Do social scientists, and defense/foreign policy writers (yours truly included) trivialize nuclear warfare by using social science vernacular? This might appear to beg the question of whether words alone can mitigate the obvious gravity of nuclear holocaust. Although Hamlet might demur, certain words do matter, especially when they appear as the precision guided tools of a professed expert understanding of the world.
Let me try to elaborate on this point by referring to my own personal experience.
As North Korea continues to accelerate the pace of its testing of variants of ballistic missiles, accompanied by habitual threats of nuclear war, Twitter has become a major platform for experts and the wider foreign policy community to discuss the implications of Kim Jong Un's nuclear weapons program for global security.