What is Reddit's opinion of The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel?

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I agree with you that US and South Korean should NEVER sign the peace treat until North Korea makes some major progresses on denuclearization and Moon administration has been repeatedly saying that since he took the office. I am not sure where is the disconnection?

Even tho you don't believe nuclear war could happen on Korean soil, but a lot of Korean experts, ex-CIA directors, and US policy makers believe there are about 20% to 30% chance that we might have 1-day nuclear war on Korean peninsular due to miss calculation/judgement and I believe their expert opinions.

There is also a new book that describes one case of 1-day nuclear Korean war due to miss-judgement.

https://www.amazon.com/Commission-Report-Nuclear-Attacks-Against-ebook/dp/B079VDR6HM

There's actually a novel called The 2020 Commission about a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the US and North Korea and one of the plot points is that a North Korean nuke misses DC and lands on Arlington. Read it while I was still living in Clarendon.

> Like Wtf, imagine a nuclear war breaks out but orange dumpling is out golfing..

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel

by Jeffrey Lewis

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Shit goes down while they're at Mar-a-lago. It discusses the actual setup they use there (not all the people that travel with the president can stay at maralago) and the implications of not having everyone immediately accessible.

https://www.amazon.com/Commission-Report-Nuclear-Attacks-Against-ebook/dp/B079VDR6HM

(Disclaimer: As a novel, it was mediocre. But its loaded to the gills with actual information [with citations] and I actually learned a bunch.)

There's a really good book by Jeffrey Lewis who works the arms control and nuclear nonproliferation industry... it's written as an after action report detailing how a tweet by Trump leads to a nuclear exchange with North Korea... given the personalities of Trump and Kim Jong Un it is disturbingly plausible.

https://www.amazon.com/Commission-Report-Nuclear-Attacks-Against-ebook/dp/B079VDR6HM

[quote]

Imagine if they hacked u/RealDonaldTrump and posted something along the lines of "I'VE AUTHORISED THE LAUNCH OF NUKES AT CHINA FOR THEIR FAKE RESPONSE TO THE CORONAVIRUS AND CAUSING DEATH TO THOUSANDS OF AMERICANS. AMERICA WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS ANY LONGER."

This isn't really out of character for Trump and if the Chinese interpreted this as a credible threat it could have lead to an actual nuclear exchange and the loss of millions of lives.

[/quote]

You know how establishment media and establishment types have been confused for the last few years why people don't take them seriously when they condemn Trump as a threat or a menace? Comments like this are part of the reason why. It's silly, and the people who make this argument seriously are not entitled to be taken seriously on foreign policy or security topics thereafter, anymore than the numerically illiterate who clearly can't pay for their own proposed policy costs.

We could, of course, compare your proposed fake tweet and the tweet you raise up as analogous and thus validating taking the fake tweet seriously-

[quote]

Remember "To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE,"?

[/quote]

One is a claim to have already authorized nuking a nuclear power with ICBM capability, an act without precedence in American history or Trumpian rhetoric and which does not match the political context of the time. The other is a vague, non-specific threat of undetermined future retaliation conditional to future misbehavior by a known adversary in the context of its time.

I realize the 'they're the same picture' meme is just a meme, but it's a living meme because of the person making the analogy is clearly either incompetent or acting in bad faith for the sake of ideology. Vague, non-specific threats of retaliation IF provoked sufficiently in the future =/= 'I have already authorized nuclear war,' and pretending they are is not a sign of seriousness, anymore than trying to defend the potential seriousness along the lines of 'well, what if the Chinese were dumb enough to take it seriously? We might all be really scared then!'

The average Chinese with nuclear launch authority is smarter than the average twitter reader who might be gullible enough to fall for an out-of-character unprecedented threat. More to the point, though- since the average Chinese person with nuclear launch authority doesn't have (access to)Twitter even if they could read English- the Chinese with nuclear launch authorities would ALSO have access to the sort of global radars and intelligence networks (and people with phones that go right to the White House, Pentagon, and other Very Important People) to figure out very quickly- well before a nuke could reach China if one had been launched- to confirm that, in fact, the reason they aren't seeing any indicators of a nuclear launch (the President on Airforce One, Congress scattering, the Supreme Court scattering, a wave of American cruise and ballistic missiles attempting a decaptiation strike to prevent a counter-nuking) is because, in fact, there isn't something.

And this won't be a surprise, because the people who work with and control nuclear weapons aren't total idiots, no matter the many breathless assertions of supposedly wise minds that we all remain one carelessly and unlucky decision away from armegeddon.

We don't. We remain many careless and unlucky decisions and resulting chains of events away from armeggedon, not least because no one with nuclear weapons bases their decision to use nuclear weapons on twitter.

So the Chinese aren't going to be afraid and fire a nuclear weapon based on a tweet, because they aren't idiots. And the Americans aren't going to launch a nuke based on a tweet, because even if they are idiots they've already mapped out a nuclear launch cycle that doesn't do that, which means that even if Trump were to try something so stupid that it would only work in badly written fanfiction, other people would know about it and be able to clarify. And the Indians- you know, the nuclear power that China is actually in an armed standoff with at this time- aren't going to launch a nuclear weapon at China because why would they besides being stupid for stupid's sake? And Pakistan, who's no stupider than the Indians, they aren't going to have a non-stupid reason to launch a nuke either. And the North Koreans, who you should never being stupid for stupid's sake if their boss tells them to, they aren't going to be launching a nuke because in the event of a US-China nuclear exchange their priority is going to be to keep their heads down and hope that noone remembers they exist.

So if the people involved aren't going to be afraid of being nuked, then the only people who are going to be afraid of are the sort of Twitter-watching people who thought <em>The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States</em> was a realistic scenario of Trump bumbling into a nuclear war. Which may seem credible at first blush, until you realize the scenario hinges on, among other things, North Korea not having 'landline phones' or 'radios' to communicate to the dear leader.

It is a silly book, even before the fetishized fantasy of punching Trump into a blubbering mess.

This is part of the plot for “The 2020 Commission Report”.