The capability to build nuclear weapons, unlike the weapons themselves, cannot be destroyed

Evidence

South Africa did not, like Brazil and Argentina, abandon a program to develop nuclear weapons; it destroyed nuclear weapons it had already built. These weapons were produced by a white government to deter foreign attacks on apartheid, and that government did not wish to bequeath them to a black government which might use them for other purposes. The ability to build nuclear weapons cannot be destroyed, however, and it is possible that a post-apartheid government could construct a new nuclear arsenal to insure its role as the core state of Africa and to deter the West from intervention in Africa. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 663

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader nuclear proliferation literature (Waltz’s ‘more may be better’ debate about which states should have nukes) and to the question of how reverse engineering of weapons works.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what deterrent logic did the white South African government actually articulate? And did the ANC seriously weigh rebuilding the arsenal post-1994?