Jeffrey Lewis’s first novel is speculative fiction with a terrifying title: 2020 Commission Report on North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States. It’s attempting to give us hindsight about the future. Obviously, from the title, things go wrong. Very wrong.
Mr. Lewis is expert on the North Korean nuclear weapons program. He is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His team has played an important role in revealing the extent of the North Korean nuclear program. He also puts together a suprisingly interesting and enjoyable (if slightly terrifying) podcast, the Arms Control Wonk, on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation.
Mr. Lewis is well aware of North Korea’s arsenal and mindset of its crazy leader.
For the MAGA inclined, you will not like the portrayal of President Trump. He is not the cause of the attacks. His off-cuff statements are easily misunderstood by a paranoid regime. That leads North Korea to escalate through misunderstanding the actions and statements from the Trump administration.
Mr. Lewis shows us that many of steps that lead to his fictional war have been in place well before President Trump and his unorthodox approach. The US has stationed bombers in Guam for over a decade and they practice sorties to the Korean peninsula on a regular basis. The “denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula” called for at the recent US North Korea summit was, in the view of North Korea, an agreement for the US to disarm.
US intelligence assessments have assumed that Kim Jong-un is a rational actor, and would never take the suicidal step to start a nuclear war. Mr. Lewis thinks that is wrong. His view is that faced with the threat of regime change, North Korea may see a nuclear strike as his best hope of survival. Even if it’s not, what is there to lose.
The 2020 Commission Report is an incredibly well written book and a page-turner. You know from the title what’s going to happen, but you can’t help watch the dominoes fall.