Making ’No First Use’ Work: Bring All WMD Inside the Tent

Alan Dowty, in The Non-proliferation Review 8 (Spring 2001): 79-85

Despite impressive progress in the delegitimization of chemical and biological weapons, success in eliminating them clearly depends on parallel progress in delegitimizing nuclear weapons. Arms control negotiations will have to take into account the linkages that exist between the different categories of weapons of mass destruction. One obvious first step would be agreement on no first use of any weapon of mass destruction, enabling the United States to maintain a nuclear deterrent against chemical or biological attack while abandoning the increasingly dubious option of nuclear response to conventional attack.

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