Geopolitical tensions have risen in Europe since the Russia-Ukraine crisis in 2014; in South Asia with the flare-up in Kashmir; and in East Asia with the growing assertiveness of China in its maritime territorial disputes and the continuing series of nuclear tests by North Korea. As a consequence, nuclear risks have also intensified, making President Barack Obama’s 2009 Prague dream of a world freed of nuclear threats an increasingly distant memory. However, great power tensions make nuclear arms control more difficult but also more urgent, and in the closing months of his presidency, Obama has one last chance to resurrect the dream.
Nuclear arms control has several interrelated components, including freezing and reducing numbers of warheads and delivery missiles; cutting back on weapons deployments; and modifying nuclear policy to minimize risky postures and consolidate stability-enhancing practices. One such measure that Obama is reportedly contemplating is a no-first-use (NFU) policy: a declaration that the U.S. will use nuclear weapons only in response to a nuclear attack on America or its allies, or in a modified form, against biological, chemical, and nuclear attacks. Thus, the use of nuclear weapons would be ruled out against conventional attacks, regardless of their scale.
The starting point of such a policy is that in practice, first use of nuclear weapons lacks strategic logic. Both deterrence and non-use are among the cluster of powerful nuclear norms, along with nonproliferation, disarmament, safety, and security. The moral opprobrium of using nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear country would be too high a price to pay for any security gains. Besides, with massive conventional superiority against any conceivable adversary long into the foreseeable future, the U.S. does not need nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries.
Against nuclear adversaries, any first use would provoke a nuclear retaliation. Rather than sensible policy, therefore, a first-use policy is a commitment to mutual suicide. Because nuclear adversaries know this, the threat of first use is non-credible, and no policy that is not credible can successfully deter any aggression.
The public debate suggests that a key factor inhibiting Washington from adopting NFU is nervousness of some European and Asian allies who seek security under the protective umbrella of U.S. nuclear weapons. Thus, a first-use policy, even though it makes no operational sense as a policy of deterrence, might serve the purpose of strategic reassurance of the umbrella states. If so, the umbrella states are suffering from a potentially fatal illusion. Given the stakes with nuclear weapons, it is grave folly to anchor alliance security in strategic illusions.
The only conceivable nuclear threats to the security of U.S. allies are from Russia, China, and North Korea. The last can be totally and quickly destroyed by the extremely powerful and accurate conventional U.S. armory. Even if the U.S. and its allies failed to defeat any Chinese or Russian attack using conventional weapons, Washington could not risk nuclear escalation because of the certainty of nuclear retaliation: the logic of national survival would trump the politics of alliance solidarity.
Of course, the same logic inhibits the first use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. by any adversary. The one temptation to the contrary would be if the adversary is convinced that under a first-use policy, U.S. nuclear weapons are about to be used, and he launches a preemptive nuclear attack. In other words, a first-use policy serves no real deterrent purpose but may increase the risk of a catastrophic nuclear war by heightening nuclear fears across the board.
The key consideration to remember is that NFU does not guarantee no first use, any more than a first-use policy guarantees first use. Hence, the American use of the phrase “calculated ambiguity,” as in the oft-repeated threat “All options are on the table” without ever spelling out the circumstances in which U.S. nuclear weapons would be used. Therefore, what is crucial are declarations, doctrines, postures, and deployments that reduce risks. A NFU policy would eliminate the rationale for forward deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons on the territory of NATO allies in Europe (none are believed to be deployed on allied territory in Asia since their withdrawal from South Korea): those based in Turkey were a matter of some concern during the failed coup attempt there.
It would also help Russia and the U.S. to walk back from the 1,800 nuclear warheads they hold on high alert, ready to launch-on-warning. Conversely, if no other nuclear powers follow the examples of the only two that currently subscribe to NFU, in due course, China and India too might abandon NFU and put some nuclear weapons on high alert – as Beijing is reportedly considering already.
Accordingly, at virtually no additional risk to the national security of the U.S. or European and Pacific allies, an NFU policy could help initiate a much-needed nuclear restraint regime that hardens the recently blurring boundary between conventional and nuclear weapons, deepens the illegitimacy of first use, reinforces the norm of non-use, and devalues the currency of nuclear weapons.
In addition to the reinforced normative barrier, NFU would permit the dismantlement of vulnerable land-based warheads. It would also defuse some of the growing frustration, impatience, and anger that has fed the humanitarian movement against nuclear weapons and generated a fresh momentum to go for a ban treaty ahead of the nuclear powers’ willingness to take part in these discussions.
