William Langewiesche begins The Atomic Bazaar with a reference to Hiroshima and a chilling, methodical description of exactly how a nuclear blast destroys a city. Literally and figuratively this is overkill. He did not need such a drastic way of attracting attention to his book's true subject: the illicit and unstoppable spread of nuclear weapons to some of the world's most volatile nations. His book insightfully examines the perils created by this leveling of the global playing field.
The Atomic Bazaar originated in The Atlantic Monthly (where Langewiesche was a national correspondent before moving to Vanity Fair) and strings together four separate sections. Its opening glimpses of apocalypse do strike a unifying note of high-stakes danger. Elsewhere he writes about the specifics of smuggling and manufacturing nuclear material; the new kinds of saber rattling that have become possible among mutually antagonistic nations; and the hubris-propelled career of Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's foremost purveyor of nuclear technology. Thanks to Khan's enterprising thefts of information from Dutch centrifuge and uranium-enrichment companies, the same blueprints for disaster have found their way to Libya, North Korea, Brazil, Iraq and Iran.
It is Langewiesche's perspective on these ominous signs that makes his book unusual. "The nuclearization of the world has become the human condition, and it cannot be changed," he writes authoritatively. "Fear of it becomes dangerous when it detracts from realistic assessments of the terrain."
Among those realistic assessments is his idea that we may be entering a period of history when limited nuclear wars are possible. "That is the flip side of proliferation, rarely addressed in public debate," he writes. "The spread of nuclear weapons, even to such countries as North Korea and Iran, may not be as catastrophic as is generally believed and certainly does not meet the category of threat than can justify the suppression of civil liberties of the pursuit of preemptive wars."
What we need, he says, is the clear-eyed vision "to accept the equalities of a maturing world in which many countries have acquired atomic bombs, and some may use them."
Buried within that grim assessment is a curious kind of optimism, bolstered by the kind of tenacious reporting for which this author is well known. In the section of the book called "Nukes Without Nations" he examines the challenges faced by terrorists trying to conduct nuclear attacks. He finds this a tougher job than many an alarmist would expect.
Yes, dangerous information is widely available. About a documentary on raiding a Russian nuclear facility he learns "that a copy was requested by a certain Osama bin Laden, in Brussels, and that no copy was sent — but that's how far you have to go not to get it." As both Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer predicted, the nuclear genie, once uncorked, will never return to its bottle.
But Langewiesche sees real deterrents to terrorist activities, starting with the thought that no government mindful of retaliation would want to see rogue weapons manufactured on its soil. And from the terrorists' viewpoint no government that did allow such activities could be trusted not to confiscate the weapons produced.
The big, noisy, impenetrable cities where bombs could be built — among them Mombasa, Kenya; Karachi, Pakistan; Mumbai, India, and Mexico City, in his estimation — "are urban collectives, ungovernable perhaps, but not necessarily uncontrolled." He suggests that there are as-yet-unexplored ways for battling terrorism by penetrating such places.
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