A noted North Korea arms control expert details how a nuclear war could escalate if diplomatic talks fail
A new book speculates about how war could begin again on the Korean peninsula. The central plot of the book talks about how renewed tensions involving North Korea and a deadly border incident could quickly escalate into nuclear war, due to political miscalculation, miscommunication and brinksmanship.
The new novel is titled, « The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States, » written by arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis, the director of the East Asia nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California.
It is a work of fiction that portrays what could happen if current diplomatic efforts to end the North Korean nuclear threat fail, and the U. S. resumes its maximum pressure campaign.
“It really was an opportunity to explain how crisis instability might play out in the Korean Peninsula in a way that is a bit more accessible than my academic work,” said Lewis.
The novel expounds on a hypothetical nuclear conflict scenario he wrote about last year in the Washington Post newspaper, and provides more fact-based background and detail to justify his assumptions. While a work of fiction, it incorporates likely actions and reactions by real leaders such as U. S. President Donald Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Denuclearization skeptics
Lewis, like many North Korea analysts, is skeptical that Kim will unilaterally give up his nuclear and missile deterrent, despite the vague promises made at the Singapore Summit with Trump and the inter-Korean Summit with Moon. And he worries that what he sees as Washington’s unrealistic expectations for the North’s complete denuclearization will doom any hope for peaceful resolution to the threat of nuclear war.
