Review: Red Storm Rising

Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is an old favourite which I keep going back to every, say, five to ten years. It is a peculiar book for a peculiar time- the late 1980s in the last years of the Cold War. The best way to describe it is that it was one of those books which sought to give a picture of a war with the Soviet Union which didn't end in nuclear annihilation, as many of us feared at the time. Ultimately, it's basic premises were that the Soviet Union was, despite its military power, economically and socially near collapse (which, actually wasn't far from the truth as we found out after 1989), but also that, when faced with the prospect of nuclear escalation, cooler heads would act to prevent it. In a sense, that also proved true, even if it ignored the disastrous consequences if they didn't.

Without giving too many spoilers, the destruction of one of the Soviet Union's major refineries by Islamic terrorists leads the leadership of the Politburo to plot an invasion of Western Europe as a prelude to an invasion of the Middle East. The result is Clancy's vision of how a conflict between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would go, which is messy. You can see Clancy is trying to suggest that more combat readiness is needed in NATO, but also that, ultimately, he thinks they can, with enough investment, hold their own. He really likes getting into the nitty gritty of both intelligence gathering and the military hardware, and generally is pretty hawkish. The climax brings the story to the brink of nuclear war, which is avoided only in something of deus ex machina political coup in Moscow. The lesson is that a good defence (with lots of defense spending) means a good deterrent.

Despite the two-by-four across the head political messaging about defense spending, this is still a good book. Clancy, whatever his political thoughts, is a compelling story teller and this is an intriguing story of man at war. There's surprise, sudden reversals, courage and even something of a love story (Clancy doesn't do love stories too much, he likes his military toys too much). It still holds up as a story, even long after the politicals have changed.

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