A no first use (NFU) policy is a commitment by a nuclear power not to initiate the use of nuclear weapons. Such a pledge would allow for a unique state of affairs in which a given nuclear power can be engaged in a conflict of conventional weaponry while it formally forswears any of the strategic advantages of nuclear weapons, provided the enemy power does not possess or utilize any such weapons of their own. The concept is primarily invoked in reference to nuclear mutually assured destruction but has also been applied to chemical and biological warfare, as is the case of the official WMD policy of India. China and India are currently the only two nuclear powers to formally maintain a NFU policy, adopting pledges in 1964 and 1998 respectively. Both NATO and a number of its member states have repeatedly rejected calls for adopting a NFU policy, as during the lifetime of the Soviet Union a pre-emptive nuclear strike was commonly argued as a key option to afford NATO a credible nuclear deterrent, compensating for the overwhelming conventional weapon superiority enjoyed by the Soviet Army in Eurasia. In 1993, Russia dropped a pledge against first use of nuclear weapons made in 1982 by Leonid Brezhnev, with Russian military doctrine later stating in 2000 that Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons "in response to a large-scale conventional aggression". Pakistan has also made similar statements, largely in reference to intermittent military tensions with India. North Korea has publicly pledged to refrain from a preemptive nuclear strike, while threatening retaliation up to and including WMD against conventional aggression. Israel has not declared a NFU policy and it maintains the stance of nuclear ambiguity, but has said it would not be the first country to "introduce" nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
Countries pledging no-first-use
China
India
India first adopted the NFU policy after its second series of nuclear tests, Pokhran-II, in 1998. In August 1999, the Indian government released a draft of the doctrine which asserts that nuclear weapons are solely for deterrence and that India will pursue a policy of "retaliation only". The document also maintains that India "will not be the first to initiate a nuclear first strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail" and that decisions to authorise the use of nuclear weapons would be made by the prime minister or his "designated successor(s)". India is in the process of developing a nuclear doctrine based on "credible minimum deterrence". In a speech at the National Defence College by India's National Security Advisor, Shivshankar Menon, on October 21, 2010, the wording was changed from "no first use" to "no first use against non-nuclear weapon states", but some argued that it was not a substantive change but "an innocent typographical or lexical error in the text of the speech". In April 2013, Shyam Saran, convener of the National Security Advisory Board, affirmed that regardless of the size of a nuclear attack against India, be it a tactical nuclear weapon or a strategic nuclear weapon, India would retaliate massively. That was in response to reports that Pakistan had developed a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon in an attempt to supposedly nullify an Indian "no first use" retaliatory doctrine. In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi described India's NFU policy as part of the country's "cultural heritage", reaffirming India's commitment to NFU policy despite the escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan in 2001–2002. On November 10, 2016, the Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar questioned the NFU policy of India, and asked why should India "bind" itself when it is a "responsible nuclear power". He clarified that it was his personal opinion. Vajpayee's government conducted the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998. On September 26, 2013, Indian Minister of External Affairs Salman Khurshid, reiterated India's NFU policy at the High Level Meeting of the General Assembly on Nuclear Disarmament, New York. Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh, speaking on the anniversary of the death of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on August 16, 2019, said that India's NFU policy might change depending upon the "circumstances". Most recently, on September 26, 2025, Sibi George, secretary (West) at the Ministry of External Affairs of India, reconfirmed their NFU policy at the High-Level Meeting on Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, AM & PM Meetings.
Countries without a no-first-use policy
Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and North Korea say that they will use nuclear weapons against either nuclear or non-nuclear states only in the case of invasion or other attack against their territory or against one of their allies. Historically, NATO military strategy, taking into account the numerical superiority of Warsaw Pact conventional forces, assumed that tactical nuclear weapons would have to be used to defeat a Soviet invasion. At the 16th NATO summit in April 1999, Germany proposed that NATO adopt a no-first-use policy, but the proposal was rejected. In 2022, the leaders of the five NPT nuclear-weapon states issued a statement on prevention of nuclear war, saying "We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."
Soviet Union/Russia In its final years, the Soviet Union adopted a formal no-first-use policy in 1982 when Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko read out at the United Nations a pledge by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev not to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike. On April 26, 1983, American child actress Samantha Smith received a mail directly from new leader Andropov, also emphasis that "Soviet Union solemnly declared throughout the entire world that never—never—will it use nuclear weapons first against any country". However, this pledge was not taken very seriously, and later leaked Soviet Armed Forces documents confirmed that the military had made plans for a pre-emptive nuclear strike and considered launching one during the Able Archer 83 crisis. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation formally reversed this policy in 1993 due to the weakness of the Russian Armed Forces in the post-Soviet era. Russia describes its entire military doctrine as defensive military doctrine. With regard to nuclear weapons specifically, Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons:
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