Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh are clearly fine people. Their dignity and rapport can only do much good to a US-India relationship, which has plummeted, despite many good people on both sides. Talbott has articulated his views clearly on what India needs to do, at his speech to the Brookings Institution on December 12 - mentioning specifically five points. But before doing so he reiterated that the 'starting point for diplomacy is that India and Pakistan need security, they deserve security, and they have a right to determine what is necessary to attain security'. Having said that, the sincerity of these words have to be matched against Talbott's third point (of the five mentioned), where he has urged India and Pakistan to 'consider strategic restraint measures, a package of prudent constraints on the development, flight testing and storage of missiles, and also on the basing of nuclear-capable aircraft'. In making this suggestion, Talbott has taken a giant leap from the field of diplomacy into the field of nuclear strategy.