Jonathan Stevenson of Mystic, Conn., spends a lot of time thinking about such unthinkable things as nuclear arsenals and counterterrorism. As a professor of strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College in Providence, he's paid to do this. As an author, he has the ability to explain these daunting but too often ignored subjects to the general reader. Indeed, his Learning from the Cold War: Rebuilding America's Strategic Vision for the 21st Century (Penguin) just won the Connecticut Book Award for nonfiction.

Stevenson agrees that the United States has experienced a sea change presidential election, one with an immediate impact on nuclear diplomacy. Unlike Pres. Bush, Pres. Obama has made nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation a priority. In April, he gave a widely praised speech in Prague on this issue. In September, he chaired a U.N. Security Council summit, which approved his resolution for achieving "a world without nuclear weapons."

These were positive steps, of course, but does Obama have anything to show for it? Stevenson told me, "The election of Pres. Obama so far does not seem to have affected a comparable shift in the threat of nuclear proliferation. His desire to 'get to zero' has certainly inspired more talk of nuclear abolition from serious players — like Ivo Daalder, the U.S. ambassador to NATO. But Iran still appears unwilling to curb its ambitions to develop a nuclear weapons capability, while North Korea seems intransigent about advancing its capability, and those two countries remain the biggest threats to the non-proliferation regime."

The most hopeful area of progress, he notes, is with the Cold War villain Russia. Given their "vastly superior nuclear arsenals," the U.S. and Russia still dominate the nuclear arena. Any substantive disarmament begins and ends with them.

"The mood music between the U.S. and Russia has undoubtedly improved on the heels of Obama's speech, owing to a concerted effort on the part of the administration to 'reset' U.S.-[Former] Soviet relations. Perhaps the most substantial incentive Moscow has to work with the U.S. was Obama's downgrading of missile-defense in Eastern Europe. The more robust Bush version of this was viewed by Russia as degrading to its nuclear deterrent and therefore provocative."

Stevenson points to talks that began in Geneva last month between the U.S. and Russia about renewing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START 1), which expires on December 5. "Renewal, of course, would not constitute abolition," says Stevenson. "But an ongoing dialogue would revive the arms-control tradition that the Bush administration disdained, which is required for incremental progress towards abolition."

While some might feel that the U.S. has become obsessed with Iran, which doesn't have a nuclear arsenal (yet), Stevenson sees Tehran as the wild card in any talks, especially in the wake of a roundly criticized election.

"Domestic discord has not appreciably tempered Tehran's nuclear ambitions," he says. "The fact that the flawed election and public protests put the Ahmadenijad government on the defensive domestically has made it harder to deal with. Signals that this is the case include not only recalcitrance on nuclear matters but Iran's ongoing political and material support for Hezbollah and Hamas."

But in obsessing over Iran, we may be forgetting about Pakistan.

"Pakistan poses the greater present danger," said Stevenson, adding, "The conventional wisdom is that the Pakistani military has been sufficiently de-Islamized in its upper ranks that the nuclear arsenal is reasonably secure."

Read the full talk with the author on the Blogbort, at hartforddvocate.com.