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108 reviews for:
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States
Jeffrey Lewis
4.18 AVERAGE
108 reviews for:
The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States
Jeffrey Lewis
4.18 AVERAGE
The first surprise: this novel wasn't in the fiction section of the library, but was as upstairs in a war/military section. The second surprise, which maybe explains the first, was the notes and references at the end to actual events. Context and timing have been shifted, but some of the behaviours of the cast are based on reality.
The book is an analysis of events and decisions leading to nuclear attacks. It's told as a summary of gathered testimony from survivors, giving you the timeline of events and a taste of being in the room when decisions were made. It was a page-turner for me.
The book is an analysis of events and decisions leading to nuclear attacks. It's told as a summary of gathered testimony from survivors, giving you the timeline of events and a taste of being in the room when decisions were made. It was a page-turner for me.
This one, as the British say, does what it says on the tin. Jeffrey Lewis – an American professor of geopolitics and nuclear arms – has written what he terms a “speculative novel” about a North Korean nuclear attack against the United States. The clearest manner in which it doesn’t live up to the title is that it reads more like a very interesting internet long-read or verbal history rather than a very dry commission report, but we’ll obviously forgive him for that.
I’m a sucker for this sort of thing and it was on my to-read list before it was even published. Not everybody feels the same way; I can’t find the tweet now but I remember somebody on Twitter ranting about how a book like this was just more fuel to the fire of anti-American sentiment against North Korea. People like that are usually tankies, but it’s fair to say the notion of North Korea attacking the United States seems so far from reality as to be lurid, since it would certainly result in the destruction of North Korea itself. This is based on Cold War thinking and is what’s called “rational actor” theory. It’s not entirely wrong, but neither is it entirely right. In this review I won’t go into details about what unfolds in the book (since the details are what make it so compelling) but I will say that Lewis does a superb job of developing the slowly escalating action/reaction series of events in a way which feels entirely plausible to a layperson, up to and including strikes against the United States. My only gripe was the notion that North Korea has delivery systems (or could in 2020 have delivery systems) capable of reaching the United States. Well, I googled around a bit and it turns out that’s my bad for doubting a nuclear scholar – as of 2017, North Korea does indeed have crude ICBMs of some kind. We don’t know how many nuclear warheads they may have and we don’t know how reliable their ICBMs may or may not be, but they do have them. So here we are in the modern age and we have to accept an unprecedentedly totalitarian state with the ability to rain death down on countries across oceans, and even in my lefty peacenik brain, even as a former resident of Seoul, there’s a part of me that has to wonder if the US and South Korea shouldn’t have just invaded in the 2000s and accepted the casualties.
Anyway: this is a good book. The first half is entirely based around the sequence of events leading to this seemingly unthinkable scenario, and Lewis does a brilliant job of painting this, primarily by modelling every step around a real historical event: the shooting down of KAL 007, the sinking of the Sewol, the attack on the Cheonan, the shelling of Yeonpyeong island, the execution of Kim Jong-un’s uncle and his supporters because of Kim’s fear that China was grooming the man as a regent. Other incidents are based not just on Lewis’ speculation but (bear with me) on a reasonable speculation of what North Korean intelligence agents might speculate – like the little-known attack on Dora Farm, in which the US attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein at the outbreak of the Iraq War. One which drew my particular attention was an examination of a nuclear firestorm which develops in Tokyo, partly caused by flammable cladding used in many modern apartment buildings, with Lewis citing not just the Grenfell Tower disaster but a fire in my own city of Melbourne and a subsequent report which found as many as half of Victoria’s modern structures might be at risk. It’s nice to know an American nuclear academic acknowledges that report, even if the Victorian government has mostly ignored it.
Most surprisingly of all – as I read the descriptions of nuclear strike victims towards the end and felt they flowed together, sounded familiar and lacked a certain creative flair – I was surprised to see Lewis reveal in the afterword that every one of them was lifted verbatim from the account of a Hiroshima survivor. “I did this because it is easy, as Americans, to let the slightly stilted grammar of a translation create a false sense of distance between ourselves and the very real people who suffered and died,” Lewis writes. This is an interesting choice, but I’m nonetheless bound to point out that the second half of the book felt weaker and less gripping than the first; when reading about the nuclear strike on New York I couldn’t help but compare it to Whitley Strieber’s much more vivid, multi-chapter description in the 1984 novel Warday. I’ve criticised plenty of books I’ve read lately for being padded, but this is one which, if anything, could have stood to be three times as long.
There’s another issue here, and that’s Donald Trump. I imagine Lewis had probably been thinking about writing a book like this for quite a while, and the election of an unusually unfit president threw a spanner in the works; but at the same time he seems more than happy to explore exactly how a nuclear crisis scenario would unfold under this particular president. We get a largely accurate (in my view and the view of any sensible person) impression of a president who is part toddler and part angry stepfather, a man with little to no interest in his responsibilities, coaxed and goaded and nudged by various other actors within the executive branch. Perhaps owing to the high staff turnover in the administration and a timeline set in 2020, Lewis opts to use fictional stand-in Francis Kelly for the chief of staff – clearly modelled on John Flynn – and speculates Keith Kellogg will become national security adviser. Together with James Mattis, Nikki Halley and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, much of the US government’s reaction is shown from the perspective of these five figures, as they manage (or struggle to manage) the escalating conflict without Trump’s input. As with other aspects of the book, this picture is largely drawn from careful study of news reports, memoirs, and cabinet leaks; it’s when shit really kicks off and Lewis has to speculate about issues surrounding the use of the nuclear football or the evacuation of the president that it sometimes wavers. In his defence, I’ll say that Lewis is clearly an academic first and a creative writer second, and also that Donald Trump being president puts us all in an utterly insane parallel universe that’s stranger than fiction in the first place. Though I must add that Lewis does a merely average job of mimicking Trump’s tweeting, writing and speaking style; contrary to the belief of every cut-rate comedian in the world, it’s not actually very imitable. The book unwisely ends with a rebuttal by former president Trump attacking the commission as Fake News, Crooked Hillary, Very Unfair, et cetera – the low-hanging fruit we’ve all heard a thousand times at this point and which adds nothing to what came before it. But my criticism is largely from the extent to which Lewis pushes this angle, not that he pushes it in the first place. Trump’s reaction to what’s going on can sometimes seem farcical – but so has most of the last two years. That’s hardly Lewis’ fault.
There are other issues with the book. It does occasionally feel like something that was rushed a bit for timely publication. It gives excessive weight to the lead-up to the attack, and leaves various descriptions of devastated American cities as a sort of afterthought. The nuclear devastation maps and their wordy legends are lifted directly from the Nuke Map website (with appendix credit, but still.) The characterisation of Trump and his advisers often ventures into areas where, as a writer, Lewis’ reach exceeds his grasp.
But warts and all, I thought it was great. It’s not the kind of book for everyone, but if a fiction-as-fact account about North Korea launching nuclear weapons against the United States seems like the kind of thing that would appeal to you, I can guarantee you this is one which is done realistically, compellingly, and with a professional amount of research and historical comparison underlining every inch of its speculation. It has its flaws, as I’ve pointed out above, but the fact is that this is a 294-page book which I read over the space of two days while I had full days at work plus university assignments due. It is – and I don’t usually use this word – unputdownable.
I’m a sucker for this sort of thing and it was on my to-read list before it was even published. Not everybody feels the same way; I can’t find the tweet now but I remember somebody on Twitter ranting about how a book like this was just more fuel to the fire of anti-American sentiment against North Korea. People like that are usually tankies, but it’s fair to say the notion of North Korea attacking the United States seems so far from reality as to be lurid, since it would certainly result in the destruction of North Korea itself. This is based on Cold War thinking and is what’s called “rational actor” theory. It’s not entirely wrong, but neither is it entirely right. In this review I won’t go into details about what unfolds in the book (since the details are what make it so compelling) but I will say that Lewis does a superb job of developing the slowly escalating action/reaction series of events in a way which feels entirely plausible to a layperson, up to and including strikes against the United States. My only gripe was the notion that North Korea has delivery systems (or could in 2020 have delivery systems) capable of reaching the United States. Well, I googled around a bit and it turns out that’s my bad for doubting a nuclear scholar – as of 2017, North Korea does indeed have crude ICBMs of some kind. We don’t know how many nuclear warheads they may have and we don’t know how reliable their ICBMs may or may not be, but they do have them. So here we are in the modern age and we have to accept an unprecedentedly totalitarian state with the ability to rain death down on countries across oceans, and even in my lefty peacenik brain, even as a former resident of Seoul, there’s a part of me that has to wonder if the US and South Korea shouldn’t have just invaded in the 2000s and accepted the casualties.
Anyway: this is a good book. The first half is entirely based around the sequence of events leading to this seemingly unthinkable scenario, and Lewis does a brilliant job of painting this, primarily by modelling every step around a real historical event: the shooting down of KAL 007, the sinking of the Sewol, the attack on the Cheonan, the shelling of Yeonpyeong island, the execution of Kim Jong-un’s uncle and his supporters because of Kim’s fear that China was grooming the man as a regent. Other incidents are based not just on Lewis’ speculation but (bear with me) on a reasonable speculation of what North Korean intelligence agents might speculate – like the little-known attack on Dora Farm, in which the US attempted to assassinate Saddam Hussein at the outbreak of the Iraq War. One which drew my particular attention was an examination of a nuclear firestorm which develops in Tokyo, partly caused by flammable cladding used in many modern apartment buildings, with Lewis citing not just the Grenfell Tower disaster but a fire in my own city of Melbourne and a subsequent report which found as many as half of Victoria’s modern structures might be at risk. It’s nice to know an American nuclear academic acknowledges that report, even if the Victorian government has mostly ignored it.
Most surprisingly of all – as I read the descriptions of nuclear strike victims towards the end and felt they flowed together, sounded familiar and lacked a certain creative flair – I was surprised to see Lewis reveal in the afterword that every one of them was lifted verbatim from the account of a Hiroshima survivor. “I did this because it is easy, as Americans, to let the slightly stilted grammar of a translation create a false sense of distance between ourselves and the very real people who suffered and died,” Lewis writes. This is an interesting choice, but I’m nonetheless bound to point out that the second half of the book felt weaker and less gripping than the first; when reading about the nuclear strike on New York I couldn’t help but compare it to Whitley Strieber’s much more vivid, multi-chapter description in the 1984 novel Warday. I’ve criticised plenty of books I’ve read lately for being padded, but this is one which, if anything, could have stood to be three times as long.
There’s another issue here, and that’s Donald Trump. I imagine Lewis had probably been thinking about writing a book like this for quite a while, and the election of an unusually unfit president threw a spanner in the works; but at the same time he seems more than happy to explore exactly how a nuclear crisis scenario would unfold under this particular president. We get a largely accurate (in my view and the view of any sensible person) impression of a president who is part toddler and part angry stepfather, a man with little to no interest in his responsibilities, coaxed and goaded and nudged by various other actors within the executive branch. Perhaps owing to the high staff turnover in the administration and a timeline set in 2020, Lewis opts to use fictional stand-in Francis Kelly for the chief of staff – clearly modelled on John Flynn – and speculates Keith Kellogg will become national security adviser. Together with James Mattis, Nikki Halley and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, much of the US government’s reaction is shown from the perspective of these five figures, as they manage (or struggle to manage) the escalating conflict without Trump’s input. As with other aspects of the book, this picture is largely drawn from careful study of news reports, memoirs, and cabinet leaks; it’s when shit really kicks off and Lewis has to speculate about issues surrounding the use of the nuclear football or the evacuation of the president that it sometimes wavers. In his defence, I’ll say that Lewis is clearly an academic first and a creative writer second, and also that Donald Trump being president puts us all in an utterly insane parallel universe that’s stranger than fiction in the first place. Though I must add that Lewis does a merely average job of mimicking Trump’s tweeting, writing and speaking style; contrary to the belief of every cut-rate comedian in the world, it’s not actually very imitable. The book unwisely ends with a rebuttal by former president Trump attacking the commission as Fake News, Crooked Hillary, Very Unfair, et cetera – the low-hanging fruit we’ve all heard a thousand times at this point and which adds nothing to what came before it. But my criticism is largely from the extent to which Lewis pushes this angle, not that he pushes it in the first place. Trump’s reaction to what’s going on can sometimes seem farcical – but so has most of the last two years. That’s hardly Lewis’ fault.
There are other issues with the book. It does occasionally feel like something that was rushed a bit for timely publication. It gives excessive weight to the lead-up to the attack, and leaves various descriptions of devastated American cities as a sort of afterthought. The nuclear devastation maps and their wordy legends are lifted directly from the Nuke Map website (with appendix credit, but still.) The characterisation of Trump and his advisers often ventures into areas where, as a writer, Lewis’ reach exceeds his grasp.
But warts and all, I thought it was great. It’s not the kind of book for everyone, but if a fiction-as-fact account about North Korea launching nuclear weapons against the United States seems like the kind of thing that would appeal to you, I can guarantee you this is one which is done realistically, compellingly, and with a professional amount of research and historical comparison underlining every inch of its speculation. It has its flaws, as I’ve pointed out above, but the fact is that this is a 294-page book which I read over the space of two days while I had full days at work plus university assignments due. It is – and I don’t usually use this word – unputdownable.
A speculative novel, written by a nonproliferation expert, that deals with the simple question: How could an accidental nuclear war with North Korea happen, and what would it look like?
I made my way through the book in two evenings, foregoing most other activities, which should tell you all you need to know about this book. It is a well-written, sobering reminder that with nuclear weapons in the mix, we are always on the brink of killing large numbers of people because of misunderstandings, bad communication, and just plain old bad luck.
Speaking a few days after the release, in August 2018, the book is very much up to date, with Donald Trump and his cadre of officials (some of which are still those in power today, some their inevitable replacements) presiding over the debacle that occurs in this fictional version of year 2020. There are some nice touches, with Trump tweets playing a central role, but it never gets implausible.
I should note that while the book is written in the form of a report by a commission tasked with investigating the events of 2020 (hence the title), it contains graphic descriptions of what happens to victims of nuclear attacks, and as you might imagine, these are not for the faint of heart. I found this book to be yet another powerful reminder for why nuclear weapons are dangerous, and why we would all be better off without them in the mix.
If you are at all interested in nuclear weapons or foreign policy, read this book.
I made my way through the book in two evenings, foregoing most other activities, which should tell you all you need to know about this book. It is a well-written, sobering reminder that with nuclear weapons in the mix, we are always on the brink of killing large numbers of people because of misunderstandings, bad communication, and just plain old bad luck.
Speaking a few days after the release, in August 2018, the book is very much up to date, with Donald Trump and his cadre of officials (some of which are still those in power today, some their inevitable replacements) presiding over the debacle that occurs in this fictional version of year 2020. There are some nice touches, with Trump tweets playing a central role, but it never gets implausible.
I should note that while the book is written in the form of a report by a commission tasked with investigating the events of 2020 (hence the title), it contains graphic descriptions of what happens to victims of nuclear attacks, and as you might imagine, these are not for the faint of heart. I found this book to be yet another powerful reminder for why nuclear weapons are dangerous, and why we would all be better off without them in the mix.
If you are at all interested in nuclear weapons or foreign policy, read this book.
Imagine a world in which a series of unfortunate events led to nuclear war.
That is this novel.
Jeffrey Lewis presents readers with a story told through a retrospective commission report on the events that led to the dropping of multiple nuclear weapons in the year 2020. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, and lack of robust protocols are detailed in this scary account of what could actually happen in our very fragile world of global powers and war-games. It's very easy for anyone to imagine the fallout that could happen when a few select individuals let their egos get the best of them before diplomacy.
It would only be understandable to be hyper critical of a speculative fiction such as this. We want this to be a false narrative, to point out the inaccuracies that Lewis presents to us. Of course our anti missile defense systems should be working in proper order. Of course our world leaders would be more willing to take a minute or two to digest what is happening before making any world altering decisions. It's important for us as a society to always be vigilant of what could happen to prevent disaster from striking.
As scary as this book is, it's a very fascinating read. Definitely check it out.
That is this novel.
Jeffrey Lewis presents readers with a story told through a retrospective commission report on the events that led to the dropping of multiple nuclear weapons in the year 2020. Miscommunication, misunderstanding, and lack of robust protocols are detailed in this scary account of what could actually happen in our very fragile world of global powers and war-games. It's very easy for anyone to imagine the fallout that could happen when a few select individuals let their egos get the best of them before diplomacy.
It would only be understandable to be hyper critical of a speculative fiction such as this. We want this to be a false narrative, to point out the inaccuracies that Lewis presents to us. Of course our anti missile defense systems should be working in proper order. Of course our world leaders would be more willing to take a minute or two to digest what is happening before making any world altering decisions. It's important for us as a society to always be vigilant of what could happen to prevent disaster from striking.
As scary as this book is, it's a very fascinating read. Definitely check it out.
challenging
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
fast-paced
dark
tense
Absolutely terrific. Picked this up because of the War on the Rocks holiday reading list recommendation and tore through it. A worthwhile read for anyone involved with the defense/foreign policy community, but surely of interest to people outside it.
This is a work of speculative fiction that takes the form of a government report on a nuclear attack on the US by North Korea - it is, in other words, as advertised. Reports like this can sometimes be a little dry, so in that sense the author has taken some liberties (this is anything but). Otherwise, this reads as an alarmingly plausible work of fiction about a series of mistakes that lead North Korea, South Korea, and the United States into a humanitarian catastrophe.
The book spoils itself in the sense that the title gives away the big event(s), but this does not diminish the gripping nature of the text, as it is fascinating to see the author chart the path from A to B, even though we already know what B is.
Aside from the general interest one might have in the text with respect to defense and foreign policy, the text is equally interesting in its attempts to explain why such a catastrophe might occur, especially when different people (or groups of people) are operating off the same sets of facts but arriving at radically different conclusions. This text, in general, has a lot to say, not only about current events, but also about human nature, and it is a worthwhile read in that respect.
The passages that may the most impactful are those that center around the experiences of people who survived the nuclear attacks. These are harrowing accounts, and are made all the more by the author's note at the end, where he explains that these are based on real-life accounts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is a really excellent text. My only hesitation in recommending it would be with respect to people who may find the topic itself (nuclear disaster/annihilation) difficult to deal with. (They are not easy topics, so I mean in the sense of them being overly anxiety-inducing.) Otherwise, this is an excellent text, especially regarding nuclear weapons and their use. (I might even go so far as to say it is a valuable meditation on them, though the text itself avoids "choosing a side", so to speak, on the issue.)
This is a work of speculative fiction that takes the form of a government report on a nuclear attack on the US by North Korea - it is, in other words, as advertised. Reports like this can sometimes be a little dry, so in that sense the author has taken some liberties (this is anything but). Otherwise, this reads as an alarmingly plausible work of fiction about a series of mistakes that lead North Korea, South Korea, and the United States into a humanitarian catastrophe.
The book spoils itself in the sense that the title gives away the big event(s), but this does not diminish the gripping nature of the text, as it is fascinating to see the author chart the path from A to B, even though we already know what B is.
Aside from the general interest one might have in the text with respect to defense and foreign policy, the text is equally interesting in its attempts to explain why such a catastrophe might occur, especially when different people (or groups of people) are operating off the same sets of facts but arriving at radically different conclusions. This text, in general, has a lot to say, not only about current events, but also about human nature, and it is a worthwhile read in that respect.
The passages that may the most impactful are those that center around the experiences of people who survived the nuclear attacks. These are harrowing accounts, and are made all the more by the author's note at the end, where he explains that these are based on real-life accounts from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is a really excellent text. My only hesitation in recommending it would be with respect to people who may find the topic itself (nuclear disaster/annihilation) difficult to deal with. (They are not easy topics, so I mean in the sense of them being overly anxiety-inducing.) Otherwise, this is an excellent text, especially regarding nuclear weapons and their use. (I might even go so far as to say it is a valuable meditation on them, though the text itself avoids "choosing a side", so to speak, on the issue.)
We can all agree this book kicks ass. I mean just look at those ratings (I really hope they don’t take a dive after I post this). As such, I won’t be throwing my opinion into the mix - it’s the same as everyone else’s anyways. Instead, I have some tips and tricks to get the most of this book, so you like it as much as I did.
1) Read the endnotes. They help you figure out what’s real and what isn’t - important because it all seems real. It also shows you just how realistic this scenario is, so that’s fun.
1.5) “I won’t read the endnotes,” you might say, which is valid - people don’t often read endnotes when reading for fun. But for the love of god, please at least read the endnote for page 230. It provides crucial contextual information, I promise it’s worth it.
1.75) “I. WON’T. READ. ENDNOTES.” Alright jeez I’ll give you the TLDR:
2) Understand this is denuclearization propaganda. The author is a disarmament advocate and gives his reasoning behind writing the book in his acknowledgments. It’s masterfully composed propaganda, worth reading for how well and how subtly Jeffrey Lewis constructs it. Everyone should read it, but diehard pro-nuclear (defense) people might get a little miffed.
3) Read the acknowledgments. I don’t normally read acknowledgments, cause usually they’re just thanking editors and family and whatnot (which this also has) but these acknowledgments provide contextual information on the book. You can wait until the end like I did (they are, after all, at the end), but it's nice to see what Jeffrey Lewis was going for.
1) Read the endnotes. They help you figure out what’s real and what isn’t - important because it all seems real. It also shows you just how realistic this scenario is, so that’s fun.
1.5) “I won’t read the endnotes,” you might say, which is valid - people don’t often read endnotes when reading for fun. But for the love of god, please at least read the endnote for page 230. It provides crucial contextual information, I promise it’s worth it.
1.75) “I. WON’T. READ. ENDNOTES.” Alright jeez I’ll give you the TLDR:
Spoiler
The accounts of victims of the nuclear attacks are actual accounts from the bombing of Hiroshima. Jeffrey Lewis wrote this entire book to trick apathetic Americans into consuming these accounts to better understand their suffering. I bet you feel like an asshole now.2) Understand this is denuclearization propaganda. The author is a disarmament advocate and gives his reasoning behind writing the book in his acknowledgments. It’s masterfully composed propaganda, worth reading for how well and how subtly Jeffrey Lewis constructs it. Everyone should read it, but diehard pro-nuclear (defense) people might get a little miffed.
3) Read the acknowledgments. I don’t normally read acknowledgments, cause usually they’re just thanking editors and family and whatnot (which this also has) but these acknowledgments provide contextual information on the book. You can wait until the end like I did (they are, after all, at the end), but it's nice to see what Jeffrey Lewis was going for.