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THE TALK is all of nuclear disarmament. This year is supposed be the year of disarmament, with important work on at least three, maybe four, treaties, and progress on Iran and North Korea. Indeed, the prospects of agreeing in the early new year the first part of this complex jigsaw, a follow-up Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), are good, according to both Washington and Moscow, writes PATRICK SMYTH

Whatever the talk, however, the underlying language and logic remain those of Cold War politics, a combination of mutual distrust and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction – the idea that the best defence consists in convincing certainty not of defeat but annihilation of the one to throw the first punch.