Disarmament Scenarios
- Introduction
- Case Against Nuclear Weapons
- Global Scenarios
- Steps to Abolition
- Ending Extended
Nuclear Deterrence - No First Use
- De-alerting
- Deep Cuts
- Dismantlement
- Banning Nukes
- Other
- Geographic
- United States/Russia
- United Kingdom/France
- China
- India/Pakistan
- Israel
Disarmament Scenarios
Articles and Reports on No First Use
Reassuring States That Forego Nuclear Weapons: No First Use
This committee of the National Academy of Sciences took up the subject of no first use in its 1997 report on The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy. The central recommendation of the report was that U.S. nuclear deterrence should be confined “to the core function of deterring nuclear attack, or coercion by threat of nuclear attack, against the United States or its allies. That is, the United States would no longer threaten to respond with nuclear weapons against conventional, chemical, or biological attacks.” (p. 3) Part of implementation would be the United States “adopting no first use for nuclear weapons as official declaratory policy.” (p. 71)
According to the Committee, “a U.S. no-first-use pledge could help remove both reasons and excuses for proliferation” by nations that want to counter the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Also: “A no-first-use declaration would recognize that, in the changed circumstance following the end of the Cold War, the United States should not threaten to use nuclear weapons to deter nonnuclear attack.” However, the United States should reassure its allies that “the United States will meet, by nonnuclear means, its obligations to come to their aid in the event of nonnuclear attack.”
In Europe the United States and Russia should negotiate a ban of Russian and NATO forward basing of nuclear weapons and work together to achieve a Central European nuclear weapons free zone.
How No First Use Would Facilitate Nuclear Disarmament
In this article Hui Zhang writes, “A global agreement on no first use (NFU) should be a key step to decreasing the role of nuclear weapons and eventually realizing the goal of the NWC [Nuclear Weapons Convention]….A no first use policy would be an important measure to strengthen the non-proliferation regime and to promote further reductions of nuclear weapons.” NFU would facilitate the nuclear disarmament process in several ways:
- Under NFU, the military strategy of each state will be switched from offensive to defensive.
- The size of the operational nuclear arsenal whose only purpose is for retaliation should be much smaller than that intended for first use.
- This would make the deeper cuts more feasible;
- NFU would ban all tactical weapons to reduce the risk of first use;
- NFU could limit the deployment of silo-based MIRVs intended for first nuclear attacks;
- NFU would require taking nuclear forces off alert and removing warheads from delivery vehicles;
- NFU would also require not deploying a national missile defense system, because such a system could encourage a country to use nuclear weapons first.
- Consequently, as an important confidence-building measure, the policy of NFU would make a NWC much easier to implement.