this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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While I don't think it bears much on how reasonable it is to suggest nuclear powers agree to never strike first, China's arsenal is uniquely well designed for this kind of strategy. They employ zero static sites, unlike the US and Russia, relying on mobile launchers, subs and bombers. This makes them tactically poised for a retaliatory strike as they don't have as much of the risk of losing their launch sites in a first strike. The US doctrine of preliminary strike in the event a nuclear attack seems likely is designed to protect their ability to launch at all.
While this kind of treaty would be slightly "advantageous" to China, it's only because they set up their nuclear arsenal with this far more reasonable and less aggressive strategy in mind from the get go while Russia and the US would have to adapt and convert their arsenal.
Russia also maintains a no first strike policy, unless that changed since I last got stuck in a rabbit hole about nuclear policy. The US is the only major country in the world to maintain a first strike policy with nuclear weapons that I know of.
Kind of? They call it that sometimes but it doesn't look like a true no first use policy in the same vein as China's and India's. Putin also threatens nuclear weapons if NATO troops were to get involved in Ukraine, and openly questions the policy.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/europe/russia-putin-nuclear-weapons-intl/index.html
I'm not sure any nuclear country would stick to these policies if they truly faced an existential threat, whether that threat was nuclear or not. Russia's policy has a carve out for any existential threat including conventional weapons. US and Russian policies are pretty close, basically okay to use for any existential threat. Doesn't hurt to try and negotiate more no first use policies and reinforce the norm though.
Looks like the UK, France, and Pakistan also lack no first use policies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_first_use
As far as I can tell the article is correct, China and India are the only current nuclear powers with true no first use policies. If that's incorrect happy to learn more though. Israel not on here cause officially not a nuclear power, but hey we weren't born yesterday.
Wow great info, thanks so much for doing all that legwork! It makes sense that Putin would put less stock into the policy than did his predecessors, because while the leaked Soviet archives show the USSR was genuinely terrified of nuclear war and mostly built up in response to US expansion of nuclear programs, I feel like Putin sees it more as a tool for intimidation.
The post-USSR Russian Federation and Yeltsin, a US tool ironically enough and traitor to the USSR, were the ones who revoked Russia's no-first-use nuclear policy from 1993 through 1997.