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The New Nuclear Danger by Helen Caldicott, New Press, $16.95, ISBN 1565847407

IF George W. Bush didn’t have Osama bin Laden, he would have had to invent him. In 1999, the US President-to-be complained that when he was growing up during the cold war he knew who the enemy was. “Today we’re not so sure who they are, but we know they’re there,” he said.

Now he knows who the enemy is once more, and what to do about it. The Bush administration has used the 11 September attacks on the US to argue for the abandonment of weapons-control treaties and for a massive increase in military spending.

It’s a bonanza for what President Eisenhower called “the military industrial complex”, the hugely powerful web linking private defence companies with the Pentagon. These companies were among the very few to record increased stock prices when the market reopened after 11 September.

With passion and rigour, Helen Caldicott warns that Bush’s response to terrorism risks triggering a nuclear chain reaction among nations. It threatens the world. Most dangerous of all is the missile defence system popularly known as “Son of Star Wars”. This will reinforce US imperialism, move war into space and kick-start a new nuclear arms race, she says. And it will be “utterly useless against suicidal men armed with box-cutters and plane tickets”.