The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor
by William Langewiesche
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, HK$330
Since September 11, 2001, US politicians - usually in an effort to justify some sort of spending or legislation - have warned Americans of the threat of a nuclear bomb exploding in a large city. The federal government has dedicated millions of dollars to installing radiation detectors, and many first responders have received training to deal with a nuclear aftermath.
Few have asked, however, how likely it is that a terrorist group or poor nation could come into possession of a nuclear weapon.
William Langewiesche is one of those few and The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor, cobbled together from his reporting for The Atlantic Monthly, attempts to answer that question. With an investigation that takes the reader from Pakistan to the mountains of Kurdistan, Langewiesche explores a nuclear underground that includes rogue nations, terrorist groups and a nuclear poor who believe they have just as much of a right to nuclear weapons as the US and Russia.
Langewiesche argues that many poorer nations are tired of an apparent hypocritical stance by the major powers: that it is fine for states such as Britain, Israel, the US and Russia to build and maintain nuclear weapons while they are denied the right. Nuclear programmes like those in North Korea and Iran may one day become the norm, not the exception, and we should prepare ourselves for a world in which these weapons will spread and may also be used.