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Comment by bracobama | Hacker News Reader

Last time I checked South Africa got rid of their nukes in 1989 and has yet to deviate from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty it acceded to in 1991. It also recently ratified the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Do you know something we don't?

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This is a bit of a special case, though. The decision to relinquish the nuclear weapons was directly a consequence of the end of the apartheid regime. In a sense, the apartheid government didn't give up it's weapons, so much as it knew that it's days were numbered and it didn't trust the next regime with the weapons.

> Last time I checked South Africa got rid of their nukes in 1989

You probably know better than I do.

I tend to believe that once countries get nukes, they don't tend to give them up, but I could certainly believe that South Africa doesn't have any anymore.

Fortunately (in this case), knowledge and technology isn't permanent - it takes a lot of work to maintain. Unless they have secretly trained scientists and engineers, and maintain secret facilities for most of the supply chain, they've probably lost the ability to make a nuclear weapon by now.

While many states do explore what is called 'nuclear hedging' where they remain non-nuclear but conduct research and development to shorten the potential time of their nuclear breakout (a contemporary example being Iran), South Africa is definitely not a part of this club as their rhetoric and supporting actions simply do not align with this strategy.

looking at the other two countries that gave up their nukes, i don't blame them.

>I tend to believe that once countries get nukes, they don't tend to give them up

Well of course not. It's the nation state equivalent of being able to defend yourself with lethal force. It means that anyone who is an existential threat to you must reckon with the fact that you can be an existential threat to them if sufficiently backed into a corner. No nation is going to give that up.

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