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CIAO DATE: 04/03

No First Use – It's Time is Not Foreseeable Whatever its Form

John B. Rhinelander

Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs

November 15-17, 2002

No First Use (NFU) as a declaratory policy was much debated in the 1980s. It had some highly respected US proponents, my particular favorites being the Gang of Four. 1 It never came close to becoming US policy in light of the explicit NATO reservation of the right to use nuclear weapons first in the event of an overwhelming Warsaw Pact conventional attack.

This rationale for opposing NFU disappeared along with the Pact and with the split up of the USSR 2 , but was replaced by the undermining of the US “negative security assurances”. The US promise — never legally binding — not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon states (NNWSs) parties to the NPT, with some explicit exceptions, was weakened by Secretary of State Baker’s implicit threat in 1991 that the US might use nuclear weapons in retaliation for chemical or biological weapon use by Iraq. 3 The fact that Colin Powell later wrote that the US never had any intent to use nuclear weapons against Iraq in the Gulf War counts for little. The calculated ambiguity of potential use has now been explicitly replaced by the explicit threats of the Bush administration in its Nuclear Posture Review to develop new nuclear weapons and to use them in various instances.

NFU is not conceivable unless and until negative security assurances are explicitly set forth in legally binding agreements without any exception for retaliation against chemical or biological weapon attack. The US will eventually have to take the lead on NFU, but will not for at least the next two, and perhaps six, years or as long as there is a Bush administration or successor in kind. A new US administration, if committed to nonproliferation, the rule of law and the positive role of international organizations and treaties, would have to prepare a new nuclear posture review and a new strategic doctrine. For NFU to be conceivable, this new administration would need to start from the basic premises of the excellent report by the US National Academy of Science, The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapon Policy 4 , published five years ago but still relevant. The report is premised on the conclusion that the sole role of nuclear weapons — the core function of deterrence — is to deter nuclear attack, or coercion by threat of nuclear attack, against the US or its allies.

The first step toward a new nuclear weapon policy should probably combine four matters in a new nuclear posture statement and strategic doctrine: (1) the role of nuclear weapons limited to the core function of deterrence, (2) a negative security assurance without exceptions for CW, BW or conventional weapons; (3) reaffirmation of positive security assurances that would be important to new NATO partners in Europe, as well as Japan and South Korea in East Asia, and (4) NFU. These Executive-branch documents would not require Congressional or Senate approval, but obviously would lead to public debate in the US, including vocal criticism from those who serve in the current Bush administration. Congress would become a major actor if and when capabilities and readiness were adjusted.

The second step could be a UN Security Council resolution approving unilateral statements of the Permanent Five on NFU, using a procedure similar to Resolution 984 in 1995. The day when steps one and two may occur is not foreseeable. But further measures would be necessary before NFU should be converted to a treaty that could obtain the necessary two-thirds concurrence of the US Senate. These would include:

  1. Limitation of US and Russian deployed and deployable nuclear weapons — strategic and tactical — to 1,000; 5 the dismantlement and destruction of excess delivery systems; cradle-to-grave control and reduction of US and Russian weapon-grade highly enriched uranium and plutonium; and transparency and other intrusive monitoring regimes necessary;
  2. Entry into force of the CTBT and a multilateral fissile material cutoff treaty;
  3. A five-party regime limiting US and Russia to 500 deployed and deployable nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom, France and China to a lesser number; with none of the five having any nuclear weapons on alert; and the required transparency and monitoring regimes; 6
  4. A regime dealing with the nuclear-weapons capability of Israel, India and Pakistan, with the required transparency and monitoring; and
  5. An enforcement regime relating to chemical, biological and nuclear weapons that is credibly overseen by the UN Security Council.

NFU, to be meaningful over the long-term, should not simply be a rhetorical posture unrelated to capabilities as was the Geneva Protocol. 7 Further, in the US it should not simply be a Presidential declaration changeable by his successor. Therefore, the third step should be a legally binding treaty that would become the law of the land in the US. Achievement of (1) through (5) above would set the state for negotiations of a NFU treaty that had a realistic chance to enter into force with the US a party.

 

Endnotes

Note 1: McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, Robert McNamara and Gerard Smith, Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance, 60 Foreign Affairs 753-769 (1982). Back.

Note 2: Russia, of course, has now adopted the former NATO position opposing NFU. Back.

Note 3: The US, and most other states, have renounced any use of chemical and biological weapons in the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention, both currently in force, and all are committed to destroying any current stocks and not manufacturing any new. Therefore, retaliation in kind is not feasible and the options are nuclear or conventional. Given the extraordinary US military superiority, the latter should be the only type of weapon considered. Back.

Note 4: National Academy Press (1997). Back.

Note 5: This is the starting point of the two-step, phased reductions in the National Academy Report. While written to follow START III, it logically would be the next step following the Treaty of Moscow and could in fact firm up that agreement and speed up its timetable. Back.

Note 6: Limitations on missile defenses and prohibitions on weaponization of space would be necessary by this stage, if not earlier. Back.

Note 7: The Geneva Protocol of 1925, as in force, prohibits the first use of chemical weapons. The US was one of its principal promoters in the 1920s, but did not ratify it for nearly fifty years. Iraq was a party, but violated it in its war against Iran. Back.