Apply the post-truth methodology to a state’s primary media function—justifying war—and you can easily foresee Russia using a 100 megaton device against the US to ‘equalize’ the balance of power, and then simply maintaining that the US started a war. After all, truth is inaccessible in a post-truth environment. Like in a fundamentalist church, all you have is a series of competing ‘claims’.
It’s not only not far fetched, they already do this WITHIN the state, as with the Russian Apartment Bombings. They’ve been doing it internationally with Crimea, Chechnya, and Ukraine. So why *wouldn’t* they make a bid for dominance in a world their ‘strongman’ type regards as hostage to the Anglo-American polity?