Red Storm Rising

Red Storm Rising is a 1986 technothriller novel by Tom Clancy about a Third World War in Europe between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Warsaw Pact forces, set around the mid-1980s. Though other novels deal with a fictional World War III, this one is notable for the way in which numerous settings for the action—from Atlantic convoy duty to shooting down reconnaissance satellites to tank battles in Germany—all have an integral part to play on the outcome. It was also unusual in its depiction of a World War III fought exclusively with conventional weapons, rather than escalating to the use of weapons of mass destruction or nuclear warfare.

It is one of three Clancy novels (with SSN and Against All Enemies) not associated with the Jack Ryan universe.

The novel eventually lent its name to a game development company called Red Storm Entertainment, which Clancy co-founded in 1997.

In 1988, Islamic terrorists from Soviet Azerbaijan destroy an important Soviet oil-production facility at Nizhnevartovsk, RSFSR, crippling the Soviet Union's oil production and threatening to wreck the nation's economy due to oil shortages. Energy Minister Mikhail Sergetov, a non-voting candidate member of the Politburo, explains the incident at an emergency meeting, advocating concessions with the West to survive the crisis. He is overruled by the Defense Minister, KGB Chairman Boris Georgiyevich Kosov and the Foreign Minister, who instead approve a plan by Kosov to seize the oil fields in the Persian Gulf by military force, despite objections from members such as longtime Politburo member Pyotr Bromkovskiy (an elderly and respected World War II veteran). Sergetov reluctantly agrees, claiming that the Soviet Union has sufficient oil reserves for the war in order to gain political favor. The mobilization is tasked to Marshal of the Soviet Union Shavyrin and Commander-in-Chief of Ground Forces Rozhkov.