It’s not easy, right? To put North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat into perspective. Everywhere you turn, you’ll hear widely differing factual claims, strongly opposed views on what to do or not do, etc. A cacaphony. And that’s a little hard to take, especially if you’re suddenly inclined to hunt for information on the subject. Serious journalists often find themselves in this situation, but lately, what with the 24-hour cable noise channels turning up the volume to 11, just about everybody has been in the same fix.
I’ve offered a few reflections on these subjects on Twitter lately. It’s quick and easy to fire off a string of tweets that get your basic point across. Pithiness is mandatory, illustrations are super-easy to stick in, and it can be a surprisingly effective way to communicate. But then comes the inevitable: threads get lost. You’d like to refer back to something or other, and, well… Seriously, you try searching that ridiculous website sometime.
So here’s the deal. I’m going to make this page a one-stop shop for my efforts, and those of my colleagues at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, to PTNKTIP (put the North Korean threat into perspective). It won’t be exhaustive, but whatever form it takes, I’ll stick the link here if I think it’s worth coming back to later.
Here, for starters, is a thread on why North Korean ICBMs are closer to reality than many may think, but also not the main military problem confronting the United States.
It begins here:
North Korea’s ICBM program didn’t start yesterday, I told @AlanYuhas at @guardian. It may be later than you think. https://t.co/s5TAycBKxS
— Joshua H. Pollack (@Joshua_Pollack) April 20, 2017
Click through to see the rest.
Update. I seem to have botched the threading, so here’s a Storify of the whole thing.
More to follow.