Alex WellersteinVerified account

I have been watching the PBS Ken Burns/Lynn Novick series on Vietnam, an hour or so a night. It's riveting, beautifully edited.

I am aware academic historians have nit-picked it to death, the way they tend to do. But it's engrossing, and paints a dark, dark tale.

But tonight, watching footage of the riots in Chicago in 1968, I had a darker thought:

A single North Korean thermonuclear weapon on Honolulu would kill almost 2.5X as many Americans as did the Vietnam War.

A single North Korean thermonuclear weapon on Los Angeles would kill 3.7X as many Americans as did the Vietnam War.

I hope our leadership understands these risks. That a nuclear-armed North Korea might not be preferable, but it's the reality on the ground.

And that it is not worth the costs of being wrong on this. There is no reason to think North Korea is not deterrable. War is avoidable.

Anyone who thinks war is preferable has not really wrapped their head around the potential — maybe even probable — consequences.