If you want a better understanding of nuclear proliferation and what can be done to prevent it, read George Perkovich’s review of Gordon Corera’s Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity, and the Rise and Fall of the A.Q. Khan Network.
An assessment of the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction should be preceded by an intelligence analysis of the programs to develop WMD’s and an estimate of the current and projected status of the program – a question which the Bush administration never even asked. (Had it done so, the administration might have realized that incomplete programs do not constitute an immanent threat.)
In his brief review, Perkovich (vice President for studies at the Carnegie endowment for international Peace) gives a concise picture of how Pakistani engineer A.Q. Khan developed a program to build nuclear weapons:
Unfortunately, life is more complicated. As the BBC reporter Gordon Corera vividly narrates in his fine new "Shopping for Bombs," it was prosperous Western engineers and business people who eagerly provided the wares that Khan marketed, and it was largely governments from the "advanced" world, including the United States, that failed to correct the weaknesses in export rules that Khan's network exploited. Khan was a brilliant shopper, trade expediter and salesman, not a great technologist. Now exposed as an arms peddler and confined to his villa in Islamabad, he is certainly an egomaniacal and amoral man, but the systemic dangers he represents are far larger than any one person.
The network took decades to build. Khan, a metallurgist, left the Netherlands for Pakistan in the 1970s, armed with nuclear centrifuge designs and parts stolen from his employers at a Dutch engineering firm, as well as lists of the manufacturers of components for a uranium-enrichment plant. That's important because nuclear export controls work like a filter: Rulemakers decide which components should be controlled and then set the gauge of the filter to catch them. With his eager vendors' connivance, Khan realized that these controls could be bypassed by trading subcomponents that would pass undetected through the filters. …
At a time when we are all looking for evidence of intelligence failures, the book also tells a story of - partial – intelligence success:
"Shopping for Bombs" is more than the fast-paced story of an alarming proliferation network and the conditions that let it flourish. Corera also offers a fascinating, detailed account of how Libya surprised the world with its undetected nuclear acquisitions and how the United States and Britain secretly persuaded Moammar Gaddafi to verifiably give them up.
That proved to be a major turning point for Khan. Washington and London had started getting detailed intelligence on the surprising extent of his network's activities in 2000, but before taking action against it, U.S. and British intelligence agencies wanted to learn more "to be sure that all the tentacles were under surveillance. Otherwise they could simply go underground and emerge soon after in a new -- and unknown -- form." But then came the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf suddenly became a key helper in the U.S.-led war against al-Qaeda. Pressing Musharraf to put Khan out of business would have to wait.
Looks like a great read. Thanks, Gordon, for your book; George, for your review; and all those intelligence analysts who painstakingly described the A.Q. Khan network and program. And shame on all those manufactures of components.
NOTE: This post linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for 10/19/06
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