The recent Russia-U.S. summit bore the first strategic arms reduction movement in seven years. This was duly dangled before the world’s eyes as an achievement, something to sing and dance about; Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama gazing out into a new world – as Shaun Walker, for the Independent dubbed it, a “post-Cold War world.”

Yet amid the furor fired up by the handshake of the world’s two most atomically-armed men, is it not time to pinch ourselves again? Why are we still talking such non-stop nuclear nonsense?

“In the mutual understanding… it is said that our two countries can have from 1,500 to 1,675 [nuclear] warheads.”

A gleeful smile of the Russian president as he so assiduously enunciates the phrase “mutual understanding.” Russia and America agree, hallelujah! The Cold War is over – apparently. Yet, lurking but milli-seconds behind that smile is the payload of this “mutual understanding”: the cold, hard facts and figures.

Let’s restate the truism: 1,500 nuclear warheads are enough to destroy the nucleus of every country on the planet, twice, nay thrice over. Now, double that. Why is it we need this power? Have we completely forgotten that we owe our shoddy little existences to those that erected the great cities long before we were just a twinkle in our daddy’s eye? Do we laugh at those that laid down their lives in defence of an idea, of a dream for a better world; those that still do? Why do we need to be able to undo 4000 years of the only civilization known to the most advanced civilization known to man - in the blink of an eye?

How many times is it we need to be able to destroy the world before we realise its probably not a good idea anyway?

“Because we must have a deterrent, sir,” the highfalutin politician begins hectoring. Or, in Medevedev’s own words: “this [ability to exterminate the earth] is a basic element of our mutual security”. Yes, and hasn’t the deterrent deterred so well. Hasn’t all our security been so comprehensively guaranteed. In an age when the foe we fear so can’t be tracked down after countless billions has been spent searching every shadowy cave on the planet, where exactly do we point our ICBMs?

How well did the U.S. deterrent deter the highjackers of 9/11? The same for Russia: the 1999 Moscow bombings, the 2002 Moscow theatre crisis? What use were Britain’s Tridents on 7/7? Did the “terrorists” worry about the nuclear-backed ramifications of their actions? Or perhaps they should have worried that nuclear missiles might have been fired at, say, the Twin Towers, Moscow city centre, or, harrowingly, Tavistock Square to foil them.

Today’s foe is a symptom of today’s world. Gone are the days when fleets laden with metal would storm beaches bristling with yet more metal. Those days are gone; long may they never return. Today’s foe ‘tweets’ commands round the world faster than it takes to push even the “red button.” Today’s foe grows up safe in the knowledge he himself is protected by ‘the bomb’ – a clear paradox.

Nuclear weapons, having endowed a world free of conventional invasion, have themselves become obsolete, especially in the numbers bounded about so frivolously at the top. The logical criticism that if we were to rid ourselves of the most convenient means of destroying ourselves, man would just set sail again for Normandy, the slaughter fields of yesteryear rearing their bloody-thirsty heads once more. Indeed, this is a valid point: the complete abandonment of nuclear weapons is a pipe dream, quixotic. No one wants another Somme.

But when Barack Obama acknowledges: “It is very difficult for us to exert that leadership [on states pursuing nuclear weapons programmes] unless we are showing ourselves willing to deal with our own nuclear stockpiles in a more rational way,” why are we still mincing around with such incremental decreases in the arsenals? Why not take a stand and say, “OK, there are rational arguments for a minimalist nuclear complement, but that figure should never be able to - in and of itself - endanger the very existence of humanity. Any other number is at best crass; at worst, nihilist.

So much has been written about Barack Obama’s calls for change. He has himself stated that “America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons”. This is admirable speak, but for others to be wildly proclaiming that the cold war is over; that peace, love and fraternity have embraced relations between the two great atomic behemoths is but mere fantasy speak. The warheads remain; the guillotine yet looms over all our heads. And, until those missiles lie limp and impotent, we must all keep screaming “stop the nuclear nonsense, stop it now”