One Point Safe

by Andrew Cockburn, Leslie Cockburn

When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it exposed a crumbling empire littered with hundreds of tonnes of nuclear material and thousands of nuclear weapons. Across Russia and the former Soviet Union, stocks of plutonium and bomb-grade uranium, as well as a wide variety of nuclear landmines, artillery shells and missile warheads were portable enough to be carried by just three people. The short-range missile warheads, small nuclear bombs, landmines and torpedo warheads could be lifted and carried by a single person and were small enough to fit into a backpack or trunk. In this account, journalists Andrew and Leslie Cockburn show that prospect criminals, extremists or terrorists might easily obtain these weapons, and that the threat from nuclear materials is dangerously real.

Genres: History

Paperback

First published September 8, 1997

About the author

Andrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic and the London Review of Books.

Reviews

[Andrew Donnellan · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who was born after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I found this book an eye-opening insight into one of the less-discussed challenges of superpower collapse. One Point Safe is a fairly easy read and very accessible to a lay person such as myself. Even though it's now twenty years old, the issue of nuclear proliferation has come back into public consciousness, and post-9/11, the nature of international terrorism has changed dramatically - the risks of nuclear theft discussed in the book are as important as ever. The book could go further in some areas - most notably, it doesn't really discuss the risks of unlawful nuclear technology/knowledge transfer at all.

Overall a very interesting read.