2034, A Novel on the Next World War
Book Author: Elliot Ackerman and retired Admiral James G. Stavridis
2034 is a book about a war between the United States and China. Keeping spoilers to the very minimum, the story starts in the South China Sea, where the United States and China are competing for influence. A US Navy Carrier Group intercepts a Chinese fishing vessel that turns out to be a spy ship with super advanced cyber technology, so the US Navy detains it. A small naval confrontation quickly escalates into a full-blown diplomatic crisis. As the talks break down, each side’s partners take advantage of the situation, with Russia launching cyber attacks on the United States and Taiwan saber-rattling against China.
The story is told through the eyes of a few main characters: the United States National Security Advisor, the Chinese Admiral in charge of the operations, and the various military officers on each side. As you read the book, there is enough suspense to make you want to read more, and the twists and turns are not what you expected.
Very quickly, things get out of control, as China disables the US Navy Carrier group in the South China Sea with a new first-strike cyber weapon, then sinks all the ships. This is a massive escalation that the United States did not anticipate. Looking to respond from a position of strength, the United States dropped a tactical nuclear weapon on Zhanjiang, China, the home of the Chinese Navy’s Southern Command. The Chinese did not anticipate such a dramatic escalation and had to respond. Other world leaders and powers get involved, and quickly you see a very plausible “slippery slope” to world war.
What happens next is horrifying but, more importantly, realistic. The book was written by retired military officers with deep knowledge of military planning, tactics, and execution. Their plan is to make real by storytelling what the endgame of our geopolitical environment can lead to. The author's intention is not to frighten the audience (spoiler alert: it will) but rather to educate the reader. The ending is not what you would expect, even while reading the book, but again, very plausible.
Why I Recommend This Book
As a high school student during the Cold War, I read Tom Clancy’s “Red Storm Rising,” a novel about World War III started by the two great powers at the time: The United States and the Soviet Union. It was riveting; I completed the 700+ page book in about a week. By comparison, my assigned English Lit homework that month, “The Great Gatsby,” clocked in at a mere 200 pages and took me three times as long to read. Red Storm Rising was part of a Cold War genre that told stories with the backdrop of what the escalation of the Cold War would look like. Having this fiction as part of pop culture allowed everyone to understand and appreciate the high stakes of the system that they lived in. Some would argue that it helped prevent that very escalation because the public had stories and a vision of what it would look like and demanded diplomacy. Movies such as “The Day After” and books such as Red Storm Rising gave the public a glimpse into the future, and they did not like it.
When it comes to the current competition between China and the United States, no such genre of fiction exists today. It is always important to envision what a confrontation would look like in order to get the public and policymakers on both sides to see the stakes. 2034 is the first of such works of fiction that I found, and hope that there are more made with similar results as the Cold War genre.
