No First Use: India’s nuclear doctrine needs to be adopted as a treaty pledge by all players
As nuclear treaties crumble and the rhetoric on nukes takes a reckless turn, the world edges that much closer to catastrophe. To revive the diplomacy of restraint, India should champion a no-first-use pact among nuclear-armed states. The world’s safety demands no less.
It is time for a new initiative to re-establish nuclear restraint. We need a global no-first-use treaty signed by all nuclear powers, declared and undeclared, given how the rhetoric over nukes has been heating up. This January, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which devised the Doomsday Clock that shows how close humanity is to nuclear catastrophe, moved its seconds hand one tick closer to midnight—or doom.
Since then, the risk scenario has worsened. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty is dead and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that is about to expire in February 2026 has bleak odds of renewal. Now, US President Donald Trump’s order for his ‘Department of War’ to resume nuclear tests might sound the death knell of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; this pact was in limbo anyway, unsigned by some, unratified by others.
Meanwhile, new nuclear weapons are being developed and brandished, most brazenly by Russia. The only glimmer amid the clouds gathering on the horizon in the shape of a mushroom is a proposal by China last year for the Big Five nuclear powers—the US, Russia, France, Britain and China—to commit themselves to No First Use (NFU).
Since this has been India’s own stance since Pokhran, New Delhi should not just join this worthy initiative, but champion it with the confidence of autonomy that comes from having its own arsenal.
After China joined the nuclear club in 1964 by testing a nuke, it declared a policy of NFU. India adopted it as its formal doctrine in 1998. But none of the other seven nuclear-armed countries—Pakistan, North Korea and Israel plus four of the Big Five—has pledged NFU or worked it into policy. Leaders of the US have occasionally expressed the opinion that the sole purpose of these weapons is to deter nuclear attacks by others, and, in case deterrence fails, to retaliate.
It may be pertinent to recall that between August 1945, when the US field-tested its nukes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and August 1949, when the Soviet Union conducted its first test, America had a global monopoly on these bombs but exercised the wisdom of restraint even as the Cold War with its Soviet rival began to thicken; the horrors suffered by Japan had created a taboo against the use of such weapons of mass destruction.
Today, US adoption of NFU would not only uphold its national conscience, but also rebuke Russia, which has taken to blatant nuclear sabre-rattling to deter greater Nato support for the country it’s at war with, Ukraine. An NFU treaty would restrain such threats and help limit the scope for actual nuclear adventurism.
Moscow recently showed off its new cruise missile Burevestnik that can reportedly deliver a warhead to a target 20,000km away. Its big marvel is that it’s powered by nuclear energy, which shows Russia’s success in developing a tiny nuclear reactor for the purpose. Such a reactor could be placed in a satellite for energy and its power deployed against enemy targets in orbit, which could be zapped into dysfunction or wholly destroyed. Keeping nukes out of space is another vital cause.
The risk that the global treaty on this may get violated just shows the futility of any side trying to gain superiority in a nuclear arms race. This is not a race anyone can win. It veers off in new directions, taking humanity that much closer to extinction. The world needs a measure of security against that outcome. An NFU treaty would make a difference.
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