TV REVIEW : What if U.S. and U.S.S.R. Ban Nuclear Arms?

It sounds like an hour in PBS Hell: Ten mostly unknown foreign policy experts on a panel answering questions put to them by Chicago newsman John Callaway.

But “Dilemmas of Disarmament” rises above its handicaps and provides a number of valuable insights into the complicated realities of nuclear politics (tonight at 10 on Channel 28; Wednesday night at 10 on Channel 24 and at 11 on Channel 50).

Spiced by dramatized newscasts filed by Bill Kurtis, the discussion is based on the let’s-pretend premise that it’s 1991 and the United States and the Soviet Union have suddenly announced that they have tentatively agreed to abolish all of their nuclear weapons.

That utopian scenario seems like it should bring joy to anyone to the left of Dr. Strangelove. But be forewarned: Despite Callaway’s effusive cheerleading for such a treaty, the former ambassadors, White House advisers and arms experts assembled for this Chicago Council of Foreign Relations educational affair take turns dumping bipartisan buckets of ice-cold realism on it.

SALT II negotiator Paul Warnke says such an arms treaty is not only “totally unrealistic” but it would make the world a more dangerous place. Physicist Richard Garwin says it would be a sign that our leaders had decided that their popularity was more important than democracy or our national security.

The panelists are unanimously and relentlessly critical, skeptical or cynical. Such a treaty couldn’t possibly be verified or enforced properly, Warnke says. The Soviets would cheat, Soviet-born scholar Dimitri Simes says. Taking away the U.S. nuclear umbrella in Western Europe might make a conventional war more likely in Western Europe. Anyway, the French and British would never give up their nukes.

There are probably about five too many experts to keep track of, and Kurtis overdoes the dramatics at first. But Callaway--once you get used to him--does a decent job as moderator and serves tirelessly as advocate of the politically naive and hopeful.

“Dilemmas” is so one-sided, it could persuade Dr. Benjamin Spock that complete superpower denuclearization is the worst idea since the neutron bomb. But for anyone interested enough in the topic to hang in there, the briskly edited production of WTTW-TV in Chicago is educational and thought-provoking.