Strategy and Doctrine

First Strike Doctrine

Contemporary

Citation Formats

General Reference

War and Military Atlas. "First Strike Doctrine." Accessed September 8, 2026. https://military.interactiveatlas.org/doctrines/first-strike-doctrine.

APA Style

War and Military Atlas. (n.d.). First Strike Doctrine. Retrieved September 8, 2026, from https://military.interactiveatlas.org/doctrines/first-strike-doctrine

BibTeX

@misc{warandmilitaryatlas-first-strike-doctrine,
  author = {War and Military Atlas},
  title = {First Strike Doctrine},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://military.interactiveatlas.org/doctrines/first-strike-doctrine},
  note = {Accessed September 8, 2026}
}

First strike, or preemptive strike, is a nuclear strategy doctrine under which a power seeks to disarm or cripple an adversary's ability to retaliate by striking its nuclear forces first, before they can be launched. It stands opposite to second-strike doctrine, and the tension between the two shaped Cold War nuclear force planning and arms-control negotiation.

Facts

Open Questions

Origin Year

1950 1

The cited source gives no single founding date for first-strike theorizing; it emerged across US and Soviet Cold War strategic literature through the 1950s alongside second-strike and deterrence theory, with no one publication the sources agree is the origin. 1950 is entered only as an order-of-magnitude placeholder for that decade, not a documented origin year.

Core Claim

Striking an adversary's nuclear forces first, before they can be launched, can disarm or cripple the opponent's ability to retaliate. 1

Cross-Tradition Connections