Smuggling Armageddon: The Nuclear Black Market in the Former Soviet Union and Europe Book

The fall of the Soviet Republic and the resulting economic recession has created a huge surge in illicit activity as a desperate population struggles to simply survive. To those in the West, the most significant factor in this new wave of crime is the illegal movement of nuclear material, documented by Foreign Policy Research Institute associate Rensselaer W. Lee III in Smuggling Armageddon. In a concise report, Lee brings us to the terrifying conclusion that there is genuine cause for alarm. Smuggling Armageddon is meticulously researched and carefully attested to--the author makes it very clear when enough information doesn't exist to draw concrete conclusions. Lee understatedly describes a dichotomy of nuclear crime in the modern-day Soviet states: inept would-be smugglers who sell bogus material coexist with the real threat of high-level corruption and a shadow network with both access to fissionable materials and the ability to move them undetected. Smuggling Armageddon is a wake-up call for the United States, demanding a decisive change in existing counterproliferation strategies. --Brendan J. LaSalle Read More