Red Army

In 1989, Ralph Peters, in perhaps a piqued reaction to the breezy assumptions of many technothriller writers and armchair pundits of the era, wrote a short novel simply entitled Red Army after the foe that NATO would end up facing in any major conventional war in the 20th century. It was, explicitly noted by the author, written as an attempt to humanize the men behind the guns of the Soviet war machine which might come streaming across the West German border.

Does it hold up as a war novel today? Personally, I really think it does.

From wikimedia commons.

It can be described as a very 'grey' novel. There's no sense that one side is winning any enormous moral victory over the other, very few hypercompetent officers, and the people behind the guns, whether they be infantrymen, tankers, artillerymen, pilots or commanding generals are just that, people. They have their flaws, worrying about whether their wives are having an affair, thinking about what to do after the war, and even wondering what the enemy may be thinking. For every man who rises to the occasion to become a hero, there's someone who flees in cowardice, for every noble act towards an enemy there's an atrocity either by mistake or by design.

Peters really puts you in the heat of the action, from the build up to the terrifying and pulse pounding moments when the guns open up all along the front. It has a number of scenes that, even having put down the book, stick with me. There is, to be frank, a lot of pointless death. Peters does not shy away from the horrors of war, and the book is all the better for it. One of the first deaths we see on the page is a young conscript crushed by a crate falling from a supply truck before the fighting has even started. From there Peters directly puts us in the firing line with bullets, artillery rounds, and bombs tearing men to literal pieces. 

That also equals a very high body count in named characters. For every character you see on screen there's a fairly decent chance that they'll be blown away by an act of war, whether from the enemy or friendly fire. I won't spoil who lives or dies, but I was stunned - and truly humbled even - by the rate of attrition. It was a very real reminder of just how deadly truly mechanized modern war could be. Also how personal the losses of the war can be.

We have numerous Russian viewpoints. This novel is rather unique in the genre as it only gives you one sides view of the war, the Soviet one. Our main viewpoints who we can sympathize with and know the most are actually behind the lines. Soviet general Mikhail Malinksy, a career officer descended from the old pre-revolution Russian nobility, will be leading the delicate operation across northern German to push Soviet forces to the Rhine. The second most important character is his chief of staff Pavel Pavlovich Chibisov. Jewish and an indispensable staff officer to his general, he does many tasks and takes much of the personal anger of Malinsky's subordinates who all believe that he, as a Jew in still extremely anti-Semitic Russia, is poisoning their leader against them. Through their eyes we see the grand plan of the battle unfold, with what goes right and what goes wrong.

It can all be somewhat dizzying at times, with characters introduced, fleshed out, and maybe blown away in the next chapter - or even in the next paragraph! I did find latching on to numerous Russian names took a bit of getting used to, but once I grasped the names and a few of the Russian patronymics, it became much easier.

Unlike say, Red Storm Rising, this book was much easier to read because with only a few exceptions, it doesn't throw mountains of technical data at you. A tank is a tank whether British, Dutch or Soviet. There is little real effort to tell you who is driving what, whether it's a T-80 or a T-74, which makes taking the information in so very easy. Even when American forces eventually show up Peters doesn't take time to wax poetic about this or that particular fighting vehicle. That gives us a lot more time to get to know characters, their foibles, flaws, and situation. It humanizes the men rather than dazzle you with the machines.

Speaking of Americans, they aren't really present until the late stages of the novel. This might be perhaps because the author couldn't really bring himself to write the Soviets beating American forces - or very realistic worries for the post-Reagan era of the Cold War that this might be interpreted as being unpatriotic. This doesn't hurt the novel, but it does rob a lot of the climax of some of the necessary oomph you would hope for, even perhaps delving into a dues ex machina territory as the war finds a more political solution, in a manner of speaking. It really could have even used fifty more pages to describe that last desperate fight to drive the story home. Though as stated, that might not be fully possible in time it was written.

Peters also doesn't shy away from the inefficiencies of the Soviet system, whether they be military or political. He stays very far away from the political situation, which allows him to write about the titular forces. It's refreshing to see a real sea of humanity in the Soviet characters with few outright caricatures, and he genuinely tries to write them as real people. It works very, very well to make me, if not necessarily root for them winning, to at least hope they make it out alive as I see them as human beings rather than simply the "other side" of the war.

This is perhaps one of the best stories of World War III I've yet read. A very well done, and extremely nuanced work, it shows you war is hell, and men suffer and die in the most agonizing ways through it. Largely absent of patriotic chest beating and full of compassion for people who were then his enemies, Peters delivers an amazing story of modern war and all its horrors. Definitely a must read for anyone thinking of this genre.

The War In 2020

Reading this book made me realize, as bad as 2020 was, it could really have been a lot worse. Originally written in 1990, Ralph Peters' The War in 2020 is now firmly in the territory of alternate history. Penned in the twilight of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had not yet undergone its dramatic collapse, in many supposedly well educated circles there were fears that a technologically ascendant Japan would make the United States obsolete with a few strokes on a keyboard, and the old securities of an ascendant America might slide out the window. We weren't quite at the farcical End of History period some predicted, and there wasn't yet only one superpower. It was, in some ways, very easy to imagine a different 2000, one where there were more rising powers and impotent old enemies.

The mildly prescient tagline includes "The World of the 21st Century is barely recognizable. War has ravaged almost every continent - a pandemic plague has swept impartially around the globe", which, in light of a Drug War in Mexico, numerous warm or hot wars in Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, seems eerily prescient. The world Peters imagines and our own 2020 also happens to coincidentally be one where a global pandemic is ravaging the world. A black man with a southern VP sits in the White House, and the United States is engaged in multiple open ended military campaigns far from home. Thankfully though, this isn't that, and merely rhymes discordantly in the bizarre present we find ourselves in.

From wikimediacommons

Peters' imagines a United States having watched its old Soviet enemy fade into obscurity, and so has decided it can downgrade on defense spending. This comes to bite them in the ass as Japan uses its technological know how and powerful trade and economic muscle to propel itself to being a power not to be trifled with. They decide to institute a long running series of proxy wars designed to gradually sap American strength and in the wake of a brutal global pandemic, move to collapse one fading power and potentially eclipse all others in Eurasia.

Enter George Taylor, a survivor of a disastrous American intervention in Zaire, where a brief fight against a Japanese backed South Africa ends in debacle, and spreads the new plague to America's shores. He fights in a few smaller proxy wars before finding himself at the tip of the spear in Soviet controlled Central Asia. Supporting him are Howard "Merry" Meredith, Manuel Martinez, and David Heifetz, honest men who are trying to make the best of a bad situation. They've formed bonds through blood and steel, through campaigns from urban pacification in the continental US, to anti-guerilla campaigns in Latin America. Facing an unprepared and disease gutted military at home, and an only semi-functional at best of times and shambolic at worst allied Soviet military, the men must do what they can to stem the tide of separatist rebels propped up by Japanese advisors and technology.

The story then follows this diverse cast of characters across Washington, Moscow and the Central Asian steppes. There's predictions about the future of warfare, technological progress and how it affects war fighting. We have some hit and miss interactions. I don't necessarily read older works for their predictions on the future, but I do tend to love how hit and miss things can be. Needless to say, much of the technology predictions and geostrategic ones are completely unrelated to our world. The various wonder weapons and technology dreamed up by the author bear no real resemblance to what a battlefield in our own world looks like. As cool as vehicle mounted laser weaponry, massive computer guided warfare, and ever versatile fighting vehicles is, we're not really close to it.

That said, the M-100 fighting vehicle portrayed in the novel deserves some mention. It's an air cavalry vehicle which functions as gunship, command ship, electronic warfare vehicle and troop transport all in one. In can move a unit of dragoons into a combat zone, take out hundreds of armored and support vehicles by itself, and jam enemy signals at the same time. It can hide itself with camouflage with few restrictions, and is a top of the line fighting vehicle replacing the old Apache gunship. Essentially, it's an amazing wonder weapon which can do many things, a jack of all trades, but master of none. Peters actually portrays it as being less than infallible, mechanically problematic, and all its systems are so new it doesn't necessarily work one hundred percent as advertised. This honestly made it a rather refreshing system to be shown in a techno-thriller. 

What I truly appreciated about the story is that Peters didn't portray it as one side effortlessly crushing the other. The Soviets are driven back by Japanese technological superiority and the strength of local forces, but in a few cases manage to make savage and punishing counter attacks. The Japanese technical superiority is undone by emerging American weapons systems and those in turn are stretched to their limit by being untested in the field while not being totally superior to their Japanese counterparts. There's no wonder weapons, no side is presented as woefully inferior to the other, and even the ostensibly inferior powers manage to take the superior by surprise.

Peters writes war exceptionally well. I rarely found myself enthused in the vein of a Tom Clancy novel or a David Weber fare, or bored by the predictable curbstomping of one side. It was nuanced, and the barbarity, the cruelty, heroism and suicidal commitment to duty were showcased in equal measure on all sides. Both sides largely believed in their own cause, wanted to win for their own reasons, and did the best they could with the material they had. They were even hampered by poor political decision making by their respective leaders and subordinates, whether those be in Tokyo, Moscow or Washington. It left commanders frustrated, shackled, or sick with worry about their choices. There were massacres, the use of weapons of mass destruction, and very grim realities of modern war. It was a bloody business, and very nicely done.

I truly enjoyed that Peters made his characters flawed. Colonel Taylor for instance, hates the Japanese with a vicious streak that borders on pathological. This isn't portrayed as a virtue however, and even Taylor admits that it impairs his judgement. His subordinates have a fanatical desire to please their commander, and they all have their own flaws. This, in a few cases, leads directly to their deaths. Their enemies are not simple cardboard cutouts, some don't actively believe in their cause, and others simply fight to fight on another day. I appreciated that there wasn't any dues ex machina which forced the scales one way or another, and indeed I was actively in suspense about the outcome until the end.

This isn't to say the book is without flaws. The portrayal of the female characters was pretty atrocious. I found myself mildly reviled by the way a few of the woman were portrayed and even some of the men talking about women (if accurate in a gross misogynistic sense) was unreadable. I tended to skim over those parts. The portrayal of the Muslim characters does lack similar nuance, and by and large they do serve as the disposable cannon fodder of the story, being the acceptable antagonists. They lack a certain nuance that writers unfriendly to them today would find striking, but in the name of a popcorn action read, you could gloss over it without thinking too much.

My final assessment of this book though, is that Ralph Peters does military fiction right. He doesn't provide some miraculous solution to the conflict, there's no instant win the characters can pull off, and there's high and real stakes. People die and you can actually feel those losses. The characters are well established enough that I can sympathize with their loss, and there is glory, but also horror, in war. The ending doesn't provide you with all the solutions, and you might even wonder what these characters will move on to, but such is life after war. The War In 2020 may not have quite predicted the future, but it does tell an entertaining story of a future that never was.