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The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States: A Speculative Novel Kindle Edition
“The skies over the Korean Peninsula on March 21, 2020, were clear and blue.” So begins this sobering report by the Commission on the Nuclear Attacks against the United States, established by Congress and President Donald J. Trump to investigate the horrific events of the following three days. An independent, bipartisan panel led by nuclear expert Jeffrey Lewis, the commission was charged with finding and reporting the relevant facts, investigating how the nuclear war began, and determining whether our government was adequately prepared.
Did President Trump and his advisers understand North Korean views about nuclear weapons? Did the tragic milestones of that fateful month—North Korea's accidental shoot-down of Air Busan flight 411, the retaliatory strike by South Korea, and the tweet that triggered vastly more carnage—inevitably lead to war? Or did America’s leaders have the opportunity to avert the greatest calamity in the history of our nation?
Answering these questions will not bring back the lives lost in March, 2020. It will not rebuild New York, Washington, or the other cities reduced to rubble. But at the very least, it might prevent a tragedy of this magnitude from occurring again. It is this hope that inspired The 2020 Commission Report.
“I couldn’t put the book down, reading most of it in the course of one increasingly intense evening. If fear of nuclear war is going to keep you up at night, at least it can be a page-turner.”—New Scientist
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMariner Books
- Publication dateAugust 7, 2018
- File size7903 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"...Lewis’s book is very effective and deeply affecting. And as a warning of how close we are to unimaginable catastrophe, it’s downright chilling." —The Weekly Standard "I have only read a few more convincing accounts of how events can spiral out of control than what you can and should read in The 2020 Commission Report." —War on the Rocks "The tone – set midway between bureaucratic sterility and a Tom Clancy thriller – works very well...I couldn’t put the book down, reading most of it in the course of one increasingly intense evening. If fear of nuclear war is going to keep you up at night, at least it can be a page-turner."—New Scientist "Disturbingly plausible...with painstaking detail and bleak humor."—Slate “Astonishing . . . Lewis deftly intertwines real-world reports with a fictional narrative that extends some of the president’s worst flaws to logical conclusions.”—The Daily Beast "Terrifyingly plausible . . . A horrific imagined future based on a quite plausible extrapolation of the present . . . In its efforts to tug at the sleeve of a blithe nation, Lewis’s book follows in the post-apocalyptic footsteps of Nevil Shute’s On the Beach or the 1983 film The Day After. In its black comedy, which surfaces in the deadpan prose of the report, it is a Dr Strangelove for our time. Trump is as flamboyantly grotesque a character as any cooked up by Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers."—The Guardian “Terrifying . . . the warning we need right now . . . [The 2020 Commission Report] aims to do what The Day After did, and spur us to action . . . It shows us an entirely plausible path from today's tense geopolitics to atomic annihilation and beyond, to what comes after nuclear fire.”—VICE Motherboard “Lewis’s cautionary tale is a reminder of the grave risks at stake if diplomatic talks with Pyongyang fail, and the dangerous consequences that could follow if Washington returns to military brinkmanship and threatening rhetoric in a renewed attempt to pressure North Korea to unilaterally disarm.”—Voice of America “A book with a ferocious pace and more black humor than one could imagine.”—Evening Standard (London) “Jeffrey Lewis has taken one of our most serious security crises and imagined how it could erupt into a catastrophic nuclear war. The result is a book that is entertaining—it grips the reader with its dramatic story—but also educational: it informs the reader what an unprecedented catastrophe even a ‘small’ nuclear war would be, and how easy it would be for us to blunder into one. This lesson must be learned by more of us if we are to take the actions that could lower the probability of such a catastrophe.”—William J. Perry, former US Secretary of Defense “The plot of this novel is so absurd and implausible—a nuclear war prompted by a presidential tweet—that it feels devastatingly true. The 2020 Commission Report is a brilliantly conceived page-turner. Let’s hope it isn’t prophetic.”—Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and Command and Control —
About the Author
Neil Hellegers grew up in New Jersey and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a BA in theater arts and a minor in psychology before getting an MFA in acting from the Trinity Rep Conservatory in Providence, Rhode Island. He moved to New York City in 2003 and, since then, has made a career of theatrical performance, percussion, theater education, and audiobook narration. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Jeffrey Lewis, PhD is a columnist for Foreign Policy, 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 for the Department of Defense. Also a former director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation and former executive director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, he is currently the publisher of ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog on disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation. In addition to hosting the Arms Control Wonk podcast, he was profiled on This American Life, and has written for the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, and elsewhere.
Product details
- ASIN : B079VDR6HM
- Publisher : Mariner Books (August 7, 2018)
- Publication date : August 7, 2018
- Language : English
- File size : 7903 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 306 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #87,126 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #113 in Political Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #381 in Political Thrillers & Suspense
- #654 in War Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
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Top reviews from the United States
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An innovative speculative history on two different levels - 1) the events are very near time since it is placed as a crisis in March of 2020; 2) it is written as the report of a special commission such as occurred post-Septemeber 11th and Pearl Harbor (both of which are referenced). The result is not the techno-thriller of Tom Clancy or either of PW Singer's forays into the genre. The book is more academic in style if published in a journal such as MIT's INTERNATIONAL SECURITY.
Dr. Lewis's choice of speculative fiction allowed him to blend Korean politics, nuclear proliferation, and American national security decision making in an entertaining manner. By staying away from the emotion and pathos that accompanies a great deal of this literature, he guides the reader to draw their own conclusion.
His plot is sound and demonstrates that Dr. Lewis is familiar with the war planning scenarios that are used as the basis of strategy development.
I would recommend this to the serious reader in national security or international relations. I will be adding it to my list of recommended readings for students.
Even though it's billed as "A Speculative Novel," the 2020 Commission Report is not written like a traditional novel. It's formatted like an official report commissioned by U.S. Federal Government (it's stylized like The 9/11 Commission Report). So those looking for a traditional narrative may get bogged down in the technical detail, military jargon, and lack of "main characters."
However, for those who know what they're in for, the 2020 Commission Report is thrilling and plausible look at how a modern nuclear conflict would play itself out. Jeffrey Lewis has created a "pastiche" novel - it blends fact and speculative fiction masterfully. A majority of this book relies on actual reports and assessments of North Korea, the U.S.'s ability to respond to nuclear threats, and the consequences of a nuclear detonation in a major metropolitan city (complete with damage maps).
And, yes, to address the elephant in the room - this book (for the most part) doesn't rely on fictional characters. Donald Trump is president (the book even concludes with a "Statement by Former President of the United States Donald J. Trump"), and his administration are the ones handling the diplomacy. The consequences of Trump's Twitter habits are explored at length and taken to their logical (and terminal) conclusion. His staff's attempts to manage and rein in the president's erratic behavior play a pivotal role in the cascade of events.
The detached style of the 2020 Commission Report may put some readers off, but - for me - the coldness of the prose made it more terrifying. Some might consider this type of book to be alarmist, but Lewis knows his stuff and he shoots through mulitple misconceptions the American public has on nuclear warfare (for example, we vastly overestimate our ability to intercept missiles before they hit their targets).
The 2020 Commission Report is a quick read that will be frustrating to some, and horrifically compelling to others. Recommended.
There are some aspects of black comedy in the narrative. The author clearly is not impressed by the decision-making and governing style of the Trump administration. At one point, the major carrying the "football" has to wrestle it away from Trump to prevent him from launching a nuclear attack on China. Trump then yells "You're fired! You're fired!" The incidents and tweets portrayed certainly ring true to what we have seen of Trump's behavior as President.
There is not a happy ending. In the end, Trump Tower and Melania are vaporized, Trump is impeached but not removed from office, and Pence wins the 2020 election. The right wing seems to have triumphed by declaring that the attack was a false flag operation done by the U.S., just as the 9/11 attacks were called a false flag operation.
It is not clear whether the target of the satire is Donald Trump or the United States electorate. I tend to think it is the latter.
I will say my only disagreement with the book was his handling of Trump. (Spoilers ahead) I know in certain points of our nations history our leaders have taken missteps and I like that Trump and his advisors don’t make the right call on that day. However I get the point that Doctor Lewis wants us to see Trump as a man baby. Constantly telling us in the report that he was pouting or hard to handle was a distraction. The story read like an actual government report until topics with Trump came around.
Overall this is a great read and I would strongly recommend it to others.
Top reviews from other countries
The writer should know what he is writing about, being a Foreign Policy and arms control expert. Starting with accidental shooting down of an South Korean airliner that is triggered in turn by heightened sensitivities of North Korea following US and S Korean war games, events spiral as S Korea unilaterally decide a limited conventional strike, keen to show they can act independently of the US. But Kim, helped by the Trumps antagonistic Tweeting, believes S Korea and Trump are acting together, and hits the nuclear button, at first at US targets in S Korea and Japan, hoping this will cow the US, when it doesn't, he launches an IBM strike against US cities.
Everything in this books seems plausible. I read it in two sittings, finding it very hard to put down. Much is made of the black humour in the blurb, but I found that to be understated, which is very welcome. Any humour lies in the bizarre strangeness of events, and the impossible clumsiness of human actions, like slapstick from Hell. This is not about trying out-strange Strangelove or point scoring or cheap sensationalism. Movingly, the writer uses the real testimony of Hiroshima survivors to inform the witness testimonies of survivors in this book.
Brilliant, chilling, unforgettable.
I doubt China would stand still if North Korea crumbled and was flooded by US troops next to its borders. This time of turmoil would also be ideal for a Taiwan invasion (liberation in China speak).
Trump is what he is, we all know it. But he was legally elected. The bottom line of this book is that Bannon was right when he said that "North Korea boxed us in, we can't stop them anymore". Only China has the leverage to change the DPRK behaviour or regime. And China seems to enjoy the currently murky situation, that could explode anytime.






