Nuclear war expert warns of future crisis in the form of a novel
War comes from 'one little step toward destruction after another,' says Jeffrey Lewis
New York and Washington D.C. have been reduced to irradiated rubble, and 1.4 million Americans are dead — all because of a tweet about Kim Jong-un's sister.
This plot from a new novel may be fictional. But its author, who is also an expert on nuclear disarmament, says the warning he's trying to get across is very real.
"People, when they talk about nuclear weapons, have this confidence that the system is deeply rational and well-organized, and will work the way it is supposed to," said Jeffrey Lewis, author of The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel.
"Everything I know about crises, and military systems, and nuclear weapons suggests none of that is true."
Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Calif., has spent years studying nuclear weapons. In The 2020 Commission Report, the war he imagines happens just two years from now, in 2020, after tensions once again flare up between the U.S. and North Korea.
In the book, a South Korean commercial airliner is shot down in error. One of Kim Jong-un's palaces is attacked in retaliation, putting the North Korean leader on edge. Soon after, a petulant tweet from the U.S. president seals the fates of millions.
It's written in the form of the U.S. government report, compiled three years after the attack.
Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at U.N. If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer!
—@realDonaldTrumpThe events Lewis describes all have parallels in recent history — such as the accidental shooting down of a South Korean commercial plane in 1983 — rearranged to create a domino effect.
Despite being an expert on the subject, he chose fiction because it allowed him to show "one little step toward destruction after another."
The book explores "the consequences of a real nuclear crisis breaking out, where people spend too much time ... managing erratic personalities like President Trump and Kim Jong-un, and not enough time managing the crisis," he told The Current's guest host Michelle Shephard.
Lewis said there needs to be broad discussion about nuclear disarmament.
"We'll stumble along until a bomb goes off, and then we'll stumble along until another one goes off, and we'll continue to repeat these mistakes over and over again," he said.
"We have to have that bigger conversation about the bargain we're making with the bomb."
Listen to the full conversation near the top of this page.
Produced by Howard Goldenthal and Samira Mohyeddin.