Le Pen kills the European Union

[Anomalocaris]

P.S. The United States has refused repeatedly demands to a adopt a 'no first use policy' for its own nuclear weapons. China (PRC), India and the Russian Federation all have no first use policies for their nuclear weapons. Sadly, NATO does not. United States LOVES to warmonger. I believe the puppet regime in Pakistan does have a no first use policy either.

This is ridiculous for a couple reasons:

1. Declaring a no first use policy is not a guarantee of no first use. What will you do if a no first use declarer changes its mind and lobs first? Bitch about them going back on their word? It's fucking stupid.

2. If the U.S. ever were to adopt a no first use policy the immediate reaction would be for others to laugh and state the obvious; namely, how serious can the promise be coming from the only nation to ever actually deploy a nuclear weapon.

Ah, no.  There is no harm in being laughed at.

If being laughed at is the only real risk, the US would have declared a no first use policy because it would actually pacify at least some thorny noise makers at no real loss.

The truth is there is very likely a very real and sustained publicity and international trust penalty to breaking so weighty a pledge as no nuclear first use, unless the user is clearly under otherwise irremediably existential threat.

The US really would like to reserve the right to nuke someone even when its existence is not on the line and everyone else would forgive it for using nuke.   It would like to do so and still reduce the penalty and fallout of such a decision, that's why it wouldn't make this declaration.

The reason why India and China would make such a pledge is: 1. They are big and can bully all their neighbors without resorting to nukes.   2. If they first use nukes against more important countries further away, or each other, thing won't go well for them.  

The reason why Pakistan would make no such pledge is because India is big and can roll over Pakistan without using nukes, and the only way for Pakistan to survive is to use nukes when India hasn't yet used nukes.

Interestingly Soviet Union had an enormous conventional superiority in Europe, so Soviet Union also had a no first use policy.  This is because Soviet Union felt confident it would win the war with NATO and the US if the war stayed purely conventional, while winning becomes much less certain, even meaningless, if the war went nuclear. So it certainly won't be the first to go nuclear.  

During the Cold War the US reasonably resisted a no first use policy precisely because it agreed with the soviets that the soviets would likely win a conventional war over Europe, and the only way to avoid being beaten and excluded from the main landmass and 70% of the world's economy and manpower is to flip the game table and go nuclear, and so it wanted to reserve the right to go nuclear if the soviets started winning.

The reason why the US continue to resist this is more brutal.  The US is now so powerful that it feels if it were to nuke someone just out of convenience, no one can really call it to account.  So it would like to reserve the right to do this.  But it would like to avoid the inconvenient, moderate, but  unnecessary fallout of first pledging not to do this, and then doing it.