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When it comes to Russia and America, nuclear weapons are old footage. They seem to belong in another time, when the old guard would stand atop Lenin's Mausoleum and watch SS20s trundling through Red Square. Or fresh-faced soldiers in their midwestern silos practising their dual-key launches. It was an era of Doctor Strangelove and MAD - mutually assured destruction. Presidents - we were often reminded - travelled with the nuclear codes.

I remember, as a Canadian correspondent, reporting from the Minot Air Force base in North Dakota, watching the B52s - those mammoths of the sky - mount their daily patrols. At the North American Aerospace Defense Command in Cheyenne Mountain they ran a simulated attack with a mission-control voice announcing "multiple missiles inbound towards continental North America". Even with that voice wiped of any emotion it was possible to contemplate nuclear annihilation.

And then as the Cold War faded those images seemed to belong to the past. They lost their potency. War with Russia was unthinkable, let alone a nuclear exchange. The demonstrations in favour of nuclear disarmament ebbed away too. It was easier to protest against America than North Korea or Iran. And Russian leaders like Vladimir Putin were men you could do business with - so judged George W Bush.

Yet for all the lowering of rhetoric and the flowering of co-operation, reducing nuclear arsenals has proved surprisingly difficult. When President Obama and President Medvedev sign a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in Prague this week it will be the most comprehensive arms reduction in nearly two decades.

And it was hard grind. There were ten rounds of talks between Russia and the United States. The presidents had at least 14 phone calls. Time and again when a deal seemed struck a late objection or an added line threatened to derail the entire effort.

We have not yet seen the entire text, but deployed strategic warheads are to be capped at 1,550. That is down from 2,200. The number of deployed launchers are to be limited to 800 - that's half the number permitted at present. There will be 18 inspections a year. Monitoring and verification are the big winners.

There is plenty the new treaty doesn't cover. Russia and the United States can still wipe each other out many times over. The deal does not cover thousands of tactical weapons and neither does it address the stockpiles that are not deployed. And conservatives in both countries could still block ratification.

Yet this is much more than about numbers. President Obama is rewriting the nuclear doctrine. He has renounced the development of new atomic weapons. They will only be considered for use in "extreme circumstances". President Bush wanted a new generation of atomic warheads, but Congress would not go along with him.

Potential targets will be fewer. Nukes will not be used against non-nuclear countries even if they use chemical or biological attack. (That assurance does not extend to those countries which refuse to sign the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - such as North Korea and Iran.)

Part of all this is aimed at shaping world opinion as the United States presses for further sanctions against Iran. It is easier to argue against Iran acquiring such weapons when America is scaling back.

Soon after he was elected I recall President Obama promising to hit the "reset" button with Russia. He has now done that. Moscow says the signing this week is a huge international event. It makes it more likely that Russia will support further sanctions against Iran.

It also paves the way for a nuclear summit which will be held in Washington next week. The Chinese leader Hu Jintao is attending. The momentum could just build towards restoring the battered and much defied NPT.

A year ago a new American president came to Prague with a dream that Nobel prizes are made of. "The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War," said President Obama. "As a nuclear power, and as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the US has a moral responsibility to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."

That ambition will not be realised during Barack Obama's presidency nor any we can forsee. It may never be realised. The United States will never give up its arsenal while other countries have weapons of mass destruction. And even if no weapons existed nuclear knowledge cannot be unlearnt. But in the view of the White House it strengthens the president's hand in building up international pressure on Iran, in what President Sarkozy calls its "mad race" towards nuclear power status.

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