NB: Russia has not hesitated to attack the UK -- a member of NATO -- with chemical weapons, largely because they felt like it and knew they'd get away with it. Let me quote a friend who will not allow me to use his name:
"We should be clear on what has happened here: the Russian state has murdered a British subject on British soil. A mother of three children is dead, and the Russian government — including its dictator — is to blame.
"Set aside what Britain will do. It is an enervated and weak state that will never summon the wherewithal to expel the Russian money that undergirds so much of its capital’s economy. Ask instead what America will do.
"Ask what the guarantor of the world order that largely deters this sort of murder and assassination campaign in its developed core will do. Ask what America will do, knowing that if America does nothing, then this sort of thing comes to America next."
And it will. Indeed, we are seriously considering the possibility today, on the 18th of July, only ten days after my friend -- let us call him X -- wrote these words.
