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Chuck Berry

Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, guitarist and songwriter who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957), and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.

Born into a middle-class black family in St. Louis, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student, he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand. He was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines for the purpose of having sexual intercourse. After his release in 1963, Berry had several more successful songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine". However, these did not achieve the same success or lasting impact of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgia performer, playing his past material with local backup bands of variable quality. In 1972, he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of "My Ding-a-Ling" became his only record to top the charts. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion.

Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine's "greatest of all time" lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and 2nd greatest guitarist of all time in 2023. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry's: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". "Johnny B. Goode" is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.

Early life

Born in St. Louis, Berry was the youngest child. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as the Ville, an area where many middle-class people lived. His father, Henry William Berry (1895–1987) was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church; his mother, Martha Bell (Banks) (1894–1980) was a certified public school principal. Berry's upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age. He gave his first public performance in 1941 while still a student at Sumner High School; he was still a student there in 1944, when he was arrested for armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City, Missouri, and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends. Berry's account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a nonfunctional pistol. He was convicted and sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men (now the Algoa Correctional Center) in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing. The singing group became competent enough that the authorities allowed it to perform outside the detention facility. Berry was released from the reformatory on his 21st birthday in 1947.

On October 28, 1948, Berry married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on October 3, 1950. Berry supported his family by taking various jobs in St. Louis, working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants and as a janitor in the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards, he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone. He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" on Whittier Street, which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places.

By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T-Bone Walker. He also took guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris, which laid the foundation for his guitar style.

By early 1953, Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. The band played blues and ballads as well as country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times, they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."

In 1954, Berry recorded the tracks "I Hope These Words Will Find You Well" and "Oh, Maria!" with the group Joe Alexander & the Cubans. The songs were released as a single on the Ballad label.

Berry's showmanship, along with a mix of country tunes and R&B tunes, sung in the style of Nat King Cole set to the music of Muddy Waters brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.

1955–1962: Signing with Chess: "Maybellene" to "Come On"
In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago, where he met Muddy Waters who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues music would interest Chess, but Chess was a larger fan of Berry's take on "Ida Red". On May 21, 1955, Berry recorded an adaptation of the song "Ida Red", under the title "Maybellene", with Johnnie Johnson on the piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley's band) on the maracas, Ebby Hardy on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass. "Maybellene" sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazine's rhythm and blues chart and number five on its Best Sellers in Stores chart for September 10, 1955. Berry said, "It came out at the right time when Afro-American music was spilling over into the mainstream pop."

When Berry first saw a copy of the Maybellene record, he was surprised that two other individuals, including DJ Alan Freed had been given writing credit; that would entitle them to some of the royalties. After a court battle, Berry was able to regain full writing credit.

At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached number 29 on the Billboard's Top 100 chart, and Berry toured as one of the "Top Acts of '56". He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that "I knew when I first heard Chuck that he'd been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great." In late 1957, Berry took part in Alan Freed's "Biggest Show of Stars for 1957", touring the United States with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others. He was a guest on ABC's Guy Mitchell Show, singing his hit song "Rock 'n' Roll Music". The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the US Top 10 hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", and "Johnny B. Goode". He appeared in two early rock-and-roll movies: Rock Rock Rock (1956), in which he sang "You Can't Catch Me", and Go, Johnny, Go! (1959), in which he had a speaking role as himself and performed "Johnny B. Goode", "Memphis, Tennessee", and "Little Queenie". His performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 was captured in the motion picture Jazz on a Summer's Day. The opening guitar riff of "Johnny B. Goode" is similar to the one used by Louis Jordan in his "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" (1946). Berry acknowledged the debt to Jordan and several sources have indicated that his work was influenced by Jordan in general.

By the end of the 1950s, Berry was a high-profile established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had opened a racially integrated St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand, and invested in real estate. But in December 1959, he was arrested under the Mann Act after allegations that he had had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old Apache waitress, Janice Escalante, whom he had transported across state lines to work as a hatcheck girl at his club. After a two-week trial in March 1960, he was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. He appealed the decision, arguing that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him. The appeal was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, resulting in another conviction and a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one-half years in prison, from February 1962 to October 1963. He had continued recording and performing during the trials, but his output had slowed as his popularity declined; his final single released before he was imprisoned was "Come On".

1963–1969: "Nadine" and move to Mercury

When Berry was released from prison in 1963, his return to recording and performing was made easier because British invasion bands—notably the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—had sustained interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs, and other bands had reworked some of them, such as the Beach Boys' 1963 hit "Surfin' U.S.A.", which used the melody of Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen". In 1964 and 1965 Berry released eight singles, including three that were commercially successful, reaching the top 20 of the Billboard 100: "No Particular Place to Go" (a humorous reworking of "School Days", concerning the introduction of seat belts in cars), "You Never Can Tell", and the rocking "Nadine". Between 1966 and 1969, Berry released five albums for Mercury Records, including his second live album (and first recorded entirely onstage), Live at Fillmore Auditorium; for the live album he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.

Although this period was not a successful one for studio work, Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he had made a successful tour of the UK, but when he returned in January 1965, his behavior was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict nonnegotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult and unexciting performer. He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival, in New York City's Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.

1970–1979: Back to Chess: "My Ding-a-Ling" to White House concert
Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album Back Home, but in 1972, Chess released a live recording of "My Ding-a-Ling", a novelty song which he had recorded in a different version as "My Tambourine" on his 1968 LP From St. Louie to Frisco. The track became his only number-one single. A live recording of "Reelin' and Rockin'", issued as a follow-up single in the same year, was his last Top 40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were included on the part-live, part-studio album The London Chuck Berry Sessions (other albums of London sessions were recorded by Chess's mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf). Berry's second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album Chuck Berry, after which he did not make a studio record until Rockit for Atco Records in 1979, which would be his last studio album for 38 years.

In the 1970s, Berry toured on the strength of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. AllMusic said that in this period his "live performances became increasingly erratic, ... working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances" which "tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers" alike. In March 1972, he was filmed, at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherds Bush, for Chuck Berry in Concert, part of a 60-date tour backed by the band Rocking Horse. Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Berry in the 1970s, were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. (Springsteen related in the documentary film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll that Berry did not give the band a set list and expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry did not speak to the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.) At the request of Jimmy Carter, Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.

Berry's touring style, traveling the "oldies" circuit in the 1970s (often being paid in cash by local promoters), added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service's accusations that Berry had evaded paying income taxes. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to evading nearly $110,000 in federal income tax owed on his 1973 earnings. Newspaper reports in 1979 put his 1973 joint income (with his wife) at $374,982. He was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—performing benefit concerts—in 1979.

1980–2017: Last years on the road
Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll, of a celebration concert for Berry's sixtieth birthday, organized by Keith Richards. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray, and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and in the film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same model that Berry used on his early recordings.

In the late 1980s, Berry bought the Southern Air, a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri. In 1982, Berry performed a television special at The Roxy in West Hollywood with Tina Turner as his special guest. The concert was released a year later on home video.

In November 2000, Berry faced legal issues when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson who claimed that he had co-written over 50 songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven", that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.

In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland, and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore. During a concert on New Year's Day 2011 in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.

Berry lived in Ladue, Missouri, approximately 10 mi west of St. Louis. He also had a home at "Berry Park", near Wentzville, Missouri where he lived part-time since the 1950s and was the home in which he died. This home, with the guitar-shaped swimming pool, is seen in scenes near the end of the film ''Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll''. He regularly performed one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood of St. Louis, from 1996 to 2014.

Berry announced on his 90th birthday that his first new studio album since Rockit in 1979, entitled Chuck, would be released in 2017. His first new record in 38 years, it includes his children, Charles Berry Jr. and Ingrid, on guitar and harmonica, with songs "covering the spectrum from hard-driving rockers to soulful thought-provoking time capsules of a life's work" and dedicated to his wife Toddy.

Physical and sexual abuse allegations
In 1987, Berry was charged with assaulting a woman at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel. He was accused of causing "lacerations of the mouth, requiring five stitches, two loose teeth, [and] contusions of the face." He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of harassment and paid a $250 fine.

In 1990, he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom of his restaurant. Berry claimed that he had had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Although his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement. One of his biographers, Bruce Pegg, estimated that it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. His lawyers said he had been the victim of a conspiracy to profit from his wealth.

Reportedly, a police raid on his house found intimate videotapes of women, one of whom was apparently a minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child abuse charges were filed. The child abuse charges were eventually dropped, and Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six month suspended jail sentence, placed on two years unsupervised probation, and was ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.

Death
On March 18, 2017, Berry was found unresponsive at his home near Wentzville, Missouri. Emergency workers called to the scene were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead by his personal physician. TMZ posted an audio recording on its website in which a 911 operator can be heard responding to a reported cardiac arrest at Berry's home.

Berry's funeral was held on April 9, 2017, at The Pageant, in Berry's home town of St. Louis. He was remembered with a public viewing by family, friends, and fans in The Pageant. He was viewed with his cherry-red Gibson ES-335 guitar bolted to the inside lid of the coffin and with flower arrangements that included one sent by the Rolling Stones in the shape of a guitar. Afterwards a private service was held in the club celebrating Berry's life and musical career, with the Berry family inviting 300 members of the public into the service. Gene Simmons of Kiss gave an impromptu, unadvertised eulogy at the service, while Little Richard was scheduled to lead the funeral procession but was unable to attend due to an illness. The night before, many St. Louis area bars held a mass toast at 10 pm in Berry's honor.

One of Berry's attorneys estimated that his estate was worth $50 million, including $17 million in music rights. Berry's music publishing accounted for $13 million of the estate's value. The Berry estate owned roughly half of his songwriting credits (mostly from his later career), while BMG Rights Management controlled the other half; most of Berry's recordings are currently owned by Universal Music Group. In September 2017, Dualtone, the label which released Berry's final album, Chuck, agreed to publish all his compositions in the United States.

Berry is interred in a mausoleum in Bellerive Gardens Cemetery in St. Louis.

Legacy

A pioneer of rock and roll, Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances, fast cars, high school life, and consumer culture, and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. Thus Berry, the songwriter, according to critic Jon Pareles, invented rock as "a music of teenage wishes fulfilled and good times (even with cops in pursuit)." Berry contributed three things to rock music: an irresistible swagger, a focus on the guitar riff as the primary melodic element and an emphasis on songwriting as storytelling. His records are a rich storehouse of the essential lyrical, showmanship and musical components of rock and roll. In addition to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, a large number of significant popular-music performers have recorded Berry's songs. Although not technically accomplished, his guitar style is distinctive—he incorporated electronic effects to mimic the sound of bottleneck blues guitarists and drew on the influence of guitar players such as Carl Hogan, and T-Bone Walker to produce a clear and exciting sound that many later guitarists would acknowledge as an influence in their own style. Berry's showmanship has been influential on other rock guitarists, particularly his one-legged hop routine, and the "duck walk", which he first used as a child when he walked "stooping with full-bended knees, but with my back and head vertical" under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining; he used it when "performing in New York for the first time and some journalist branded it the duck walk."

On July 29, 2011, Berry was honored in a dedication of an eight-foot, in-motion Chuck Berry Statue in the Delmar Loop in St. Louis right across the street from Blueberry Hill. Berry said, "It's glorious—I do appreciate it to the highest, no doubt about it. That sort of honor is seldom given out.  But I don't deserve it."

Rock critic Robert Christgau considers Berry "the greatest of the rock and rollers", and John Lennon said, "if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'." Ted Nugent said, "If you don't know every Chuck Berry lick, you can't play rock guitar." Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll". Bruce Springsteen tweeted, "Chuck Berry was rock's greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock 'n' roll writer who ever lived."

When asked what caused the explosion of the popularity of rock 'n roll that took place in the 1950s, with him and a handful of others, mainly him, Berry said, "Well, actually they begin to listen to it, you see, because certain stations played certain music. The music that we, the blacks, played, the cultures were so far apart, we would have to have a play station in order to play it. The cultures begin to come together, and you begin to see one another's vein of life, then the music came together."

Among the honors Berry received were the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000. He was ranked seventh on Time magazine's 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all time. On May 14, 2002, Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard. In August 2014, Berry was made a laureate of the Polar Music Prize.

Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazine's "Greatest of All Time" lists. In September 2003, the magazine ranked him number 6 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In November his compilation album The Great Twenty-Eight was ranked 21st in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth on the list of "The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". Joe Perry wrote in tribute, "As a songwriter, Chuck Berry is like the Ernest Hemingway of rock & roll. He gets right to the point. He tells a story in short sentences. You get a great picture in your mind of what's going on, in a very short amount of space, in well-picked words... kids today are playing the same three chords, trying to play in that same style. Turn the guitars up, and it's punk rock. It's the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. I hear it in the White Stripes, too. People will always cover Chuck Berry songs. When bands go do their homework, they will have to listen to Chuck Berry. If you want to learn about rock & roll, if you want to play rock & roll, you have to start there." In December 2004, six of his songs were included in "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Johnny B. Goode" (#7), "Maybellene" (#18), "Roll Over Beethoven" (#97), "Rock and Roll Music" (#128), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (#272) and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (#374). In June 2008, his song "Johnny B. Goode" was ranked first in the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time". In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Berry at number 96 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

The journalist Chuck Klosterman has argued that in 300 years Berry will still be remembered as the rock musician who most closely captured the essence of rock and roll. Time magazine stated, "There was no one like Elvis. But there was 'definitely' no one like Chuck Berry." Rolling Stone called him "the father of rock & roll" who "gave the music its sound and its attitude, even as he battled racism—and his own misdeeds—all the way," reporting that Leonard Cohen said, "All of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry." Kevin Strait, curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, said that Berry is "one of the primary sonic architects of rock and roll."

According to Cleveland.com's Troy L. Smith, "Chuck Berry didn't invent rock and roll all by his lonesome. But he was the man who took rhythm and blues and transformed it into a new genre that would ever change popular music. Songs like 'Maybellene,' 'Johnny B. Goode,' 'Roll Over Beethoven' and 'Rock and Roll Music' would showcase the core elements of what rock and roll would become. The sound, the format and the style were built on the music Berry created. To some extent, everyone who followed was a copycat."

In 2020, the International Astronomical Union named a small crater on Mercury after Berry.

Studio albums

 * After School Session (1957)
 * One Dozen Berrys (1958)
 * Chuck Berry Is on Top (1959)
 * Rockin' at the Hops (1960)
 * New Juke Box Hits (1961)
 * Two Great Guitars (with Bo Diddley) (1964)
 * St. Louis to Liverpool (1964)
 * Chuck Berry in London (1965)
 * Fresh Berry's (1965)
 * Chuck Berry's Golden Hits (1967)
 * Chuck Berry in Memphis (1967)
 * From St. Louie to Frisco (1968)
 * Concerto in B. Goode (1969)
 * Back Home (1970)
 * San Francisco Dues (1971)
 * The London Chuck Berry Sessions (1972)
 * Bio (1973)
 * Chuck Berry (1975)
 * Rockit (1979)
 * Chuck (2017)

title: Chuck Berry


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No first use

In nuclear ethics and deterrence theory, no first use (NFU) refers to a type of pledge or policy wherein a nuclear power formally refrains from the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in warfare, except for as a second strike in retaliation to an attack by an enemy power using WMD. 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 no first use 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.

China
China became the first nuclear-weapon state to make public its NFU pledge, when it first gained nuclear capabilities in 1964. During the Cold War, China decided to keep the size of its nuclear arsenal small, rather than compete in an international nuclear arms race with the United States and the Soviet Union. In its statement during a UN Security Council meeting in 2023, China reiterated its non-first use stance and support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, adding its rejection of any attacks against nuclear weapons facilities and power plants.

India
India first adopted a "no first use" 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)". According to the National Research Development Corporation, despite the escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan in 2001–2002, India remained committed to its nuclear no-first-use policy. 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 April 2014, before the general elections, Prime Minister Modi reiterated commitment to a no-first-use policy. On November 10, 2016, the Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar questioned the no-first-use 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.

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 no-first-use policy might change depending upon the "circumstances". Vajpayee's government conducted the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998.

Countries against no-first-use policy
Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France 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, 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 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. However, this pledge was not taken seriously, and later leaked Soviet Armed Forces documents confirmed that the military had 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: The military doctrine of 2014 did not depart from this stance. The 2020 Presidential Executive Order on Nuclear Deterrence in Article 4 uses the following wording: "deterrence of a potential adversary from aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies. In the event of a military conflict, this Policy provides for the prevention of an escalation of military actions and their termination on conditions that are acceptable for the Russian Federation and/or its allies." This has been interpreted as describing non-nuclear scenarios where Russia might use nuclear weapons to achieve its military goals. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, observers expressed concern that Russia would preemptively use tactical nuclear weapons after President Vladimir Putin announced the mobilization of Russian nuclear forces to "combat-ready" status. In December 2022, Putin claimed that Russia would not be the first to use nuclear weapons or the second, and that "Russian nuclear doctrine is premised on self-defense."
 * in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, and also
 * in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.

Russia and China do maintain a mutual agreement to have a no first use policy which was developed under the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation. Under the second paragraph of article two, China and Russia agreed that "The contracting parties reaffirm their commitment that they will not be the first to use nuclear weapons against each other nor target strategic nuclear missiles against each other."

United Kingdom
In March 2002, the Secretary of State for Defence Geoff Hoon stated that the UK was prepared to use nuclear weapons against "rogue states" such as Ba'athist Iraq if they ever used "weapons of mass destruction" against British Armed Forces troops in the field. This policy was restated in February 2003 and again under the Ministry of Defence's Strategic Defence and Security Review 2010. In April 2017 Defence Secretary Michael Fallon confirmed that the UK would use nuclear weapons in a "pre-emptive initial strike" in "the most extreme circumstances". Fallon stated in a parliamentary answer that the UK has neither a 'first use' or 'no first use' in its nuclear weapon policy so that its adversaries would not know when the UK would launch nuclear strikes.

United States
The United States has refused to adopt a no first use policy and says that it "reserves the right to use" nuclear weapons first in the case of conflict. This was partially to provide a nuclear umbrella over its allies in NATO as a deterrent against a conventional Warsaw Pact attack during the Cold War, and NATO continues to oppose a no-first-use policy. Not only did the United States and NATO refuse to adopt a no first use policy, but until 1967 they maintained a nuclear doctrine of "massive retaliation" in which nuclear weapons would explicitly be used to defend North America or Western Europe against a conventional attack. Although this strategy was revised, they both reserved the right to use nuclear weapons first under the new doctrine of "flexible response".

Released on April 6, 2010, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review reduces the role of U.S. nuclear weapons: "The fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons, which will continue as long as nuclear weapons exist, is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners." The U.S. doctrine also includes the following assurance to other states: "The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations."

For states eligible for the assurance, the United States would not use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack but states that those responsible for such an attack would be held accountable and would face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response. Even for states that are not eligible for the assurance, the United States would consider the use of nuclear weapons only in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners. The Nuclear Posture Review also notes, "It is in the U.S. interest and that of all other nations that the nearly 65-year record of nuclear non-use be extended forever."

This supersedes the doctrine of the George W. Bush administration set forth in "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" and written under the direction of Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That now superseded doctrine envisioned commanders requesting presidential approval to use nuclear weapons to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The now superseded doctrine also included the option of using nuclear weapons to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.

In August 2016, President Barack Obama reportedly considered adopting a no first use policy. Obama was persuaded by several Cabinet officials such as Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, and Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz that 'no first use' would rattle U.S. allies and decided not to take up the policy.

During the 2017–2018 North Korea crisis, there were efforts to either require congressional approval for a pre-emptive nuclear strike or to ban it altogether and impose an NFU policy. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Bob Corker held its first meeting on the President's authority to use nuclear weapons in 41 years. Since 2017, Ted Lieu, Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and Adam Smith all introduced bills to limit the President's ability to order a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Calls to limit the President of the United States' ability to unilaterally launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike increased after the January 6 United States Capitol attack. During the 2020 United States presidential election the eventual victor Joe Biden expressed support for a "sole purpose" declaration confirming that the only use of U.S. nuclear weapons would be as a deterrent, although this is distinct from a "no first use" declaration identifying that the United States would not unilaterally use them.

Pakistan
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shamshad Ahmad warned that if Pakistan is ever invaded or attacked, it will use "any weapon in its arsenal" to defend itself.

Pakistan refuses to adopt a no first use doctrine and indicates that it would launch nuclear weapons even if the other side did not use such weapons first. Pakistan's asymmetric nuclear posture has significant influence on India's ability to retaliate, as shown in 2001 and 2008 crises, when non-state actors carried out deadly terrorist attacks on India, only to be met with a relatively subdued response from India. A military spokesperson stated that "Pakistan's threat of nuclear first-use deterred India from seriously considering conventional military strikes."

Pakistan's National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz defended the policy of first use. Aziz stated that Pakistan's first use doctrine is entirely deterrent in nature. He explained that it was effective after the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and argued that if Pakistan had a no first use policy, there would have been a major war between the two countries.

North Korea
North Korea's stated policy position is that nuclear weapons "will never be abused or used as a means for preemptive strike", but if there is an "attempt to have recourse to military force against us" North Korea may use their "most powerful offensive strength in advance to punish them".

Israel
Although Israel does not officially confirm or deny having nuclear weapons, the country is widely believed to be in possession of them. Its continued ambiguous stance puts it in a difficult position since to issue a statement pledging 'no first use' would confirm their possession of nuclear weapons.

Israel has said that it "would not be the first country in the Middle East to formally introduce nuclear weapons into the region".

If Israel's very existence is threatened, some speculate that Israel would use a "Samson Option", a "last resort" deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons, should the State of Israel be substantially damaged and/or near destruction. According to Israeli historian Avner Cohen, Israel's policy on nuclear weapons, which was set down in 1966, revolves around four "red lines" which could lead to an Israeli nuclear response:

 * A successful military penetration into populated areas within Israel's borders.
 * The destruction of the Israeli Air Force.
 * Israeli cities being subjected to massive and devastating aerial bombardment, chemical attacks, or biological attacks.
 * The use of nuclear weapons against Israel.

Rationale
Debates in the international community on strategic no-first-use of nuclear weapons include legal, ethical, moral and political arguments from intergovernmental organizations, regional blocs, non-governmental organizations and civil society actors as well as countries. In 2023, former IPPNW program director John Loretz wrote: "With the risk of nuclear war greater than at any time since the Cold War of the 1980s (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 2023)—exacerbated even further by the prolonged war in Ukraine—it comes as no surprise that academics, diplomats, and nuclear strategists are focusing anew on risk reduction proposals. One idea that has been in circulation for some time is a global-no-first-use agreement (GNFU), with unilateral or bilateral NFUs as another option."

According to SIPRI's 1984 analysis, first use of nuclear weapons as a right of self-defense in warfare is the "most controversial" under international law—a right, in their view, not unlimited. Highlighted also were the views of "religious, political and military authorities" who questioned a first-use doctrine. SIPRI concluded that a meaningful no-first-use declaration "would have to be accompanied—or preferably preceded—by changes in the deployment of both nuclear and conventional forces".

Sparking debate with their 1982 Foreign Affairs article, former US national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, US diplomat George F. Kennan, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and US lead negotiator for the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Gerard C. Smith challenged the US and the Atlantic Alliance "to consider the possibilities, the requirements, the difficulties, and the advantages of a policy of no-first-use" and urged that citizens, too, consider these policy questions. The authors believed that fully exploring NFU as a strategy and policy would reveal greater advantages than costs and "help the peoples and governments of the Alliance to find the political will to move in this direction". They called "both fear and mistrust ... the most immediate enemies", arguing that: "The Soviet government has repeatedly offered to join the West in declaring such a policy, and while such declarations may have only limited reliability, it would be wrong to disregard the real value to both sides of a jointly declared adherence to this policy." They also maintained that an NFU posture and policy "could help to open the path toward serious reduction of nuclear armaments on both sides", cautioning that "[a]s long as the weapons themselves exist, the possibility of use will remain."

In the context of Japan's reliance on US extended deterrence, former Japanese diplomat, director of JIIA's Center for the Promotion of Disarmament and Nonproliferation (2008–2014) and commissioner of the Japanese Atomic Energy Commission (2014–2017) Nobuyasu Abe in 2018 called for re-examining the role of nuclear weapons alongside the non-nuclear military situation in the regional security environment to bridge the "great divide between idealists and realists" on adopting a no-first-use policy. He described the political divide in Japan as the skepticism of the Japanese government, the ruling LDP, and "center/right conservatives" on the one hand, and the support of the ruling coalition's junior partner Komeito, opposition parties, and "left/center anti-nuclear idealists" on the other. In its analysis of South Korea's reliance on US extended deterrence, the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in January 2022 wrote that, were the US to adopt an NFU position, the credibility of its extended deterrence would be diminished. The institute's public attitudes survey findings, published in May 2023, include naming North Korea as the most pressing security concern, followed by China. In its November 2017 policy brief, the European Council on Foreign Relations concluded that North Korea's posture is one of "nuclear pre-emption" and its government "concerned that a first strike could destroy it"; in contrast, China pursues "what Beijing calls 'nuclear counterstrike campaigns, having declared its NFU doctrine out of the belief "that neither its government nor its nuclear arsenal could be eliminated in a first strike by a hostile power". And in the foreground of strained relations between South Korea and Japan, stemming from Japan's 1910–1945 occupation of Korea, the June 2023 trilateral meeting of the countries' military chiefs signaled closer nuclear strategy consultation at the urging of their US counterpart.

Nonresident Senior Fellows in Brookings's Center for East Asia Policy Studies Richard C. Bush and Jonathan D. Pollack in 2016 noted that "non-nuclear states living in the shadow of nuclear-armed adversaries" are willing to forego developing their own nuclear arms because of US security guarantees, and that adopting an NFU doctrine "would represent a profound shift" in those guarantees. Co-founder Keith B. Payne and Research Scholar Michaela Dodge of the National Institute for Public Policy in 2023 noted that for decades "US allies" have continued to oppose such a shift, citing a reported survey by the Biden Administration as the most recent indicator, and called for, among other things, "a more informed public discourse" by strengthening and expanding participation in strategic deterrence dialogues. The authors also noted that further enlargement of "underlying 'anti-nuclear' sentiment among some allied governments and/or their publics ... would essentially eliminate the existing US extended nuclear deterrence policy, particularly (but not only) undercutting NATO allied participation in NATO's nuclear deterrence policy." Former chair of the Bundestag Subcommittee on Disarmament and Arms Control Uta Zapf in 2021 characterized NFU policy adoption as "a first step and a door-opener for an urgently needed dialog on the role of NW in military doctrines and strategies". Dominic Tierney, political science professor at Swarthmore College and author of The Right Way to Lose a War: America in an Age of Unwinnable Conflicts, in 2016 wrote: "Champions and critics of no-first-use often cast it as a principled policy and a revolutionary step, for good or for ill. But the idealistic symbolism of no-first-use betrays an underlying reality. Disavowing a first strike is a luxury afforded to the strong. ... No-first-use is the policy of Goliath, not Gandhi."

From the perspective of TPNW supporters, ambassador and director for Disarmament, Arms Control and Non-Proliferation at the Austrian Foreign Ministry Alexander Kmentt in 2020 explained that nuclear risk reduction measures, including de-alerting and de-targeting as well as no-first-use declarations, are "assessed as having a negative impact on the credibility of nuclear deterrence" and "considered only insofar, as they do not impact the nuclear deterrence calculus, which in itself is the origin of nuclear risk". In her 2018 view of narratives surrounding the TPNW, Heather Williams of King's College London acknowledged the importance of deterrence as a security tool to many states and proposed a "bridge-building framework" involving supporters and opponents finding common ground and working together, for example, on nuclear risk reduction.

By 2020 new NFU commitments and ideas had stalled, according to Wilfred Wan, UNIDIR researcher on the global nonproliferation regime, because of the deep divide over whether they reduce risk or, for example, increase risk by undermining strategic stability, while John Borrie, lead for UNIDIR's research program on WMDs, noted that even the definition of strategic stability was evolving due to the unpredictability of and increasing strategic concerns. In the same publication, Manpreet Sethi, lead researcher for the Centre for Air Power Studies, recommended that China's and India's unilateral NFU declarations be turned into a bilateral statement as a step towards nuclear risk reduction in South Asia, "since the risk of not taking any would be quite risky indeed". The following year, the India-based Observer Research Foundation co-authored an opinion piece with Manpreet Sethi, mentioning the reintroduction of the No First Use Act in both chambers of the US Congress as "hope rekindled" and noting that, given the reality of countries unwilling to give up their nuclear weapons, an NFU "allows nations to maintain a notional sense of security from their nuclear weapons, but significantly reduces possibilities of use". And in its effort to shape proposals and ideas on nuclear risk reduction "into a pathway to achieve the treaty-mandated disarmament end state of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons," the Council on Strategic Risks places the universal adoption of NFU at "the starting gate for any process towards full nuclear disarmament."

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title: No first use