Book Review: “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War” (2015) by P. W. Singer and August Cole
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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.
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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!
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Reviewer: shuier
