The Atomic Bazaar, by William Langewiesche

The key to this book lies in the sub-title: "the rise of the nuclear poor". While part of it is about the risk of paramilitary groups acquiring nuclear weapons, possibly from insecure bits of the decaying Russian nuclear apparatus, the real concern is with the lessons from the AQ Khan episode in Pakistan. Khan, educated in Pakistan and the Netherlands, had become a successful metallurgist with the leading European producer of uranium enrichment centrifuges. Taking much knowledge and not a little equipment back to Pakistan in the mid-1970s, he then became the key person in Pakistan's nuclear programme.

The core of The Atomic Bazaar lies not so much with the story of Pakistan's programme, revealing though that is, but how Khan later spread the technologies to other countries, including North Korea, Libya and Iran. Behind this proliferation lies the central hypocrisy of the nuclear age.

Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the five "mature" nuclear powers (the US, Russia, China, France and Britain) are required, at some unspecified date, to go for serious nuclear disarmament. Cutbacks at the end of the Cold War never extended to the possibility of full nuclear disarmament. Instead, the five insist they are sensible enough to keep and modernise their arsenals, but that this is unacceptable for others. Israel is an acknowledged exception – a cause of much resentment in the Arab world – and India and Pakistan have been reluctantly accepted as members of the club. Much effort will be expended to control North Korea and there may even be military strikes to bring Tehran under control.

As William Langewiesche sees it, none of this will work for two reasons. One is that there is too much knowledge out there – given the political will and enough time, even some poorer countries can develop as Pakistan did. This is made easier as many weapons technologies are paralleled by civil nuclear programmes. The other reason is that the nuclear poor, excluded from the big boys' club, will be happy to cooperate. North Korea gave Pakistan missile technology in exchange for uranium enrichment equipment.

Time is catching up on the nuclear elite. Either they embrace the idea of a nuclear-free world or they face a thoroughly unstable international disorder with a score or more nuclear powers. Langeweische's achievement is to show up this predicament in an uncompromising manner, and to do so in what is – surprisingly for such a topic – a rattling good read.

Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University

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