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Alas, that claim was a cruel joke. The world is seemingly overrun by one or more Horsemen of the Apocalypse, as famine, war, and death round the globe. Fewer Americans than ever believe Biden is up to the presidency. Uncle Sam looks like a helpless incompetent, staggering into unnecessary conflicts.

Europe approaches the second anniversary of a war in which the U.S. is deeply involved, openly battling a nuclear-armed power via proxy. Long-standing Middle Eastern antagonisms highlighted by Israel’s increasingly oppressive rule over millions of Palestinians exploded. In this fight the administration heedlessly intervened, deploying the fleet for political effect while leaving American personnel under attack across Iraq and Syria.

The above recitation shows that Washington has historically adjusted the emphases and implementations of its cross-Strait policies. But until recently, preserving a stable military balance across the Taiwan Strait was subordinated to other national priorities and challenges—leading to a dangerous erosion of deterrence. Meanwhile, the United States now finds itself dealing simultaneously with competing hot wars in Europe and the Middle East, unprecedented drawdowns of U.S. arms and ammunition, and a withered defense industrial base. The time to act is now.

Most importantly, the United States must adequately resource its national security strategy—closing the “say-do gap” by significantly raising defense spending. The country will have to make tough choices and sacrifices in the name of peace and prosperity. The president should use his bully pulpit and make the case to Congress and the American people that China is a threat to global stability and that Taiwan is a vital U.S. interest—invoking the great power contests of the last century.

Four months since Hamas launched a brutal terror attack against Israel, the situation in the Middle East remains highly volatile. Regional adversaries – namely Iran and its proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon – seek to utilize this opportunity to reshape the region in a manner favorable to their strategic interests. A new strategy based in offshore balancing will solve this security spiral in the Middle East because it will reduce American vulnerabilities and strengthen America’s capabilities to respond effectively to emerging threats.

The Houthi Rebels in Yemen, supported by Iran and aligned with Hamas, intensified attacks against any merchant ships destined for Israel, endangering commercial shipping in the Red Sea.  In response, the United States, along with its allies, deployed naval assets to protect shipping lanes in Operation Prosperity Guardian and conducted airstrikes against Houthi positions.

In recent decades, US foreign policy has been beset by visions of the United States ensuring security throughout much of the world, but with little thought to the resources or resolve required or the second-order consequences. One would do well to remember the words of British writer Aldous Huxley: “good ends . . . can be achieved only by the employment of appropriate means.” This notion is specifically relevant when reflecting on the US defense ecosystem—one bearing an industrial base that had struggled to meet capacity long before conflict erupted in Ukraine and Israel in recent years. While maintaining regional stability across the globe is critical to US defense and national security objectives, simultaneously supplying major arms packages to Israel and Ukraine, at a time when the United States needs to prepare for the possibility of armed conflict with China, will stretch production lines and resources beyond sustainable limits, potentially jeopardizing all US-supported efforts. 

Recently, the US response to conflict in the Middle East and to Russia’s war in Ukraine has brought to light growing concerns about US defense industrial capacity and about the spectrum of security cooperation the United States deploys. Limited resources within the Department of Defense are polarizing debates in Washington and beyond about which country needs help more: Israel or Ukraine? The real answer is less simple than one or the other. While maintaining Israel’s and Ukraine’s sovereignty are both critical to US national security objectives, the size of the United States’ involvement in helping each could, in turn, gamble with many of the same security objectives.

Sustaining Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific: Next Steps for Allies and Partners

U.S. alliances and minilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific are on increasingly strong footing— but the challenge of sustaining deterrence in the region is growing rapidly as China’s capabilities advance. The challenge is to both run faster and expand cooperation into new areas. Some areas to prioritize include:

The Washington Post reported that deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told the Arms Control Association on 6 June: ‘I can promise you today that President Obama is continuing to review a number of ways he can advance the Prague agenda over the course of the next seven months. Put simply, our work is not finished on these issues.’ There have been no official announcements, but well-orchestrated press reports say that in his last months as president, Obama wants to take the first concrete step towards nuclear abolition by reducing the United States’ own dependence on nuclear forces. He could do that by declaring officially that the United States will never use nuclear weapons unless an adversary has used them first. And that is a big deal. It may or may not bring us a step closer to abolishing nuclear weapons, but it would certainly be a big blow to the US’ strategic credibility in Asia. All the world’s other major nuclear powers have made what is called a ‘no first use’ (NFU) declaration decades ago, which in effect means they have promised not to start a nuclear war. But the United States has not. During the Cold War, Washington always threatened to use nuclear weapons first to stop the Soviet Union’s massive conventional forces overrunning Western Europe. Since the Cold War ended, many people have argued that Washington no longer needs to make this kind of threat. They say that US conventional forces are now so overwhelmingly powerful that they could easily deter any adversary without threatening nuclear escalation. Back in 2009, Obama seemed to agree with this argument, and he was widely expected to make an NFU declaration. But many of his advisers disagreed, and when his major Nuclear Posture Review came out in 2010, it stopped far short of an NFU declaration. That left his historic Prague initiative dead in the water. Obama could not credibly argue to abolish nuclear weapons while his own government, alone among the major nuclear powers, still threatened to start a nuclear war by using them first to defeat a conventional attack. The key reason that Obama’s advisers, like most of Washington’s foreign policy ‘establishment’, thought the United States should hang on to this threat was the attitude of US allies, including South Korea and Japan. They said an NFU declaration would seriously undermine allies’ confidence in US security guarantees because leaders in Tokyo and Seoul did not buy the argument that US conventional forces were now so strong that nuclear forces would never be needed. On the contrary, US allies — like many analysts and policymakers in the US itself —understand all too well how much the conventional forces of US rivals like China have improved in recent years. There is no real doubt that defeating China in a major war without using nuclear forces is becoming harder, not easier. That seems to many people a decisive argument for the United States to keep the threat of nuclear escalation firmly on the table. But it is not that simple. The US’ threat of nuclear escalation only works to deter an adversary if the adversary believes that Washington’s threat is serious, not a bluff. And the problem is that the threat is not credible against any adversary — like China today and perhaps North Korea in future — that has nuclear weapons of its own that can target the United States. In a conflict over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, for example, the United States could not credibly threaten to use nuclear weapons against Chinese conventional forces, because China could so easily and credibly threaten to retaliate by launching a nuclear strike against the United States. Back in the Cold War, re sUS threats to use nuclear weapons first were credible despite the risk of Soviet nuclear retaliation because the stakes weo high. Everyone believed that the US would be willing to risk a nuclear attack on itself to keep the Soviets out of West Berlin. But no one believes the US today would accept the same risks to defend Japan’s claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, or even over Taiwan. So any US threat of nuclear escalation would be trumped by China’s counter-threat of nuclear retaliation. Obama probably understands this, which helps explain why he wants to think again about making an NFU declaration. And this time, he will be harder to dissuade. But that does not mean the experts who talked him out of NFU back then were wrong about the impact on US allies. A declaration that the United States would no longer threaten to use its nuclear weapons to defend them against a conventional attack would erode their confidence because it would implicitly acknowledge that the threat was not credible. Combined with the knowledge that the United States could no longer easily win a conventional war against an adversary like China, this would be a big blow to the US’ standing as the leading strategic power in Asia and the guarantor of its allies’ security. The reality is that while it might make perfect sense in the light of new strategic realities, and perhaps even help to move the world towards nuclear disarmament, an NFU declaration would weaken the United States’ standing in Asia by amplifying the message that it no longer has the will to stand up to China. That message is of course already being heard loud and clear this year from the US presidential campaign trail, and not just from Republican candidate Donald Trump. Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s categorical repudiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership shows how strongly the political wind is blowing against the old orthodoxies of free trade and strong alliances that have guided US foreign policy for generations. No one should assume that Clinton, if she wins the White House, would reverse an NFU declaration made by Obama. She would be too worried about what that might mean for her chances of re-election for a second term in 2020.

A NFU declaration by the United States would embolden US allies to pursue their own nuclear armament. If one country does somehow develop nuclear weapons, it would certainly not be the last one to do so. A domino of nuclear proliferation would kickstart across different regions. A South Korean nuclear program would lead to Japan and Taiwan pursuing their own, which would in turn provoke China into an additional build-up. Watching the developments in East Asia, Saudi Arabia might quickly “import” nuclear weapons from Pakistan. And the contagious nuclear arms race would continue. This would mark the end of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime as we know it. China and North Korea have already declared NFU. Beijing declared NFU in 1964, when it first developed nuclear weapons. North Korea made the announcement during the 7th Party Congress in 2016. What kind of moral satisfaction is the Biden administration hoping to get out of NFU, when it’s clear that their pledges don’t amount to much? Perhaps President Biden is wondering why the US does not declare NFU when even China and North Korea already have. Think again. Pyongyang’s NFU pledge is virtually as trustworthy as its pledge to denuclearize. Even if the North Koreans do not actually launch nuclear missiles in a war, it could seek to leverage a nuclear-loaded Intercontinental Ballistic Missile targeting the US mainland into eliciting Washington’s concessions. In that scenario, what good is NFU? China declared NFU in 1964 because it did not want to enter an unwinnable nuclear arms race. Over the last few years, Beijing has repeatedly blackmailed the US, Japan, and Australia with a “nuclear response” to their “provocations.” Most importantly, China has been aggrandizing and modernizing its nuclear arsenal. It would be naive to believe these efforts are purely to stock up second-strike capabilities, and not for a more credible first-strike threat. President Biden declared that “America is Back” after four years of Trump. However, US credibility was severely dented this summer as a result of the Afghanistan withdrawal, which the administration justified by citing the pivot to Asia. NFU was surely not the recalibration US allies imagined when receiving that reasoning. The increasingly likely prospect of two-front conflicts in Taiwan and Ukraine are undermining confidence in US-led collective security. If President Biden truly wishes to reconsolidate US global leadership and focus on issues of utmost importance, he should reject the allure of No First Use or Sole Purpose. Perhaps Washington could learn from former British Prime Minister Theresa May’s response when asked in the Parliament if she would be willing to authorize a nuclear strike that could “kill tens of millions of innocent lives:

Beijing’s nuclear strategy, redlines, and limits remain highly uncertain: China is developing its forces rapidly while offering neither substantial transparency nor dialogue, to say nothing of confidence-building measures, let alone binding arms control agreements of the sort that Washington and Moscow concluded successfully in later Cold War years. Beijing officially maintains a strict No First Use (NFU) policy, but it seems unlikely that it could be relied upon in the event of foreign strikes that threatened PRC command and control (C2) nodes or major strategic effects, or in the event that the Party and its Army faced failure in a Taiwan conflict.[43] Risks of confusion, misperception, and escalation are all heightened by PRC comingling of nuclear and conventional missiles, or the “dispersal of mobile missile systems to hide sites” whereby it may be unclear which type of system is where at a given time.[44] As part of this risk-raising approach, China “may be exploring development of conventionally-armed intercontinental range missile systems. ... Such capabilities would allow the PRC to threaten conventional strikes against targets in the continental United States, Hawaii, and Alaska. Conventionally-armed ICBMs would present significant risks to strategic stability.”[45] Figure 7 depicts the respective range rings of PRC conventional strike systems (i.e., missiles, some of which are aircraft-delivered, thereby extending their range) that are already operational.

Nonetheless, a month later, China’s proposal for global governance seems to have dropped this decades-old policy. Up until August 2023, China had repeatedly reaffirmed its No First Use policy from 1964 onwards, although on some occasions Beijing has stretched it to exclude other nuclear powers, especially the US. The dual pledges of No First Use and No Threatening to Use nuclear weapons have long been cornerstones of China’s nuclear strategy. The fact that China’s proposal on global governance omits these commitments – while otherwise expressing China’s positions in a detailed manner – could indicate a change in China’s position on nuclear weapons, especially because China has never previously wavered or appeared ambiguous about these commitments. China may have learned from Moscow’s capitalisation on European fear regarding Russian nuclear weapons use China’s ultimate aim in its 1964 policy on the use of nuclear arms was ‘to deter others from using or threatening to use’ nuclear weapons against China. Could dropping this from an important policy document simply be a mistake, or is this a deliberate new shift in policy, perhaps based on Xi Jinping’s analyses of ‘changes not seen in a hundred years’, or influenced by Russia’s threatening rhetoric directed at NATO allies regarding nuclear weapons? While China’s proposal for global governance demands that the international community oppose the threat or use of nuclear weapons, China appears to have excluded its unilateral pledge to do so. Beyond this, China’s tacit support for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine has cemented talking points on ‘invisible security’ and how countries’ national security should not threaten that of others. China sees this as the root cause of the war in Ukraine. In Beijing’s view, ‘the crisis’ – China still refuses to call the war anything else – stems from a flawed, unbalanced European security architecture, where other parties' security concerns are ignored. In this context, multiple Chinese researchers have sided with Russia. Furthermore, following Finland’s NATO accession, a number of Chinese researchers took the view that since Russia could not match NATO’s conventional deterrence, Russia had no other option but to increase its nuclear arsenal. The consequences of China abandoning its No First Use/No Threatening to Use policy are minor at most; China has in any case refused to engage in any arms-control dialogue with the US. Thus, its policy promises have often been taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, two immediate implications of China’s potential new approach still come to mind. First, China’s quick nuclear build-up means that the US will face two nuclear-armed powers, China and Russia, working together as its adversaries. Second, China may have learned from Moscow’s capitalisation on European fear regarding Russian nuclear weapons in order to, at a minimum, delay help for Ukraine. Similarly, triggering fear by threatening the use of nuclear weapons could rein in Japan’s and other US allies’ willingness to defend Taiwan, if the People’s Liberation Army tries to take the island by force.

Over the past few decades, the United States has weighed the risks and benefits to both its nuclear deterrence posture and its non-proliferation policy goals of renouncing first-use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. In President Barack Obama’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review and, later, near the end of Obama’s second term as part of a mini-nuclear review, the adoption of a so-called “no-first-use” pledge was considered. Both times, Obama rejected adopting such a policy. The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review carried out by the Trump administration reviewed the policy and reaffirmed Obama’s decision. Recently, Rep. Adam Smith, the new chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren have called for a U.S. no-first-use policy. Well-meaning supporters of no-first-use are taken with the simplicity of the idea and its potential for bolstering U.S. “moral leadership” in the world. After all, they argue, the United States has no intention of starting a nuclear war so why not just say so? Given the recent revival of this topic, it is appropriate to review some of the considerations that caused both Obama and Trump, as well as Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bus, to reject adopting a policy of no-first-use. There are three major risks in adopting a nuclear declaratory policy of no-first-use. The first risk is to deterrence: Adversaries, absent a fear of reprisal, could be emboldened to act against U.S. interests. The second risk is to U.S. assurances to its allies: If America adopts no-first-use, then allies could lose confidence in America’s extended deterrence commitments. The third risk is to the goal of non-proliferation: Such lost confidence among America’s allies could spur them to develop and field their own nuclear weapons. The purported benefits of adopting a no-first-use policy, which I discuss below, are insufficient to offset these inherent risks. Deterrence Risks Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has viewed nuclear weapons not just as another weapon of war augmenting conventional arms, but as a special kind of weapon to be used only in the direst circumstances when vital U.S. security interests are at stake. The main concern in adopting a policy of no-first-use is that it could lead an enemy to believe that it could launch a catastrophic, non-nuclear strike against the United States, its allies, or U.S. overseas forces without fear of nuclear reprisal. Consider, for example, a North Korean biological attack on an American city that kills hundreds of thousands, or an artillery bombardment of Seoul with chemical weapons, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Korean and U.S. forces and citizens. Would North Korea be more willing to contemplate such attacks if it thought it was immune to a U.S. nuclear response? Recent presidents have been unwilling to accept the risk to deterrence that would accompany a pledge of no-first-use. Two factors might mitigate such risks to deterrence were a no-first-use policy adopted. First, a no-first-use pledge is unlikely to appear credible to an adversary contemplating major aggression. For example, North Korea is unlikely to base any military planning to reunify the Korean Peninsula by force, or plans for its regime survival after an unsuccessful effort to achieve that objective, on a U.S. promise of no-first-use. Consider China’s existing no-first-use pledge, which has not caused the United States to moderate its own nuclear posture one iota. Few states will risk their national security based on a declaratory policy that can be reversed overnight. Dominic Tierney, an academic who supports a no-first-use policy, eloquently addresses this point: Viewed through a strategic — and perhaps more cynical — lens, the no-first-use doctrine also has a huge credibility problem. For the U.S. pledge to truly matter, a president who otherwise favors a nuclear first strike would have to decide not to press the button because of this policy. But in an extreme national crisis — one involving, say, North Korean nuclear missiles — a president is unlikely to feel bound by America’s former assurance. After all, if a country is willing to use nuclear weapons, it’s also willing to break a promise. Second, it’s not at all clear that an adversary could count on U.S. public opinion to act as a “brake” on an American president contemplating first use in response to a catastrophic non-nuclear attack. Several surveys conducted by Scott Sagan and Ben Valentino look at the American public’s willingness to support first-use under such circumstances. The results reveal a surprising level of support. Sagan and Valentino thus argue: Would we drop the bomb again? Our surveys can’t say how future presidents and their top advisers would weigh their options. But they do reveal something unsettling about the instincts of the U.S. public: When provoked, we don’t seem to consider the use of nuclear weapons a taboo, and our commitment to the immunity of civilians from deliberate attack in wartime, even with vast casualties, is shallow. Today, as in 1945, the U.S. public is unlikely to hold back a president who might consider using nuclear weapons in the crucible of war. In other words, the American public might well demand, rather than oppose or simply tolerate, a nuclear response to a catastrophic non-nuclear attack — no-first-use pledge or not. Thus, an adversary’s doubts about a no-first-use pledge and its belief that the U.S. public may well support breaking such a pledge in response to a horrific attack could mitigate some of the deterrence risks of adopting a no-first-use policy. However, the degree to which those risks would be mitigated remains uncertain and, so far, no president has been willing to find out. Assurance and Nonproliferation Risks Building and maintaining strong alliances has been a centerpiece of America’s effort to produce and sustain a more peaceful world. Critical to this is assuring U.S. allies of America’s commitment to their defense by extending to them the full range of U.S. military power. Many countries, including those that share a border with an adversary that presents a threat to their very existence, see no-first-use as a weakening, symbolic or otherwise, of U.S. extended deterrence. In response to Chinese provocations in the western Pacific and North Korea’s nuclear tests and missile launches, Japan regularly seeks, both in official consultations and ongoing military cooperation, assurances that America will continue to fulfill its security commitments to protect the island nation. Some in South Korea have already pressed to explore an increased U.S. nuclear presence in their country to further deter regional threats. Loss of confidence in U.S. security commitments could cause some allies to seek accommodation with regional adversaries in ways that run counter to U.S. interests. Moreover, both South Korea and Japan, similar to many NATO allies, have latent nuclear weapons capabilities characteristic of advanced industrial economies with commercial nuclear power. Any perceived wavering of U.S. security commitments could cause allies to develop and field their own nuclear weapons. Further, America’s allies have made their feelings about America adopting a no-first-use policy known. U.S. officials consulted America’s allies extensively in the lead up to the 2010 and 2018 nuclear posture reviews. This dialogue has been rich and productive and, in some ways, surprising in its candor. For example, in 2009, Japanese officials briefed the Perry-Schlesinger Commission, established by Congress to seek a bipartisan approach to the U.S. nuclear posture, on specific features and capabilities of the U.S. nuclear deterrent that Japan viewed as critical to its security. In related dialogue, many foreign counterparts to U.S. officials, including those of Japan, have urged the United States not to adopt a no-first-use policy.

Biden subscribing to a NFU policy removes this element of ambiguity from America’s strategic approach and makes the prospect of US adversaries like China and Russia behaving more aggressively to prosecute their regional interests more likely.

This is particularly concerning given the highly diverse and unique range of international security challenges Biden will face over his first term. America’s primary competitor, China, has and continues to develop a range of kinetic and non-kinetic military capabilities to deter the US from regional escalation in assistance of allies in a conflict or crisis. China’s military modernisation has allowed it to gain at least regional parity in its conventional military capabilities – this is particularly relevant when examining the implications for Taiwan, where anxieties about a successful Chinese assault remain high.

Detractors, on the other hand, do view NFU as a dangerous folly.

Among the general criticisms of such an approach are that it would leave the U.S. without the ability to deter non-nuclear non-conventional attacks (involving, say, biological or chemical weapons); that such restraint would not be credible in the eyes of potential adversaries who would always have to assume that the U.S. would retain a practical first-use option; and that there is no reason to believe that other nuclear powers would follow suit.

The reality is that every single American president, Democrat and Republican alike, has rejected an NFU declaration because to do so would invite unacceptable risk that could yield catastrophic war—and for no tangible benefit at all.

This is true for four reasons.

Reality: Adopting a No First Use policy will not reduce the United States’ commitment to extended deterrence. Extended deterrence is about much more than just nuclear weapons. Forward deployments of U.S. conventional forces paired with strong and unwavering political commitments play the most immediate roles in deterring aggression against the United States and its allies. The United States maintains thousands of troops and hundreds of ships in commands around the world to balance crisis zones and deter aggression. The United States employs advanced conventional capabilities including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance tools and precision-guided weapons in conflicts, but also to help deter potential attacks. The United States’ robust conventional forces are more than sufficient to deter or counter non-nuclear attacks on U.S. allies, and conventional military threats are more credible than threats to use nuclear weapons first. Current and former military officials have emphasized the crucial role that U.S. conventional forces play in projecting power globally and credibly deterring aggression.

The credible U.S. second-strike capability is and will remain a deterrent to nuclear attack, but the threat of nuclear preemption is unnecessary and dangerous. If nuclear-armed adversaries believe that the United States would use nuclear weapons first, they will be incentivized to use their nuclear weapons before a devastating U.S. strike degrades the capability. This dynamic is destabilizing and increases the chance of a nuclear miscalculation.

The NPR placed no emphasis on entering a ‘strategic dialogue’ with China, which we consider essential to enhancing nuclear stability in the vital and precarious Pacific region. Such a dialogue might be initiated by an offer to China to enter into a bilateral NFU agreement with three conditions. Firstly, the Chinese would acknowledge that such an agreement would cover US allies; logically, this should not give China cause to object, because it already pledges NFU globally. Secondly, the Chinese would agree to enter into a process to foster transparency and to build confidence in support of an NFU agreement, and nuclear stability more generally. Thirdly, China would agree to work with the United States to strengthen nuclear stewardship globally, which might include constraining Russian and North Korean nuclear belligerence – actions which are in China’s interest.

Compatible with a bilateral NFU pledge would be a mutual understanding that both sides are already highly vulnerable to the nuclear weapons of the other side. Thus far, the United States has resisted such an understanding. This would be an important element of any dialogue and could serve to limit China’s desire for a massive build-up.

Third, although supporters of calculated ambiguity fervently believe it maximizes deterrence, the evidence for such a claim is hardly definitive. Nuclear weapons did not deter the 9/11 attacks; the rise of the Islamic State; Russian interventions in Georgia, Ukraine, or Syria; or North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Nor have Indian and Pakistani nuclear weapons deterred risky conventional crises between the two countries over Kashmir, most recently in February 2019. The calculated ambiguity argument gained some support from the perception that during the 1991 Gulf War a U.S. nuclear threat had helped deter Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein from using chemical weapons against U.S. and coalition forces or Israel.18 As Scott Sagan has persuasively argued, however, it is highly unlikely that a nuclear threat in fact deterred Saddam from using chemical weapons.19 Indeed, recent research suggests that the threat to use nuclear weapons first against non-nuclear states has little credible coercive power.20

Fourth, even in the very small number of scenarios where nuclear weapons might seem to be necessary — for example, knocking out North Korean mobile missiles or underground command centers — opening the Pandora’s box of nuclear use would likely lead to uncontrolled escalation. There is no scenario in which using nuclear weapons first can make a bad situation better. As James Doyle, a former staffer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has argued, “It is folly to believe that the use of nuclear weapons could de-escalate a conflict.”21

The fact that nuclear threats cannot deter most conventional attacks, and that there is no sensible use for nuclear weapons in response for such attacks, does not mean that conventional attacks cannot be deterred or prevented, or that the United States is not committed to do so. The United States and Japan must plan on deterring and defeating conventional aggression through conventional means. They cannot and should not rely on the magic of a nuclear umbrella, because the umbrella will not be effective under these circumstances. A pledge of no-first-use by the United States would not signal any reduction in the commitment of the United States to the security of Japan. Instead, by recognizing that nuclear weapons cannot deter most nonnuclear attacks, and by taking steps to acquire the conventional capabilities required to deter and respond to them, the security of both countries would be enhanced.

Many benefits. A no-first-use treaty can also guide domestic political and technical debates. The nuclear-weapon states have a wide range of military programs, some of which may strengthen no-first-use commitments and some of which may undermine them. State parties to a no-first-use treaty have responsibilities to shape their military force structures to be consistent with no-first-use commitments. In domestic debates, political and technical experts and policymakers could invoke the treaty’s rules in support of projects that are consistent with the spirit of the treaty and against those that violate it. A no-first-use treaty could reduce the nuclear risks associated with the blind development of nuclear weapon projects by guiding domestic discussions in states parties.

A no-first-use treaty could also steer international debate and therefore contribute to establishing and strengthening the norm of no first use of nuclear weapons. In fact, there has been no use of nuclear weapons since the end of World War II. To explain this, one theory claims that mutual nuclear deterrence has prevented the incentives for first use, while another argues that it is the existence of a “nuclear taboo” that has limited the incentives for first use. This means that there is a social force that inhibits the first use of nuclear weapons. Whether this social force is a very strong—or a less strong but still useful tradition—remains subject to debate. But there is little doubt that a no-first-use treaty would strengthen this social force.

There are many reasons why retaining the option of using nuclear weapons first is dangerous for the United States. If the president decided to cross the threshold and use nuclear weapons first against a nuclear-armed adversary (Russia, China, or North Korea), those countries would almost certainly retaliate with nuclear weapons, either directly against the US or against its allies. Maintaining a first-use option therefore increases the chance of a catastrophic attack against the US public.

In addition, if a nuclear-armed adversary is concerned that the United States might use nuclear weapons first in a crisis, that could increase the adversary's incentive to go nuclear first because of "use-it-or-lose-it" thinking—that is, the fear that if the US attacked first it might wipe out the adversary's nuclear arsenal. This kind of thinking creates pressure to use these weapons before they are lost.

As Kingston Reif and Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association have argued, “a clear U.S. no-first-use policy would reduce the risk of Russian or Chinese nuclear miscalculation during a crisis by alleviating concerns about a devastating U.S. nuclear first-strike.”24 This would mean that the United States would rely on nuclear weapons only to deter nuclear attacks. Adopting this approach would involve more than “cheap talk,” for it would require meaningful doctrinal and operational changes.25 Specifically, it would allow the United States to adopt a less threatening nuclear posture. It would eliminate first-strike postures, preemptive capabilities, and other types of destabilizing warfighting strategies. It would emphasize restraint in targeting, launch-on-warning, alert levels of deployed systems, procurement, and modernization plans. In other words, it would help shape the physical qualities of nuclear forces in a way that renders them unsuitable for missions other than deterrence of nuclear attacks.26

Implementing these steps would significantly reduce the risk of accidental, unauthorized, mistaken, or preemptive use. The removal of threats of a nuclear first strike would also strengthen strategic and crisis stability.27 Of perhaps equal importance, adopting an NFU policy would help address humanitarian concerns and reduce the salience of nuclear weapons.28 Likewise, it would “be more consistent with the long-term goal of global nuclear disarmament and would better contribute to US nuclear non-proliferation objectives.”29