Tutu: No nation should own nuclear arms, not Iran, and not their critics

CND UK

No nation should own nuclear arms – not Iran, not North Korea, and not their critics who take the moral high ground, says Desmond Tutu on the Guardian’s comment is free website today.

“We cannot intimidate others into behaving well when we ourselves are misbehaving. Yet that is precisely what nations armed with nuclear weapons hope to do”, says Tutu. 

According to the declared nuclear states, a select few nations can ensure the security of all by having the capacity to destroy all. Until we overcome this double standard, we are unlikely to make meaningful progress in halting the spread of these monstrous devices, let alone banishing them from national arsenals, he says.

Comments on the article dwell on the theme that nuclear weapons once invented can’t be disinvented, and on Israel’s supposed need for nuclear weapons. Israel be it noted is an undeclared nuclear weapons state, not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.