War & Peace Quote by Mohamed ElBaradei

Delegitimize is doing the real work here: ElBaradei isn’t arguing about warheads as hardware, but about nukes as a socially sanctioned idea. Nuclear deterrence survives less because it’s morally persuasive than because it’s been normalized as the grown-up way states manage fear. By reaching for the language of legitimacy, he treats nuclear weapons like apartheid or chemical arms: not merely dangerous, but politically stainable. The aim is to shift the debate from “how many” and “who has them” to “why is this acceptable at all?”

The subtext is a critique of the security establishment’s circular logic. Deterrence promises stability while quietly demanding permanent readiness to commit mass slaughter, then calls that readiness “peace.” ElBaradei, speaking from the technocratic vantage point of a scientist-diplomat, is also taking aim at the hypocrisy embedded in the global nonproliferation regime: a world where some states are asked to abstain while others treat possession as a birthright. Delegitimization is a way to puncture that prestige economy.

Context matters: as a former IAEA leader shaped by Iraq’s WMD debacle and the post-9/11 securitization binge, ElBaradei is wary of doctrines that rely on perfect rationality, perfect control, and perfect information. His call for “a different system of security” signals that abolitionist rhetoric without institutional alternatives is just moral theater. He’s pointing toward verification, regional security guarantees, crisis hotlines, arms control that actually reduces roles and alert status, and norms that make nuclear threats politically costly. The rhetorical strategy is pragmatic idealism: change the story states tell themselves, then build mechanisms that make living without the bomb plausible.