The likelihood of North Korea waging nuclear war against the United States and its allies has been a topic of interest since the relatively recent advancement of the DPRK’s weapons capabilities. Experts and the general public alike have speculated on the range of the North’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), analyzed the impact of various US administrations’ policy decisions, and agonized over the increasing threat to regional stability.
While these speculations have been taken seriously to a degree, they have been bubble-wrapped by an underlying assumption: that wouldn’t actually happen, would it? It’s all just a bluff. But in the aftermath of the ‘Fire and Fury’ exchanges between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in 2017 followed by the failed 2019 Hanoi summit – where Kim returned home empty-handed - the trust deficit between the United States and North Korea has reached a breaking point.
Nearly.
There are still opportunities for diplomacy to prevail. In response to rampant misinformation, indifferent policy discourse, and the lack of serious consideration of the realities of nuclear war, The National Committee on North Korea (NCNK) has created the Nuclear Analysis Hub (“NukeHub”) to urge for an engagement-centric approach to back away from the edge of nuclear annihilation.
The NukeHub – which was inspired by Alex Wellerstein’s NUKEMAP project – is comprised of balanced analyses from NCNK’s extensive network of members, colleagues, and expert contributors. These analyses, headlined by our inaugural short essay series, provide a multifaceted perspective of the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula and US-DPRK relations more broadly. The goals of this project include:
Providing balanced analyses of the past, present, and future of US-DPRK relations from top experts in the field.
Prompting thought-provoking conversations surrounding the consequences of nuclear war.
Please visit this page and check NCNK’s X/Twitter and LinkedIn pages to learn more about current NukeHub initiatives, such as the Nuclear Notions short essay series, and to be notified when more projects under the NukeHub umbrella will be launched.
