A Book Review Gone Wild

From the Strategic Deterrence Quarterly
Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen Reviewed by Dr. Patricia Kellerman, Senior Fellow, Institute for Strategic Studies

Annie Jacobsen's Nuclear War: A Scenario offers a viscerally compelling but strategically flawed meditation on nuclear escalation that ultimately undermines the very deterrence frameworks it seeks to illuminate. While her minute-by-minute countdown format delivers undeniable dramatic impact, the book's fundamental premise—that any nuclear exchange inevitably cascades into civilization-ending conflagration—rests on a series of pessimistic assumptions that serious strategists abandoned decades ago.

The Escalation Fallacy

Jacobsen's central conceit requires readers to accept that modern command-and-control systems, refined through decades of crisis management experience, would fail catastrophically at the first moment of stress. This ignores substantial evidence from actual near-miss incidents—Able Archer 83, the 1995 Norwegian rocket launch, even Petrov's 1983 decision—where institutional restraints and human judgment prevented escalation despite technical failures or miscommunication.

More problematically, her scenario eliminates any possibility of escalation control. By making North Korea the initiating actor, she sidesteps the rational calculation frameworks that have successfully managed superpower competition since 1945. Real deterrence theory acknowledges that rational actors—even under extreme stress—retain incentives to limit damage and preserve post-conflict capabilities.

The Rogue State Red Herring

Jacobsen's choice to trigger global annihilation through a North Korean first strike is narratively convenient but strategically suspect. It allows her to bypass the complex signaling, backchannel communication, and graduated response options that would characterize any realistic great-power crisis. Actual containment strategies for rogue actors exist precisely because major powers understand the difference between regional proliferation challenges and existential threats to global order.

The book's failure to engage seriously with limited nuclear options, tactical employment scenarios, or damage-limitation strategies reflects a popular misconception that nuclear weapons are inherently uncontrollable. This is neither historically accurate nor strategically useful.

Technical Precision, Strategic Blindness

To her credit, Jacobsen has clearly done extensive research into launch procedures, targeting protocols, and weapons effects. Her technical descriptions are largely accurate and her sourcing appears solid. The problem lies not in her facts but in her framework—she assembles accurate technical details into a strategically implausible scenario.

Jacobsen's casualty projections rely heavily on outdated RAND modeling from the 1970s, particularly Kahn's demographic impact studies, without accounting for advances in civil defense planning, medical countermeasures, or distributed infrastructure resilience. Modern strategic analysis has moved well beyond these crude "megadeath" calculations toward more sophisticated assessments of societal recovery capacity and critical system redundancy.

Furthermore, her treatment of nuclear winter effects uncritically accepts the most pessimistic climate modeling without engaging the substantial scientific literature questioning these projections. As my 2017 paper on reciprocal de-escalatory messaging demonstrates, even severe nuclear exchanges need not produce the uniform global catastrophe Jacobsen describes, provided adequate preparation and crisis communication protocols are maintained.

Deterrence as Casualty

Perhaps most concerning is how Jacobsen's scenario could undermine deterrence stability itself. By portraying nuclear weapons as inevitably civilization-ending, she inadvertently strengthens the hand of proliferators who argue that even small arsenals provide total leverage against major powers. If nuclear war truly means automatic global suicide, then any actor with even a few warheads becomes uncontainable.

Effective deterrence requires credible options across the escalation spectrum. Jacobsen's all-or-nothing framework collapses these gradations into a single catastrophic outcome, which paradoxically makes nuclear conflict more likely by eliminating the calculated restraint that has preserved stability for eight decades.

Real nuclear crisis management depends on factors Jacobsen systematically excludes: political constraints on escalation, economic costs of prolonged conflict, alliance dynamics that create both risks and restraints, and the simple fact that leaders generally prefer survival to martyrdom.

Strategic Implications

The most troubling aspect of Nuclear War: A Scenario may be its potential impact on defense policy discourse. By promoting "civilization-ending" rhetoric that ignores decades of refinement in deterrence theory, Jacobsen risks eroding the bipartisan consensus necessary for continued nuclear modernization.

If policymakers and the public come to view nuclear weapons as inherently uncontrollable rather than as sophisticated tools of statecraft, support for the GBSD program, B-21 integration, and next-generation command systems could suffer precisely when strategic competitors are advancing their own capabilities.

The real danger of Jacobsen's scenario is not the nuclear war she describes—which remains highly implausible under current strategic frameworks—but the budgetary war her apocalyptic framing might trigger against the very deterrent systems that have prevented such outcomes for eight decades.

Conclusion

While Nuclear War: A Scenario will undoubtedly generate valuable public discussion about nuclear risks, serious strategists should approach it as a work of speculative fiction rather than policy analysis. The book's contribution lies in its emotional impact rather than its strategic insight—it reminds readers why nuclear deterrence matters, even as it misrepresents how nuclear deterrence works.

For those seeking to understand actual nuclear strategy in the 21st century, readers would be better served by recent works on escalation management, alliance dynamics, and the integration of conventional and nuclear planning. Jacobsen's book offers catharsis; it does not offer solutions.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Dr. Patricia Kellerman is Senior Fellow for Nuclear Strategy at the Institute for Strategic Studies and co-author of "Graduated Deterrence in Multipolar Systems" (Stanford, 2023).

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Free Minds, Free Markets, and Fewer Megadeaths
A Response to Dr. Patricia Kellerman’s Review of Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario
By J.D. Talbot, Senior Editor, Reasonable

Reading Dr. Patricia Kellerman’s Strategic Deterrence Quarterly review of Nuclear War: A Scenario, I had to check the date to make sure I hadn’t wandered into a Cold War time capsule. The language is pure 1983: “graduated deterrence,” “damage limitation strategies,” and the unshakable belief that enough acronyms will save us from ourselves.

Kellerman’s central complaint — that Jacobsen’s all-or-nothing nuclear nightmare ignores “credible options across the escalation spectrum” — is textbook Beltway reassurance. The assumption here is that, in a world where humans can barely keep from hitting “reply all” by mistake, we’ll somehow manage a precise, rational tit-for-tat nuclear exchange without stumbling into Armageddon.

The review chides Jacobsen for her “pessimistic assumptions” and then blithely reminds readers that leaders “generally prefer survival to martyrdom.” Sure. But deterrence doctrine is littered with near misses that look, in hindsight, like coin flips between the two. Pretending we’ve evolved past the possibility of catastrophic error isn’t strategy — it’s faith-based arms control.

The real tell is in Kellerman’s fixation on modernization programs — the GBSD, the B-21, C2 networks — as if the credibility of deterrence depends not on whether nukes work (spoiler: they do), but on whether Congress signs off on another $200 billion in contracts. This is the libertarian’s recurring nightmare: a permanent crisis justifying permanent budgets, wrapped in the language of “strategic necessity.”

Yes, Jacobsen’s book is sensational. Yes, her scenario skips the messy reality of slow-burn crises and backchannel diplomacy. But her “catastrophe all the way down” framing serves one purpose the think-tank class finds uncomfortable: it cuts through the polite fictions that keep the arms race humming along.

Kellerman writes that Jacobsen’s book “offers catharsis; it does not offer solutions.” True enough. But in a world where the “solutions” on offer mostly involve writing bigger checks to weapons contractors and hoping the new toys behave better than the old ones, catharsis might be the more honest product.

If the choice is between Jacobsen’s cinematic panic and Kellerman’s cool assurance that we’ve got escalation under control, I know which one sounds more like reality — and which one sounds like a sales pitch.

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Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Supreme People’s Committee for Literary and Strategic Affairs
INTERNAL CIRCULATION ONLY – DO NOT TRANSLATE FOR FOREIGN DOGS

Memorandum 8/14/2025
Subject: Analysis of Capitalist Collapse Fantasies in the Reactionary Work Nuclear War: A Scenario and Associated Imperialist Reviews

1. Overview
The Ministry of Glorious Truth has completed its examination of Annie Jacobsen’s latest imperialist novel, Nuclear War: A Scenario. It is the considered opinion of the Committee that:

• Jacobsen greatly overestimates the amount of functioning electronics the U.S. will still have after our Juche Lightning Strike™.
  [Margin note: “Yes, she forgot about our bonus strike on Starbucks Wi-Fi. NO frappes after victory!”]
• Her portrayal of North Korean leadership as “irrational” is laughable — we are extremely rational about which French wines pair best with post-apocalypse cave banquets.
  [Margin note: “Make sure sommeliers are in second wave evacuation priority. Victory must taste correct.”]

2. Review by Dr. Patricia Kellerman (Strategic Deterrence Quarterly)
Our analysts note with amusement that the American think-tank “Dr.” Patricia Kellerman criticized Jacobsen for portraying the destruction of the United States as too easy. This proves that:

• U.S. strategic elites are still in the “negotiating with the fire” stage of nuclear denial.
  [Margin note: “Negotiating with fire is fine… if you are fireproof. They are not.”]
• They cling to the fantasy of “graduated deterrence,” apparently believing nuclear war can be paused like a Netflix drama when they need to refill the popcorn.
  [Margin note: “Popcorn = priority target. Burn their snack morale.”]

Committee note: If they wish to test their “limited options” theory, we can arrange a live demonstration with Guam.
[Margin note: “Guam still on the menu. Pencil it for Q3.”]

3. Rebuttal by J.D. Talbot (Reason)
Talbot, a libertarian heretic, surprisingly admits Jacobsen’s version of events might be more plausible than the sanitized think-tank scripts. However:

• His main objection is the cost of maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal, not the arsenal itself.
  [Margin note: “Cost? We build nukes with pocket change and patriotic sweat!”]
• He seems more afraid of “$200 billion in contracts” than of a North Korean EMP over Kansas.
  [Margin note: “We could EMP Kansas for less than a case of Bordeaux. Efficiency = Juche.”]
• His focus on “permanent crisis justifying permanent budgets” almost makes him sound like a sensible man — if he weren’t simultaneously insisting that capitalist chaos will self-correct like a broken vending machine.
  [Margin note: “Vending machines DO self-correct… when you kick them.”]

4. Party Guidance for Propaganda Use

• Domestic Broadcasting: Quote Jacobsen’s destruction timeline on state radio as “Western expert confirms inevitability of DPRK victory.”
  [Margin note: “Add dramatic music. Preferably something with gongs AND electric guitar.”]
• Foreign Psychological Ops: Distribute Kellerman’s review to U.S. policy staff with key phrases highlighted (“graduated deterrence,” “credible options”) so they continue to believe in unicorn strategies until the warheads land.
  [Margin note: “Unicorns are Korean. Claim intellectual property infringement.”]
• Academic Exchanges: Invite Talbot to Pyongyang for a “Libertarian Futures” symposium; seat him between two generals with medals for “Most Creative First Strike Scenario.”
  [Margin note: “Also medal for ‘Best Wine Pairing with War Crimes’—for morale purposes only, of course.”]

5. Conclusion
All three capitalist sources agree on the most important point: the people have no agency in nuclear policy. The Supreme Leader graciously accepts this concession.
[Margin note: “Finally, Westerners admitting reality! Frame and hang in War Room.”]

In preparation for victory celebrations, the Ministry of Catering has been instructed to secure additional Swiss cheese reserves and pink leather for the Presidential Train.
[Margin note: “Double order on cheese. We will host many post-war summits.”]

Signed,
Comrade Ri Yong-min
Deputy Director, Department of Imperialist Literature Dissection