Proliferate to Abolish: Mazrui’s Perspective on Nuclear Disarmament

Abstract

Africa’s perspectives on nuclear weapons (and other world-order issues) remain largely unexplored. They are, therefore, little known or not known at all. This essay seeks to take a modest step to fill the gap by bringing into focus the nuclear discourse of the Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui—a forgotten “classic,” many of whose ideas have stood the test of time and might even help us to better understand the nature of the challenges of global nuclear disarmament as well as think creatively about solutions. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Mazrui was a passionate and foremost proponent of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Africa and the Middle East. However, he never advocated this for its own sake but only as a means of achieving the most fundamental and desirable goal of global nuclear disarmament. A dose of the disease, in Mazrui’s view, must be used as a part of the necessary cure. Hence his idea—“proliferate to abolish.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I prepared this article as a member of the Beyond Nuclear Deterrence Working Group, part of the Rethinking Nuclear Deterrence network at the Harvard Kennedy School; the MacArthur Foundation supported the research. To both institutions, I express my gratitude. To members of the working group, I am indebted for their stimulation, particularly at our workshops in Hiroshima City (2023) and Mexico City (2024). The responsibility is entirely mine if there are any factual errors or contestable interpretations in the article. The article has also significantly benefited from suggestions made by the three anonymous reviewers and the editors of this journal.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Notes on contributors

Seifudein Adem

Seifudein Adem is a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Research and Education, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. Dr. Adem is also Ali Mazrui’s intellectual biographer and author of Postcolonial Constructivism: Mazrui’s Theory of Intercultural Relations (Palgrave, 2021). E-mail: [email protected]