No-First-Use in NATO: Time to Reconsider?
Abstract
In 1982, four prominent American statesmen ignited a controversy over NATO's military strategy by proposing that the Atlantic Alliance adopt a declaratory "No First Use" policy on nuclear weapons. "The time has come," they wrote, "for .. a new Alliance policy and doctrine: that nuclear weapons will not be used unless an aggressor should use them first." Though McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan, Robert McNamara,,and George Smith tied their suggestion to an improvement in NATO's conventional military capabilities, it was the no-first-use (NFU) aspect of their proposal that captured the headlines and spooked the Alliance's leaders. In succeeding months, the NFU suggestion was buried under a rockslide of criticism from both sides of the Atlantic. The heaviest boulders in the rebuttal avalanche were rolled down by General Bernard Rogers, who was then Supreme Allied Commander, and by a group of German statesmen. Rogers and the "European Gang of Four" argued that the possible first use of nuclear weapons was essential both to the credibility of NATO's flexible response military strategy and to alliance political cohesion. Without these, the overall goal of Alliance policy -- to deter the Warsaw Pact from attacking -- might be jeopardized. When the dust settled, NFU was a dead issue. The rejection of NFU in the early 1980s was due as much to static inertia within the alliance as to sound strategic reasoning. Having adopted flexible response in 1967 only after 6 years of bitterly divisive debate, NATO was not about to throw it away. However, in the past year, the geostrategic situation in Europe has changed to a degree that was heretofore unimaginable. This paper will examine the evolution of NATO's current strategy of flexible response, and explain why continuing changes in Europe are likely to lead to a no-first-use policy. It also will consider some of the likely military and political consequences of this policy.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA437402
Entities
People
- Timothy A. Wray
Organizations
- National War College