THERE is an Elizabethan play called 'It's a Mad World My Masters', a title which the veteran foreign correspondent John Simpson chose as an appropriate one for a book of his on world affairs The world is becoming increasing irrational. Let me take some examples

The USA has just dropped the biggest non nuclear bomb that has ever been used, on a complex of caves in Afghanistan said to be used by Islamic State.

Is it even in the interests of the US to use what is obviously a terrorist weapon?Obviously not : world wide public opinion polling has revealed that world opinion regards the US as the chief threat to world peace.

This will strengthen that perception and the West generally is likely to face an increased level of terrorist attacks as a result. And the use of such a weapon underlines the US contempt for international law. For the US as the world's most powerful state can do what it likes, when it likes and how it likes. If it can secure the support of the UN, all well and good: but if it can't it will go ahead regardless as it did in Iraq. And it will do what it wants even if by doing so it harms its own interests Like a boa constrictor it can eat itself.

Look what is happening over North Korea. The US has sent a threatening flotilla to intimidate North Korea into cancelling its proposed nuclear test. If North Korea is not intimidated, then what? The US will regard itself as losing face if it does nothing. We're on the possible brink of something very dangerous. But the position of the US is completely irrational: the US has nuclear weapons which are capable of reaching North Korea. So what if North Korea has nuclear missiles capable of reaching the US? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, surely?

If North Korea should not have nuclear weapons, neither should the US. If the US and the West claim as they do that their nuclear weapons exist to protect them from attack, why can't North Korea use the same argument? Irrationality is the judging of the actions of others by different criteria than you judge your own.

In a rational world, one of the overriding aims would be to get rid of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction as a preliminary to negotiating a completely disarmed world. But there is no prospect of that happening. Under the terms of the Non Proliferation Treaty, which the nuclear powers have signed, they are supposed to enter into negotiations to rid themselves of such weapons. Are they entering into such negotiations? Of course not. The nuclear powers including, of course our own, are determined to hold on to the weapons that North Korea can't be allowed to have while pretending to believe in multilateral nuclear disarmament. It is a mad world my master.

Malcolm Pittock

St James Avenue

Bolton