Could Ali Mazrui's nuclear pragmatism inspire practical policies?

Mail & Guardian

06-05-2025

Kenyan American political scientist Ali Mazrui
Possession of nuclear weapons is not incidentally negative, it is directly and purposefully so, designed to instantly kill millions of people upon pressing an intercontinental ballistic missile button, according to Kenyan American political scientist
He made this obvious point in the course of comparing what he called the crises of global survival, including climate change and nuclear war. He knew this was an obvious point, although it was often ignored.
The Russo-Ukrainian War and the potential fractures in United States extended deterrence have today triggered fears of a renewed nuclear arms race and nuclear proliferation, or even a nuclear war.
Contemporary nuclear politics may therefore need creative and even radical ideas that part ways with established practices. One such idea is Mazrui's 'nuclear pragmatism', which holds that horizontal nuclear proliferation — the spread of nuclear weapons to new actors in the Global South — is a necessary step toward a universal nuclear disarmament. He believed this could fundamentally change the mindsets of the leaders of major nuclear powers and encourage them to abolish their arsenals.
This idea, a little too counterintuitive for sure, has long been overlooked in the Western canon of security studies literature. I argue that giving it a closer look could at least provoke new lines of thinking.
'Abolish to abolish' and 'proliferate to abolish' are the two schools of thought in Africa on nuclear disarmament championed, respectively, by the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, and by Mazrui. Both Nkrumah and Mazrui were for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. Nkrumah argued that nuclear weapons were too dangerous to be used for any purpose, including deterrence, since a threat of violence itself is a form of violence. Mazrui agreed with Nkrumah that nuclear weapons must be abolished.
But the two diverged sharply on how to achieve this. Nkrumah preferred a geographically focused, legally based approach. The ideas of Africa as a nuclear-free zone and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons resonate with the approach once advocated by Nkrumah.
Mazrui maintained that Nkrumah's approach could at best lead us to a nuclear-free Africa but not to a nuclear-free planet; the former is meaningless if it does not lead to the latter. Mazrui thus asserted: '… African countries should stop thinking in terms of making Africa a nuclear-free zone.' His alternative suggestion was for African countries to 'reconsider their position' vis-à-vis the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which came into being in 1968.
In other words, Mazrui suggested that African countries should (threaten to) withdraw en masse from the treaty. He insisted, '… non-proliferation for the nuclear 'have-nots' will be a nonstarter until it is matched by progressive military denuclearization among the 'haves'.'
From Mazrui's point of view a modest proliferation of nuclear weapons in Africa and the Middle East could increase nuclear anxieties among the major nuclear states in the Global North, intensify the pressure on the leadership there for total nuclear disarmament and ultimately lead to the rejection of nuclear weapons by all — and their abolition. He passionately advocated this idea for more than half a century.
Unlike Nkrumah's view, Mazrui's idea was never seriously considered in Africa, and it was never referenced in the mainstream discourse on nuclear disarmament. But this appears to be slowly changing in recent years. The assertion made by the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, in February 2025, however, still accurately captures the prevailing mood about nuclear weapons in the Global South. Guterres said: 'The nuclear option is no option at all.'
Mazrui's nuclear pragmatism is based on at least four assumptions: (1) nuclear weapons are evil by nature and should be illegitimate, not just for some, but for all; (2) a modest horizontal nuclear proliferation in the Global South would increase nuclear anxieties within the major nuclear powers; (3) this anxiety, in turn, would intensify the public pressure on the leaders of the major nuclear states for total military denuclearisation; and (4) ultimately, the whole process would lead to the rejection of nuclear weapons by all and their total abolition.
Mazrui started from the premise that the nuclear accident at
Therefore, he posed the question: what other, less catastrophic alternatives might lead to global nuclear disarmament? What thus came into being was his nuclear pragmatism: horizontal nuclear proliferation, specifically a modest increase in nuclear capabilities in Africa and the Middle East, could offer such an alternative, fostering a climate where crises may be manageable and constructive. Of course, horizontal nuclear proliferation has its risks, Mazrui added, but are those risks really more dangerous than the risks of vertical proliferation in arsenals of the superpowers themselves?
A key element of Mazrui's nuclear pragmatism is the distrust that Western powers have about nuclear weapons in the Global South. This distrust could be beneficial if it generates enough alarm in the Northern Hemisphere, which could, in turn, lead to a significant movement aimed at declaring nuclear weapons illegitimate for all nations and working toward their elimination in every country that possesses them.
It must nevertheless be reiterated that Mazrui never overlooked the risks associated with nuclear proliferation. The ideal scenario for him was total nuclear disarmament or an initiative toward that end without any additional nuclear stockpile (vertical nuclear proliferation) and additional membership in the nuclear club (horizontal nuclear proliferation). For him, however, horizontal nuclear proliferation would lead to a sufficiently great sense of imminent peril to tilt the judgment in favor of total denuclearization in the military field everywhere.
According to Mazrui, the racial prejudices and cultural distrust of the white members of the nuclear club may well serve the positive function of disbanding the larger club. The geographical focus of horizontal nuclear proliferation was to be Africa and the Middle East.
But a modest horizontal proliferation in the Middle East would be more dangerous in global terms than a slightly higher level of proliferation in Latin America or Africa. This is partly because a regional war in the Middle East carries a greater risk of escalating into a world war than does a regional war in Latin America or Africa. It was, therefore, the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East that could cause greater alarm in the Global North and trigger a movement for the prohibition of nuclear weapons for all.
'Perhaps until now, the major powers have worried only about 'the wrongs weapons in the right hands,'' Mazrui reasoned, 'when nuclear devices pass into Arab or African hands, a new nightmare will have arrived — 'the wrong weapon in the wrong hands'.' This Northern fear could be an asset for getting the North to agree to total and universal denuclearisation in the military field.
Dr Seifudein Adem is a research fellow at JICA Ogata Research Institute for Peace and Development in Tokyo, Japan. He is also Ali Mazrui's intellectual biographer.