NUCLEAR STRATEGYThe Risks of Getting Russian and Chinese Nuclear Strategy Wrong
Nuclear weapons first-use is an anxiety-inducing topic for policymakers. The possibility of nuclear weapons first-use influences diplomacy, the use of conventional force, and theories of deterrence. In this article, two scholars warn of the danger of misperception regarding first use of nuclear weapons and identify ways that major powers might—but often won’t—use nuclear weapons first.
In October 2022, Biden administration officials feared that Russia might use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine. For more than a decade prior, Western strategists had debated whether Russia’s nuclear strategy included an option to “escalate to deescalate” a conflict using a nuclear weapon. Uncertainty about Russia’s threshold for using nuclear weapons led the Biden administration to warn that severe consequences would follow if Russia employed a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
The events the Biden administration believed could have prompted Russia to go nuclear never came to pass in the fall of 2022, and the impact of the U.S. warning remains unclear. But this episode illustrates a broader problem in contemporary great power competition: Russia, China, and the United States struggle to understand whether and when each other might use nuclear weapons first. In addition to fears about Russia, China’s nuclear build-up in recent years has increased uncertainty about its threshold for nuclear use, despite its long-standing No First-Use (NFU) policy.
Nuclear-armed great powers’ peacetime nuclear strategies reveal information about whether and why they believe they might need a first-use option in a future war, as well as the first-use options they have developed. But great powers often mirror-image their own nuclear threshold when interpreting their adversary’s plans about nuclear first use. Alternatively, they estimate that an adversary’s nuclear threshold is lower than their own because they anticipate the worst-case scenario of what an adversary could do based on its nuclear capabilities. Dire assessments of an adversary’s potential to use nuclear weapons might seem prudent, but they can also be a dangerous driver of nuclear escalation in a conflict.
Why Great Powers Might Use Nuclear Weapons First
A nuclear first-use option refers to a state’s development of the capabilities and doctrine in peacetime to carry out the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in a crisis or conflict to attack foreign territory or destroy foreign military forces. To prevent nuclear escalation in a conventional great power conflict, the United States needs to know whether, why, and how Russia or China might use nuclear weapons first. Equally, Chinese and Russian decision-makers need a clear understanding of when the United States could cross the nuclear threshold first.
