Escalate to Survive?: Nuclear First Use in Contemporary Great Power Conflict
2026-06-04
Why do great powers believe it is necessary to have nuclear first-use options? What explains the different types of first-use options in the nuclear force postures of Russia and the United States? Why did China not develop a first-use option in the post-Cold War era? Existing literature focuses on whether great power nuclear strategies should entrench mutually assured destruction or compete for superiority, but it does not fully explain variation in first-use options. We compare the approaches to first use in the nuclear strategies of China, Russia, and the United States. Each of these great powers has different plans for both pursuing limited conflict objectives and countering conventional and geographic vulnerabilities, regime threats, and threats to allies, as well as different beliefs about damage limitation. Acute conventional and geographic vulnerabilities explain Russia's first-use options, which are optimized for state survival. Despite speculation that China might use nuclear weapons first to compel reunification with Taiwan, China has weak reasons to do so because it prefers non-nuclear means to achieve this objective. In contrast, the United States maintains options for first use, largely because of its extended deterrence commitments to allies and beliefs about damage limitation. These different approaches could fuel nuclear escalation in a conflict scenario.