We have got used to thinking that the nuclear threat has become a thing of the cold-war past.

I don’t want to worry you, but it clearly hasn’t.

The war in Syria has become a playground for military powers of every description, and amid the tangled web of mutual destruction the usual two ‘super-powers’, the old cold-war protagonists, Russia and the US, have both seen fit to ‘intervene’. So far they have managed to sustain a shaky and hardly convincing alliance, which has, for all its destructiveness, given us some faint hope that they might achieve some sort of entente, even if it falls short of being quite cordiale.

But things are going badly wrong. Russia sees an opportunity to strengthen its influence outside its accustomed borders by upgrading its base in Syria to a permanent one, with nuclear capability. I’ll repeat that — a permanent base with nuclear capability. In Tartus, Syria. On the East Coast of the Mediterranean.

One can easily see why they would want to, given that according to the dominant mythology nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent, and given that, allegedly, their base was recently attacked by ISIS, and also given that NATO has for some time been placing its own nuclear capability close to the Russian border in states that used to belong to the Soviet Union (having previously give assurances that it would do no such thing).

But remember that American (and British) warplanes are operating, supposedly ‘alongside’ the Russian forces, and at bottom they are still competing for influence. One wonders what would happen should their interests begin to diverge to the point where direct confrontation became unavoidable. Mr Putin has evidently been wondering the same thing and has made his position clear: any attack by the US on Russian planes could trigger a nuclear response (I forget his exact words — they were in Russian anyway).

So that, one might think, is that. Russia has a base in Syria which it is using for its Syrian ‘operations’. That base has a nuclear capability. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent (that’s why we have Trident, right?). So the West and the rest may as well go home. Russia has the situation in hand. Game, set, and match.

Well, not exactly. Here’s a little riddle: when is a deterrent not a deterrent? Answer: when it’s the other side that has it.

So there are now calls from conservative MPs for a ‘no fly zone’ to be imposed by the US and its allies (i.e. the UK) to limit the activity of Russian planes. The same Russian planes that, if attacked, could trigger a nuclear response.

Does Armageddon loom, or doesn’t it? You decide. But here’s a hint: what could be a better outcome for ISIS than the culmination of its death-wish in a nuclear conflagration beginning in the middle-east? Perhaps November 5 would be a good day for it.