U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy: Considering No First Use

The Biden Administrations Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) reviewed U.S. nuclear declaratory policy- the statements the United States makes about when, how, and why it might use nuclear weapons to deter adversaries and reassure U.S. allies of its commitment to their defense. But, according to an Administration fact sheet, the NPR will not alter this policy to include a no first use pledge stating that the United States will never use nuclear weapons first in a conflict or a sole purpose policy stating that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear use. Instead, the NPR will state that the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, andpartners. It will also indicate that the United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners. The United States has long pledged to refrain from using nuclear weapons against most non-nuclear weapon states, but has neither ruled out their first use in all cases nor specified the circumstances under which it would use them. This policy of calculated ambiguity addressed U.S. concerns during the Cold War, when the United States and NATO faced numerically superior Soviet and Warsaw Pact conventional forces in Europe. At the time, the United States not only developed plans to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield to disrupt or defeat attacking tanks and troops, but it also hoped that the risk of a nuclear response would deter the Soviet Union from initiating a conventional attack. This is not because the United States believed it could defeat the Soviet Union in a nuclear war, but because it hoped the Soviet Union would know that the use of these weapons would likely escalate to all-out nuclear war, with both sides suffering massive destruction.