It's being called the most significant arms reduction treaty in nearly 2 decades. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Alexander Medvedev are expected to sign an historic treaty which, if ratified, would reduce the former Cold War rivals' nuclear arsenals by almost a third. The so-called New START treaty is one of a number of arms control initiatives being pushed over the next couple of months. As part of an effort to increase public awareness of the issue, 2 nuclear policy experts are visiting Maine on a tour organized by the Non-proft Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Although they come from very different backgrounds Richard Klass and Ira Helfand share the hope that there will be a breakthrough in the struggle to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world.

"We may be at one of the most important points in the whole nuclear era, because we're moving into an arms control regime that will sigficantly reduce the danger of nuclear weapons," said Klass.

He is a retired US Air Force colonel, a decorated Vietnam veteran who worked on nuclear issues at the Pentagon during the height of the cold war.

As well as promoting the nuclear arms treaty, the White House is planning to release a major policy statement this week on the use of nuclear weapons, and to host a nuclear summitlater this month. Next month, says Klass, an international meeting is planned in New York to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Klass said, "all of a sudden, from not dealing with nuclear issues for a number of years, we're into what we call the nuclear spring, where everything is blooming."

Klass says details of the New START treaty - named after the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991 - are not yet known but the agreement is expected to reduce US and Russian arsenals by nearly a third. He calls this significant given that the countries share 90% of the world's nuclear weapons.

RK: "Right now the US has about 2200 nuclear weapons strategically deployed, the Russians have maybe 2600. This will reduce those numbers to 1550, which is basically a 30 percent or so reduction in the number of nuclear weapons. Plus a reduction in the number of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, and a whole new verification regime aimed at verifying the provisions of this new treaty."

TP: "Dr. Helfand, you're with Physicians for Social Responsibility. What kind of perspective are you giving on this debate from a medical point?

Ira Helfand: "Our concern is to educate people about the consequences of using nuclear weaspons. And it seems at some level this is an unnecessary task - everybody knows that nuclear war will be really terrible, but it turns out that the vast majority of people, including important decision makers, really don't understand fully how a nuclear war would be. And in the last few years there's been new data which indicates that it is even worse than people who look at this professionally had thought. Studies have shown that even a very limited nuclear war - for example between India and Pakistan - would cause worldwide climate destruction, in addition to the horrible destruction that it would cause directly in south Asia. And this climate disruption would cut down on food production worldwide, and we have reason to believe that even a war involving just half of the current Indian and Pakistani arsenals, could lead to up to a billion, with a 'B', a billion deaths worldwide from famine in the aftermath."

Doctor Helfand says concerns over nuclear terrorism, and the prospect of so-called rogue nations developing the bomb, have caused many to forget the threat of nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

Ever since the cold war ended we acted as if that danger went away, but it hasn't. We still have between us thousands of warheads. Most importantly about a thousand warheard on each side are still mounted on missiles aimed at the other country on hair trigger alert," said Helfand.

These warheard, he says, can be launched within 15 minutes and destroy cities in the other country 30 minutes later. According to 2002 a study carried out Physicians for Social Responsibility, even a small scale Russian attack - using less than an 8th of their warheads, would kill 90 million people in the US within half an hour.

Such an apocolyptic scenario came dangerously close to becoming a reality just 15 years ago, says Dr Helfand - all because of a misunderstanding.

"On January 27th, 1995, the U.S. launched a rocket in Norway to study the northern lights. We told the Russians we were going to be doing this, and somebody in Moscow dropped the ball and forgot to notify the military authorities. When they picked up this thing on radar, they thought it might be a US attack on Russia, and for the only time that we know of in the nuclear era, the 'football', the suitcase that the Russian leader carries with him to respond to a nuclear attack was activated," said Helfand. "And Boris Yeltsin who was Russian president at that time, was given 5 minutes to decide what to do. The options ranged from doing nothing to launching a full-scale attack on the U.S. which would have involved about 4,000 warheads."

Once signed, the New START treaty will still have to ratified by a two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate, where Colonel Klass says the role of Maine senators Collins and Snowe will be significant.

He's cautiously optimistic the treaty will pass.

"No-one has come out against the treaty," said Klass. "There are some senators that seem to have negative views but Senator luger, the ranking republican on the foreign relations committee, has indicated his support. And I think most of the senators are waiting to see the actual text of the treaty. We anticipate that there will be some attempts to link modernization of US nuclear weapons to the treaty and perhaps some other conditions. I think most observers believe it will be a hard fight but that it will be won. I believe the prospects look reasonably good so long as it is dealty with as an issue of national security and doesn't get hung up in issues such as the healthcare debate."

Colonel Richard Klass and Dr. Ira Helfand are speaking at 7:30 Monday, April 5, 2010 at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 they'll be in Waterviile and at the University of Maine campus in Orono.