Editing Red Storm Rising (section)

==Themes==
[[File:Redstormrisingmap.png|thumb|right|300px|Allegiances of nations involved in the war described in the book.]]

''Red Storm Rising'' depicts a future [[Third World War]], chiefly between the United States and the Soviet Union. It follows the "future war" genre first popularized by the 1871 [[novella]] ''[[The Battle of Dorking]]'' by [[George Tomkyns Chesney]] as well as the [[science fiction]] novel ''[[The War in the Air]]'' (1908) by [[H.G. Wells]]. ''Red Storm Rising'' is unusual among Cold War examples of the genre in that it presented a war fought entirely using [[conventional weapons]] rather than one with nuclear weaponry or chemical weaponry. For instance, ''[[The Third World War: August 1985]]'' describes a conflict based on fairly similar assumptions, but involving heavy use of chemical weaponry and with limited use of strategic nuclear weapons at the conclusion of the conflict.

According to a document released by [[the National Archives (United Kingdom)|the UK National Archives]] in December 2015, U.S. President [[Ronald Reagan]] had recommended ''Red Storm Rising'' to [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom|UK Prime Minister]] [[Margaret Thatcher]] shortly after the [[Reykjavík Summit]] in 1986 between him and Soviet general secretary [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] so as to gain an understanding of the Soviet Union's intentions and strategy.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ronald-reagan-prepared-for-historic-cold-war-meeting-by-reading-tom-clancy-thriller-a6790036.html |title=Ronald Reagan 'prepared for historic Cold War meeting by reading Tom Clancy thriller' |first=Cahal |last=Milmo |date=30 December 2015 |newspaper=[[The Independent]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://qz.com/583822/reagan-to-thatcher-read-a-tom-clancy-thriller-to-understand-the-soviet-union/ |title=Reagan to Thatcher: Read a Tom Clancy thriller to understand the Soviet Union |website=Quartz |date=December 30, 2015 |first=Aamna |last=Mohdin}}</ref> Some of the advanced weapons systems described in the novel were deployed four years later in the [[Gulf War]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Greenberg |first1=Martin H. |title=The Tom Clancy Companion |pages=11–17 |edition=revised}}</ref>