The Case for No First Use: An Exchange

Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 51, no. 5, October–November 2009, pp. 17–46

Promises and Priorities

Morton H. Halperin

The Trouble with No First Use

Bruno Tertrais

Strategic Hubris

Keith B. Payne

No First Use: An Indian View

K. Subrahmanyam

Reply: Evidence, Logic and Nuclear Doctrine

Scott D. Sagan

Scott Sagan makes a persuasive case for no first use, arguing that such a declaration would contribute to the American objectives of preventing the use of nuclear weapons by states or terrorist groups and preventing further proliferation. He also makes the case that such a declaration would not reduce the credibility of the American deterrent but rather might increase the credibility of a non-nuclear response.

As Sagan notes, these arguments are not new. In fact I presented a similar proposal and many, if not all, of the same arguments in a paper I published almost 50 years ago. ¹ It is useful to ask why no previous president acted on this sensible recommendation and whether President Obama should now make this commitment. Sagan discusses some of the objections to an explicit commitment not to use nuclear weapons first, but he fails to convey the depth of the opposition and the fundamental nature of the objection.

Opponents of no first use make the basic argument that we should not make any ‘promise’ to a potential adversary that might make it easier for an opponent to plan an effective military action. During the Cold War it was precisely the policy of the United States and its NATO allies to threaten first use in the belief that the Soviet Union had conventional superiority in Europe and would attack if it could be sure that the West would not respond with nuclear weapons. Even now, despite the vast global American conventional superiority, there are places – the Russian border with Georgia, the Taiwan Strait, deep inside Iran where its nuclear facilities are located – where the United States might find it hard to prevail with conventional forces and where the threat to use nuclear weapons first might, it is argued, still be credible and necessary.

Sagan and I agree that there is a clear response to this argument: the threat to use nuclear weapons in these situations is not credible and the implication that nuclear weapons are necessary reduces the credibility of the conventional deterrent. This response, however, does not deal with the very serious domestic political storm a president would confront, even today, were he to make such a promise.

Such a storm would result from a very different view of nuclear weapons held by many who are deeply sceptical that stigmatising nuclear weapons will prevent their further proliferation. Opponents of no first use, including many associated with Democratic presidents, believe that such a no-first-use promise will increase the political cost of using nuclear weapons only for the United States, undermining the credibility of the US deterrent, and especially the extended deterrent. There is no doubt that some allies would be nervous if the United States made a no-first-use pledge even after extended consultations. Such discussions, as Sagan notes, would be necessary especially with NATO allies and Japan. Critics are not likely to feel that influencing Indian nuclear doctrine, as Sagan discusses, is sufficiently important to overcome their objections, particularly given the importance that they attach...

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Morton H. Halperin worked on nuclear issues in the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Clinton administrations in the Department of Defense, the National Security Council and the State Department. He is a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States and Senior Advisor to the Open Society Institute. He has written numerous books and articles on nuclear policy.

Bruno Tertrais is a Senior Research Fellow at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research and a Contributing Editor to Survival. He is the author of War Without End (New York: The New Press, 2005).

Keith B. Payne is President and co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, head of the Graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies of Missouri State University, Washington DC campus, a member of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Review of the United States, Policy Panel Chairman of the US Strategic Command’s Senior Advisory Group, and a member of the Department of State’s International Security Advisory Board.

K. Subrahmanyam is an Indian strategic analyst and journalist. He served as the Director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and has held a number of other government positions, including chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

Scott D. Sagan is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Co-Director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

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