Book Review: “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War” (2015) by P. W. Singer and August Cole
…
In this novel the People’s Liberation Army refused to open fire on protesters pouring into the streets. Their supreme leader vanished, being vanquished. A PLA-backed oligarchy known as Directorate took over China. It went on to take over the world.
With covert support of Russia, China obliterated the U.S. satellite defense preemptively. Next, the PLA wiped out the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor and then occupied Hawaii. Now China effectively controlled the resource-rich Western Pacific Region, mocking U.S. sanctions.
Below China’s radar screen the U.S. recommissioned and revived those rusty warships long retired into a naval junkyard. A “Ghost Fleet” emerged on the horizon. America might be down, but not out.
*
As a war novel “Ghost Fleet” has a promising beginning. But it soon capsizes in the absence of a good explanation for being shy away from the nuclear option.
For the record, Mao Zedong had boasted more than once that he would not blink, even if he had to lose 300 million of his countrymen to the United States or the Soviet Union, should either one bet on the nuclear option in a war with China.
Would Maoists go softer than Mao on nuclear warfare? Would the U.S. simply wait for the other shoe to drop and let the PLA seize the nuclear initiative?
I found the authors, Singer and Cole, inarticulate on this burning war issue. They had a nuclear elephant in their fictional war room, for crying out loud. In deafening silence, however, they kept their World War III going non-nuclear, unconvincingly.
Yes, a world war in the nuclear age doesn’t have to go nuclear. But Singer and Cole had better put up a cogent argument against the nuclear option, which they didn’t. How disappointing!
Being witty I'd like the authors to include this content in the novel - after a round of throwing nuclear warheads at each other, both the USA and China found sth not quite right. Why the heck none of the targeted cities was annihilated despite widespread infrastructure damage? ... A deeply covert organization, DANG, gradually surfaced...Since the end of WWII, DANG (Disarm Nuclear Global), a conscientious group of self-organized scientists, engineers, army generals, secrete operatives, and politicians across the world had been working strenuously to prevent a heat nuclear WWIII from happening, incl. altering nuclear formulas in physics textbooks to make chain-reaction shortcircuited unknowingly, planting agents in major research and arm development institutes, you name it, out of your wildest imagination.
The wartorn silhouette of Hunololo City appears at the horizon, against the backdrop of a dark purple dawn, breaking out of a haze of smoke smearing across the sky. On the placid deep gray water, a surfaced sub, with its reactors shut down, propelled only by the onboard battery set, soundlessly plows through all forms of debris scattered around, towards a largely destroyed but still dockable corner of Peral Harbor. In the capitan cabin, LaoJian drops down the last two lines in the opened journal, "The voyage ends here. Mankind has once again saved herself. Thanks Lord and the founding chairman of DANG, Prof. J. Robert Oppenheimer". (this could be the ending scene of the upcoming movie "Oppenheimer")
Book Review: “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War” (2015) by P. W. Singer and August Cole
…
In this novel the People’s Liberation Army refused to open fire on protesters pouring into the streets. Their supreme leader vanished, being vanquished. A PLA-backed oligarchy known as Directorate took over China. It went on to take over the world.
With covert support of Russia, China obliterated the U.S. satellite defense preemptively. Next, the PLA wiped out the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor and then occupied Hawaii. Now China effectively controlled the resource-rich Western Pacific Region, mocking U.S. sanctions.
Below China’s radar screen the U.S. recommissioned and revived those rusty warships long retired into a naval junkyard. A “Ghost Fleet” emerged on the horizon. America might be down, but not out.
*
As a war novel “Ghost Fleet” has a promising beginning. But it soon capsizes in the absence of a good explanation for being shy away from the nuclear option.
For the record, Mao Zedong had boasted more than once that he would not blink, even if he had to lose 300 million of his countrymen to the United States or the Soviet Union, should either one bet on the nuclear option in a war with China.
Would Maoists go softer than Mao on nuclear warfare? Would the U.S. simply wait for the other shoe to drop and let the PLA seize the nuclear initiative?
I found the authors, Singer and Cole, inarticulate on this burning war issue. They had a nuclear elephant in their fictional war room, for crying out loud. In deafening silence, however, they kept their World War III going non-nuclear, unconvincingly.
Yes, a world war in the nuclear age doesn’t have to go nuclear. But Singer and Cole had better put up a cogent argument against the nuclear option, which they didn’t. How disappointing!
.......
Reviewer: shuier
Chinese and everyone else, aren't they?
Being witty I'd like the authors to include this content in the novel - after a round of throwing nuclear warheads at each other, both the USA and China found sth not quite right. Why the heck none of the targeted cities was annihilated despite widespread infrastructure damage? ... A deeply covert organization, DANG, gradually surfaced...Since the end of WWII, DANG (Disarm Nuclear Global), a conscientious group of self-organized scientists, engineers, army generals, secrete operatives, and politicians across the world had been working strenuously to prevent a heat nuclear WWIII from happening, incl. altering nuclear formulas in physics textbooks to make chain-reaction shortcircuited unknowingly, planting agents in major research and arm development institutes, you name it, out of your wildest imagination.
The wartorn silhouette of Hunololo City appears at the horizon, against the backdrop of a dark purple dawn, breaking out of a haze of smoke smearing across the sky. On the placid deep gray water, a surfaced sub, with its reactors shut down, propelled only by the onboard battery set, soundlessly plows through all forms of debris scattered around, towards a largely destroyed but still dockable corner of Peral Harbor. In the capitan cabin, LaoJian drops down the last two lines in the opened journal, "The voyage ends here. Mankind has once again saved herself. Thanks Lord and the founding chairman of DANG, Prof. J. Robert Oppenheimer". (this could be the ending scene of the upcoming movie "Oppenheimer")