Red Storm Rising

In 1986, militants from Azerbaijan destroy an oil production refinery in Nizhnevartovsk, threatening to cripple the Soviet Union's economy due to oil shortages. After much deliberation, the Soviet Politburo decides to seize the Persian Gulf by military force in order to recoup the country's oil losses. Knowing that the United States had pledged to defend the oil-producing countries in the Persian Gulf, the Soviets decide that neutralizing NATO is a necessary first step before its military operation can take place.

To divert attention from the impending operation, the Politburo embarks upon an elaborate maskirovka to disguise both their predicament and their intentions. The Soviets publicly declare their arms reduction proposal to scrap their obsolete submarines. The KGB then carries out a false flag operation involving a bomb being detonated in a Kremlin building, framing a KGB sleeper agent as a West German BND spy involved in the incident. The Politburo publicly denounces the West German government and calls for retaliation. With Germany neutralized and occupied, the Soviets believe that the United States would not move to rescue the Arab states since it could meet its oil needs from the Western Hemisphere alone.

Even though a planned attack on a NATO communications facility in Lammersdorf was compromised when a Spetsnaz officer was arrested, the Soviets push through with their advance operations in Germany. However, they suffer reverses on the first night of the war, when NATO stealth and fighter-bomber aircraft achieve air superiority over Eastern Europe by eliminating Soviet AWACS and fighter aircraft, as well as bombing many key bridges that much of the Soviet Army has yet to cross.

Nevertheless, the Soviet Navy achieves an advantage by occupying Iceland, taking control of the NATO airbase in Keflavík and ensuring command of the strategically important GIUK gap. U.S. Air Force lieutenant Mike Edwards escapes the attack and hides behind enemy lines, serving as a scout for NATO forces. The Soviet Navy also attack several resupply convoys from North America as well as a NATO carrier battle group in the North Atlantic, causing severe losses to the other side. Meanwhile, the Soviet Air Force engage in a fierce air battle over Norway and later secure a rocket launch site there, bringing key NATO radar and air stations in nearby Scotland within range of sustained air attack.

After much difficulty in occupying West Germany, the Soviet Army, led by General-Colonel Pavel Alekseyev, score a breakthrough in a tank battle over Alfeld, threatening to proceed west of Weser River without heavy resistance from NATO forces. Meanwhile, a naval attack on Soviet bomber bases with cruise missiles launched by NATO submarines paves the way for an amphibious assault on Iceland, retaking the island and effectively closing the Atlantic to Soviet forces. While Edwards is first reinforced by a squad of Royal Marines and then rescued by the United States Marines, a Soviet prisoner on the island reveals the true cause of the war, narrowing down bombing priorities to the Soviet Army's forward fuel depots and immobilizing the Soviet formations.

In Moscow, the desperate Politburo considers deploying nuclear weapons to stave off defeat. This infuriates Alekseyev, who had been mobilizing for a final counterattack on Germany but faces execution by the Soviet government for its slow timetable. He later takes part in a coup d'etat orchestrated by the KGB in the Kremlin, arresting the government ministers and establishing a troika to temporarily preside over the country. The new Soviet government then negotiates for a ceasefire with NATO and a return to status quo ante bellum, effectively ending the conflict.[2]

Red Storm Rising depicts a future Third World War, chiefly between the United States and the Soviet Union. It follows the "future war" genre popularized by the 1871 novella The Battle of Dorking by George Tomkyns Chesney as well as the science fiction novel The War in the Air (1908) by H.G. Wells. However, the novel is unique in that it presented a war using conventional weapons rather than nuclear weaponry that was typical with fiction dealing with an East-West confrontation at the time, which was deemed "apocalyptic in tone".

The book served as a cautionary tale advocating the defense buildup during the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. According to a document released by the UK National Archives in December 2015, U.S. President Ronald Reagan had recommended Red Storm Rising to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher shortly after the Reykjavík Summit in 1986 between him and Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev so as to gain an understanding of the Soviet Union's intentions and strategy. Some of the advanced weapons systems described in the novel were deployed four years later in the Gulf War.[3]

Tom Clancy met Larry Bond in 1982. Clancy had purchased Bond's wargame Harpoon as a primary source for his future novel The Hunt for Red October (1984).[4] They used the board game's second edition miniature rules to test key battle sequences, notably the Soviet operation to seize Iceland and the attack on the carrier battle group in the "Dance of the Vampires" chapter, with Bond refereeing the game sessions, which typically involved several players on each side (Clancy among them) acting in various roles.[5]

The two discussed Convoy-84, a wargame Bond had been working on at the time that featured a new Battle of the North Atlantic. The idea became the basis for Red Storm Rising, although Clancy is later referred as the sole author. "I wrote like 1 percent of the book," remarked Bond. For research on the Politburo scenes, Clancy and Bond interviewed Soviet defector Arkady Shevchenko.[6]

In 1987, the book was published in French as Tempête Rouge (Red Storm), translated by France-Marie Watkins, with the collaboration of Jean Sabbagh.

Like its predecessor, The Hunt for Red October, the book received critical acclaim for its accurate military narrative. Publishers Weekly praised it as "fascinating and totally credible story, told with authenticity and great suspense".[7] Kirkus Reviews hailed it as "an informative, readable, sometimes dazzling speculation on superpower war".[8]

In December 1988, MicroProse released a Red Storm Rising computer game, in which the player commanded an American submarine against Soviet forces. The player had the option of choosing between both single missions or campaign and which era to play in; modern missions offered the player more advanced submarines and weapons, but also a more technologically advanced adversary as well.

In 1989, TSR, Inc. released the Red Storm Rising board game designed by Douglas Niles, based on the book. The game won the Origins Award for Best Modern-Day Boardgame and Best Graphic Presentation of a Boardgame in 1989.[9]

• The Third World War: The Untold Story, by John Hackett

• Maritime interdiction
• Blockade

• Gallagher, Mark. Action figures: Men, action films, and contemporary adventure narratives (Springer, 2006).
• Griffin, Benjamin. "The good guys win: Ronald Reagan, Tom Clancy, and the transformation of national security" (MA thesis , U of Texas, 2015). online
• Hixson, Walter L. "Red Storm Rising: Tom Clancy Novels and the Cult of National Security." Diplomatic History 17.4 (1993): 599-614.
• Outlaw, Leroy B. "Red Storm Rising-A Primer for a Future Conventional War in Central Europe"" (Army War College, 1988). online
• Payne, Matthew Thomas. Playing war: Military video games after 9/11 (NYU Press, 2016).
• Terdoslavich, William. The Jack Ryan Agenda: Policy and Politics in the Novels of Tom Clancy: An Unauthorized Analysis (Macmillan, 2005). excerpt

• Red Storm Rising at BoardGameGeek