Just nine days before President-elect Trump took the oath of office in 2017, then-Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech in Washington in which he advocated a fundamental change in U.S. nuclear deterrence policy: a public declaration that America would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a future conflict.
“Given our nonnuclear capabilities and the nature of today’s threats, it’s hard to envision a plausible scenario in which the first use of nuclear weapons by the United States would be necessary or make sense,” Biden said.
“The next administration will put forward its own policies,” he said, but he argued, “President Obama and I are confident we can deter and defend ourselves and our allies against nonnuclear threats through other means.”
“Deterring, and, if necessary, retaliating against a nuclear attack should be the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” he added.
Trump and his initial national security team, which included his defense secretary, retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, and national security adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, did indeed go another way, not only rejecting any idea of forswearing the first use of nuclear weapons but expanding the conditions under which adversaries might be subject to a nuclear strike from the U.S.
The language was included in a rewrite of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review, published in February 2018, which said the U.S. reserved the right to respond with nuclear weapons to a conventional, chemical, biological, or cyber attack in “extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners.”
Under the revised nuclear doctrine, “extreme circumstances” would include “significant nonnuclear attacks” on strategic assets, including targets such as population centers, critical civilian infrastructure, or any attack on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, command and control facilities, or early warning radars or satellites.
The precept that the U.S., the world’s premier nuclear power, should never rule out the first use of nuclear weapons is one that previous presidents, including George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama, have questioned but never changed.
Most but not all of the four-star commanders who have been in charge of America’s strategic arsenal have flatly rejected the idea of a no-first-use declaration.
“I think the current policy is exactly right. It’s been that way through multiple administrations. I think it’s important to continue that policy. It improves our strategic deterrent. It improves the support that we give to our allies,” testified Air Force Gen. John Hyten in April 2019 when he was still head of U.S. Strategic Command.
“When I travel overseas, the extended deterrent message I bring from the United States is hugely powerful to our allies that have chosen not to build their own nuclear weapons and to trust that the United States nuclear umbrella will cover them,” he told a House Armed Services subcommittee.
But Marine Gen. James Cartwright, who served as STRATCOM commander under President George W. Bush, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Obama, and went on to become a member of the arms control group Global Zero, came to view “no first use” as the only rational doctrine.
“A no-first-use policy would … reduce the risks of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons,” he wrote along with fellow arms control advocate Bruce Blair in a New York Times op-ed in 2016.
“Although a no-first-use policy would limit the president’s discretion by imposing procedural and physical constraints on his or her ability to initiate the use of nuclear weapons, we believe such checks on the commander in chief would serve the national interest,” they wrote. “Nuclear weapons today no longer serve any purpose beyond deterring the first use of such weapons by our adversaries.”
Given his public statements and the failure of his mentor Obama to make any progress on his vision of “a world without nuclear weapons,” Biden may find the argument for a no-first-use declaration persuasive, as laid out in a new book by former Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry.
In The Button, co-written with Tom Collina of the Ploughshares Fund, Perry argues that there is a realistic scenario in which the world’s dominant conventional military power needs nuclear weapons to deter or respond to nonnuclear threats. “How can the United States possibly convince other nations that they do not need nuclear weapons if the United States itself says it needs them for nonnuclear threats?” he asks.
But military commanders argue that the point of maintaining the option of first use is to add another level of deterrence, to ensure no adversary miscalculates or underestimates the willingness of the U.S. to protect itself and its allies.
“I think anything that simplifies an enemy’s decision-making calculus would be a mistake,” Gen. Joseph Dunford, then the Joint Chiefs chairman, told Congress last year. “I’m very comfortable with the policy that we have right now, what creates a degree of ambiguity.”
Of course, because historically, the president, in his role as commander in chief, has had the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons, each president can have an individual policy about when to launch. The president doesn’t have to announce it to anyone. It can just remain a personal conviction.
Which brings up a second argument from Perry and Collina: It’s time, they say, to reconsider whether a single person should have the power to end the world.
“No president should have to make that awesome decision quickly, without deliberation and consultation; no president should have the sole authority to launch nuclear weapons first,” they argue. “In the case of first use, we support current legislation to require a declaration of war by Congress that specifically authorizes a nuclear attack before the president can use nuclear weapons.”
History provides a cautionary tale.
“The president could be emotionally unstable or under the influence of drugs or alcohol and could impulsively choose to initiate nuclear war at any time,” they write, and here they are thinking of one president in particular: Richard Nixon, who they say had a well-documented “tendency to drink alcohol to excess.”
In 1969, when a U.S. spy plane was downed by North Korea over the Sea of Japan, killing 31 Americans, “Nixon became incensed and ordered a tactical nuclear strike,” Perry and Collina recount, citing George Carver, the CIA’s top Vietnam specialist at the time.
“The Joint Chiefs were alerted and asked to recommend targets, but [national security adviser Henry] Kissinger got on the phone to them. They agreed not to do anything until Nixon sobered up.”
Both Russia and China have some version of a declared “no first use” policy. In the case of Russia, its military doctrine calls for the use of nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against it first.
But those declarations aren’t worth the paper they are written on, Adm. Chas Richard, the current U.S. strategic commander, told Republican Sen. Josh Hawley earlier this year.
“Senator, I think I could drive a truck through that ‘no first use’ policy,” Richard testified at an Armed Services Committee hearing in February, noting that Beijing doesn’t have the same definition of “first use” as the U.S. does.
“They are very opaque about what their intentions are,” Richard said. “So, what constitutes first use? Where might they say, ‘That’s our territory,’ right? ‘Therefore, it doesn’t count as an attack against you.’”
In a presidential debate in September 2016, then-candidate Trump was asked directly if he supported the current policy.
“I would certainly not do first strike. I think that once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over,” Trump said, but then he added the caveat that all prior presidents have cited. “At the same time, we have to be prepared. I can’t take anything off the table.”
Jamie McIntyre is the Washington Examiner’s senior writer on defense and national security. His morning newsletter, “Jamie McIntyre’s Daily on Defense,” is free and available by email subscription at dailyondefense.com.
