No First Use - Countries Pledging Only To Use Nuclear Weapons Defensively

Countries Pledging Only To Use Nuclear Weapons Defensively

See also: Mutual assured destruction

Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France say 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 the use of tactical nuclear weapons would have been required in defeating a Soviet invasion.

At a NATO summit in April 1999, Germany proposed that NATO adopt a no-first-use policy, but the proposal was rejected.

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