia had launched a nuclear attack on us, particularly if it was just one smallish bomb say on Faslane. And we would know that Putin would know this. And Putin would know that we knew this. In such circumstances the UK government would have to consider the possibility that the only deterrent available was the single UK submarine on patrol. One sub must be extremely vulnerable to concentrated Russian attempts to destroy it. Supposing it were destroyed. There would then be no deterrent at all. UK governments would have to concede to whatever the Russian demands were or face the possibility of a nuclear assault in which it had no nuclear allies at all right  (I'm discounting the French of course] .

My point is not that these nuclear exchanges would actually happen – likely not - but that all parties would realise that they could happen. Whereas  now at the moment such a scenario  is not conceivable, becauses of MAD, which is underwritten by the  US. In other words, the second coming of Trump threatens the end of MAD. And in the circumstances  of Europe at the moment, that gives enormous power to the fascist leader in the Kremlin – wiithout his having to fire a shot.

 I don't think we've begun to think about that. We should.

Somewhere on social media I voiced doubts that the criminal justice system can, in fact, cut reoffending. And - rare event! - a reader emailed me to ask for the evidence. I wrote this in reply.

The case for doubting the ability of correctional services to make significant, permanent reductions in the rate of reoffending is as follows.

1.  Sustained, well resourced programmes to do this have had little, or temporary, effects, here and in New Zealand. See my analyses ;
https://www.julianlevay.com/articles/20-years-of-reducing-re-offending-well-did-it-work
and
https://www.julianlevay.com/articles/nothing-works-again
and on NZ
https://oag.parliament.nz/2016/reoffending
 
2.   Reconviction rates for prisons and probation  have fallen substantially since 2010 ie during exactly the period when both prison and probation servcies were being devastated and reduced to unprecendented chaos by cuts, and in probation,  botched privatisation. Here

3.      Reconviction rates fell similarly over the same period for disposals that have nothing to do with the work of the correctional services eg the fine, discharge. See above also.
 
4.      Reoffending rates are merely a subset of the overall offending rate – the ‘crime rate’. The  crime rate rises and falls hugely, for reasons we cannot know, but which certainly having nothing to do with the criminal justice system. See
 
https://www.julianlevay.com/articles/doubling-prison-numbers-did-not-halve-crime
 
I am not - of course - saying that ‘nothing works’ in reducing reoffending. We know that some interventions do work for some peole for at least a couple of years (longer, we don’t know). But they have to be particularly suitable for those interventions. For the whole mass of offenders, it is doubtful that interventions can make a difference that lasts. Though at the individual level, we should always try to help those offenders who do want to change, or who are suffering because of the same things that push them into crime - homelessness, drugs - but (in my view) for moral reasons (the State has assumed control of them, therefore takes  responsiility for their problems which it arguably doesnt have for a 'free' person). But not as part of social engineering.

And is that  so surprising? A person is shaped by heredity, family upbringing, social circumstances, experience, over perhaps 20 years, their formative years, in ways predisposing them to offending. How likely is it, when society itself is unchanged- or rather, since 2010, has become much tougher, bleaker, and public services have greatly deteriorated  – that a brief course run by prison or probation officers will offset those influences, that in the real world are as strong as ever, or stronger?

Two things interest me out of all this.

One is the way both right leaning policiticans/media and left leaning criminologists/commentators resist - almost without thinking - the evidence that contradicts their beliefs. And not just on crime. On everything. We choose our beliefs, ones we feel ‘comfortable’ with, then sort through the evidence and pick out what supports them. ‘Confirmation bias’, they call it.

The second is what aims and values should the criminal justice system follow, if in fact it is not capable for reducing the crime rate? That is an interesting moral question. Because if the system isnt a machine to produce changes in society, in mass behaviour, surely its only rationale must be moral? Which leads us I suspect to a place equally far from the Guardian and the Mail....