Red Storm Rising - A Short Review

I’ve read this book a couple of times before and always enjoyed it. I found it in a box of my books just before moving to Bull Shoals, and I figured I would need something fun to read while I was away from my family for a couple weeks. I was right.

Red Storm Rising is a fictional story of what World War 3 might have looked like in the mid-1980s. The inspiration for the book came from a naval simulation video game from that same period. I guess Clancy saw the game and just had this neat idea about how to develop it further. In the book, you follow a few individuals: a US Air Force meteorologist stuck on Iceland, a US Navy submarine captain, a US Navy destroyer commander, a US Army tank commander, a Russian general, a Russian junior member of the Politburo, and his son. Each of these stories swirl around as the war progresses over, I estimate, about 6 weeks’ time.

Like many other war movies and books, one of the primary themes of this book is that war is terrible and should be avoided, if possible. Of course, the addendum to that message is present here, as well – you must be prepared to fight if war is unavoidable. I can agree with this balanced approach.

I find it interesting that Clancy used an Islamic terrorist attack on a Soviet refinery as the catalyst for the war. Even in the mid-1980s, he could see that group as being a destabilizing force emerging in the world.