THE apparent widespread international paranoia expressed by Graeme McCormick's New Jersey Republican in a polling station encounter on the banks of Loch Lomond (Letters, May 12) may or may not lead President Obama's successor into to yet another disastrous foreign war.

What we do know for certain however, is that in the preparatory discussions around the forthcoming UK 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), the UK is building in assumptions that UK forces will be involved. It is likely that the constant expeditionary warfare mode that underpinned David Cameron's and Gordon Brown's and Tony Blair's UK foreign and defence policies seems set to continue.

Given that the SNP, as the third-largest party in the Commons, will have a voice in the discourse around the eventual shape of the 2015 SDSR it will be interesting to see if the SNP takes the opportunity to develop a critique of what is a dysfunctional UK defence policy.

As Gordon Wilson, a former leader of the SNP who has more than a passing acquaintance with Westminster procedures has pointed out, the SNP will now have the resources over the next period to review and revise important aspects of the policies contained in the pre referendum white paper for round two, whenever that will occur. Some of course will contest this, however what is uncontestable is the fact that the SNP has a clear mandate to develop a critique of Britain's foreign adventures which helps generate rather than address insecurity in the UK.

Bill Ramsay,

84 Albert Avenue, Glasgow.

WAR and the preparation for war is good for business, that is if you are a shareholder in the armaments industry or those who supply consumables to our armed forces. Hot on the heels of our connivance with the United States in the destabilisation of the Middle East I am becoming increasingly concerned about the ramping up of anti-Russian propaganda. My eye was caught by your headline "British jets sent to intercept Russian spy plane as tensions with NATO increase" (The Herald, May 13). It is only on reading the article one finds that the Russian plane was in international airspace adjacent to its own coastline and the RAF planes were hundreds of miles distant from our own shores as part of a Nato screen set up deliberately to intercept and monitor all aircraft leaving Russian airspace. Were the situation reversed we would rightly be aggrieved at Russian interceptors shadowing our planes leaving UK airspace.

We are constantly being subjected to anti-Russian propaganda as to its evil involvement in the likes of Ukraine while at the same time our own self-proclaimed white-knight lethal forays into oil-bearing countries are ignored as are the thousands of innocent lives that were lost as a result and are still being lost. We conveniently overlook that 66,000 of the 250,000 US troops involved in activities outside mainland USA are stationed in European bases and the WMDs they have are deliberately trained at Russia.

Countries never go to war. Wealthy powerful people start wars deliberately, safe in the knowledge that they will not be doing the fighting but simply increasing their wealth and power as a result of conflict. We are brainwashed that we must continue to spend two per cent of GDP on defence when what we are actually doing is channelling our taxes into the bank accounts of defence contractors' many of which are US commercial enterprises or UK scions of them.Could it be that this latest ramping up of tension has some connection to the issue of replacing Trident?

David J Crawford,

Flat 3/3 131 Shuna Street, Glasgow.

I NOTE with interest your report on the concerns of the trade union Unite ("Union's fears over cheap rates for foreign shipbuilders", The Herald, May 12). Could a similar scheme to that which employs foreign workers at lower wages to build our new aircraft carriers not be employed in the banking sector?

Ewan Stevenson,

1 Peacock Avenue, Paisley.