![]() If the credibility of a pledge is a priority, Washington can strengthen it through additional changes. If adversaries assume the worst about US nuclear planning, what’s the harm in claiming they need not worry about US nukes unless they use theirs? Yet the fact that it sometimes pays to deceive in statecraft does not repudiate a no-first use policy. Why, then, would preserving a first-use nuclear option be a good idea, especially when the context is not one of US restraint but rather an uninhibited US arms build-up? Opponents of no first use offer three justifications.įirst, nuclear advocates claim that China, Russia and North Korea won’t believe no-first use declarations. In the past four years, the United States has withdrawn from most arms control agreements, expanded investments in hypersonic glide vehicles, advanced development of low-yield ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, threatened nuclear use in the most gratuitous ways, and committed to a US$1.5 trillion nuclear modernisation plan. While US President Joe Biden has spoken favourably about a no-first use policy in the past, his administration’s nuclear thinking is so far mostly indistinguishable from that of the Trump era. Who wants to entrust a candidate of the far right with the authority to launch nuclear weapons? No first use is the most meagre of many measures needed to restrain US presidential authority in the nuclear realm. He has spawned many imitators in the Republican Party, who traffic in conspiracy theories and promote antagonistic, militaristic and racialised foreign policies to score domestic political points. Trump was a symptom not an anomaly of US politics today. Only a fool would trust in US strategic competence after the decision-making of the Trump era. But since the Trump presidency, the imperative of a no-first use policy has grown more urgent. No sane president would use nuclear weapons before an adversary did, except perhaps out of tragic misperception. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any scenario where the United States gains from using nuclear weapons before an adversary, especially when Washington’s conventional arsenal has global reach.Ī no-first use nuclear policy would therefore be honest nuclear policy. ![]() Legislation requiring it has growing support in the US Congress. ![]() Most of the leading candidates campaigning for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination publicly endorsed a no-first use policy. If the United States seeks only deterrence, but not political advantage from nuclear weapons, then adopting a no-first use nuclear policy is not just low-risk - it’s necessary. Weapons capable only of spasmodic mass violence are too crude as a credible tool of coercion in most circumstances. It was one of the most potent lessons of the Cold War - nukes are good for deterring others from using nukes, but not much else. Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the PacificĪuthor: Van Jackson, Victoria University of Wellington ![]()
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