The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against The United States

Summary


'A book with a ferocious pace and more black humour than one could imagine'–
Evening Standard

**As heard on BBC Radio 4 The World Tonight**

America lost 1.4 million citizens in the North Korean attacks of 2020. This is the final, authorised report of the US government commission investigating the catastrophe.


‘The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue . . .’ So begins this investigation by nuclear expert Dr Jeffrey Lewis into the horrific events of the three days that followed.

While covering the fatal milestones — from North Korea’s accidental shootdown of a South Korean airliner to the tweet that triggered carnage — the report asks difficult questions about the conduct of world leaders along the path to war.

Did President Trump and his advisers realise the dangers of provoking Kim Jong Un with social media posts? Was conflict inevitable, or could the peace talks of 2018 have been successful? Who, ultimately, is responsible for one of the greatest tragedies in world history?


‘A bold warning of how easily the nightmare could occur’– The Times
‘Chillingly plausible’The Economist
‘A Dr Strangelove for our time’The Observer

Reviews

  • A bold warning of how easily the nightmare could occur
    The Times

About the author

Dr Jeffrey Lewis

Jeffrey Lewis PhD is a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and a research affiliate at the Stanford University Center for Security and International Cooperation. He previously worked at the US Department of Defense, and was director of both the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and the Managing the Atom Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. A columnist for Foreign Policy, he is the publisher of ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog on disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation. He has written for the New York Times, Atlantic, Daily Beast and the Washington Post.
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