The UN's 80-year Struggle with Nuclear Weapons Hypocrisy

Alvin Botes

The United Nations (UN) was born 80 years ago this month. Its main purpose was to ensure peace through cooperation. The UN’s very first General Assembly resolution —Resolution 1(1) of 1946 — called for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Eighty years later, those same weapons remain not only in existence but also in modernized form, positioned in hardened bunkers and enshrined in the strategic doctrines of some states, which claim moral and ethical authority.

At the centre of the global nuclear regime stands the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), adopted in 1968 and entering into force in 1970. Unfortunately, the NPT is perceived by many in the global south as resting on a delicate and unfair bargain: five states — the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom — were recognised as Nuclear Weapon States (NWS), while all others were expected to forgo nuclear weapons in exchange for the promise of disarmament and access to peaceful nuclear energy.

Today, nearly every member of the UN — 191 countries — has joined the NPT. Yet three states — India, Pakistan, and Israel — have never signed it. North Korea claims to have withdrawn in 2003. These four countries all possess nuclear weapons, with Israel maintaining a policy of “strategic ambiguity,” despite a growing historical body of evidence of an undeclared nuclear arsenal.

While NPT signatories are routinely scrutinised and penalised, Israel’s nuclear status remains largely unchallenged, protected by the veil of Western geopolitical alliances. Unfortunately, it is this type of multilateral double standard that strikes at the very credibility of the treaty.

For many in the developing world, an important but difficult question is: why do we, as the international community, demand non-proliferation from some while granting impunity to others? How do we reconcile the call for restraint in the Global South while the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) states shelter under nuclear umbrellas and modernise their arsenals? This is hypocrisy and double standards and “nuclear apartheid” that South Africa has long decried.

South Africa's own experience stands as a moral compass. The apartheid regime developed a covert nuclear weapons programme, supported tacitly and, at times, explicitly, by Western powers and Israel. It constructed six fully operational warheads, and a seventh was in development when the decision to dismantle the weapons was made.

The ANC-led government, after gaining power in 1994, fully embraced a strategy of disarmament and non-proliferation. This is because the ANC-led government’s foreign policy had, since 1955, always included support for nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament.

The ANC foreign policy has always been premised on the principle that we are anti-war and pro-peace—that we believe in peace and friendship, and the peaceful resolution of conflict, with multilateralism, human rights, and the international rule of law at its centre.

South Africa joined the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state after dismantling its weapons. We helped establish the African Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone through the Pelindaba Treaty. We supported the African Commission on Nuclear Energy. And we were among the first 50 states to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which entered into force in January 2021.

Over the past five decades, the NPT has arguably helped prevent the rapid proliferation of nuclear weapons, limiting the number of nuclear-armed states far below the many predictions made in the 1960s. Dozens of countries that once pursued or considered nuclear weapons programmes — such as Brazil, Argentina, South Korea, and Libya — eventually abandoned these pursuits, in part due to the normative weight and institutional mechanisms of the NPT framework.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), created in 1957 and strengthened through its role under the NPT, has become a vital institution in verifying compliance and facilitating the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Moreover, the NPT has given birth to an interlocking network of norms and treaties that comprise today’s disarmament architecture.

Although a global consensus is building that the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons render their continued existence morally untenable and legally indefensible, we are still witnessing a quiet arms race. Nuclear-armed states are not disarming: they are upgrading. Doctrines are shifting from deterrence to warfighting scenarios. Military budgets are ballooning. And the non-nuclear majority of the world —especially the Global South— is once again asked to trust a system that marginalises their voice and risks the future.

The NPT is therefore in danger of a credibility crisis; not because of its spirit and principles, but because its implementation has been selectively enforced. Non-nuclear states are expected to comply in full, while nuclear-weapon states reinterpret, delay, or dilute their commitments.

The Eleventh Review Conference of the NPT, to be held in 2026, must be a turning point. If not, the erosion of trust in the treaty may become irreversible. South Africa continues to advocate for a nuclear-free world not only because it is just, but because it is necessary.

Nuclear weapons do not exist in isolation — they exacerbate global inequality, prolong militarism, and divert resources away from development, health, and education. Today, the pursuit of disarmament is not a luxury. It is the foundation of any genuine international order rooted in the rule of law and the principles of equality, fairness, accountability, and justice.

The world stands at a critical conjuncture. We are watching the erosion of the international rule of law in real time. We see nuclear posturing in Europe, strategic escalation in the Indo-Pacific, and the genocidal, blatant disregard for civilian life in Palestine. At the same time, new wars rage in Africa, often fuelled by foreign interests, arms sales, and the echoes of a post-Cold War rivalry. We cannot afford silence.

South Africa’s position is resolute: peace, security, friendship, development, international cooperation, diplomacy, multilateralism, international law, and human solidarity and human rights must be the pillars of our global security system. We must reject the false binaries of might versus vulnerability. We must reject the moral relativism that tolerates weapons of mass destruction in the hands of some while criminalising them in others. We must reject the idea that peace can be built on the promise of mass death.

* Alvin Botes, Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African.