2034: A Novel of the Next World War Hardcover – March 9, 2021

Complacency in our thoughts about our economics, politics and international relationships could lead us to this fate. It does not have to, if we take seriously our responsibilities as American citizens.

It's early morning hours, and I just finished this. I find it bittersweet to read in early 2025 when it seems we are doing a very good job of fulfilling President Lincoln's warning words. The event that starts all of the horror in this book is as real as it gets: the US over reliance on military tech and our lack of imagination that our nation could ever make a mistake, despite the last 30 years of evidence... Anyway, while it's not the best book I've ever read, it's far from the worst and it's important for every American to try and wrap our brains around the national suicide we seem to be choosing. It probably won't happen exactly like this book, but I feel sure some of the themes will feature prominently. I feel very sad after reading this. And I have decided that on my next trip, I will find myself a paper map. 😐

I've read negative comments on this book, and agree some of those points are valid, and yet I give this book five stars and urge voters and those in positions to set policy to read it.The gist and ultimate message of the book is what we should take away.The novel centers on five characters, told from their point of view. I am a geek that prefers focus on technology or science, so this human centered narrative was a turn-off at first. Further in I became more engrossed with the book and saw the relience on characters as an efficient means to convey the military-geopolitical dynamics.I certainly prefer dry, unsentimental military strategy such as in my science fiction military theory short story "Treason Alaska : The Story of the Treason Trade Route", which in spite of it's title is more about Chinese-American antagonism and a surprising outcome.Still, I endorse this sentiment drenched 2034 for it's few very important statements Americans need to see. There are pro-Russian statements, and pro-Chinese statements, and are very counter to the a priori moral assumptions we see in US journalism and State Department policy rhetoric.Here are my favorite quotes:On Russia:"Kolchak began to pontificate about the Rodina, his “Mother Russia,” how in its many iterations, whether they be tsarist, imperialist, or communist, it had never enjoyed the legitimacy of other world powers. “During the empire our tsars spoke French at court,” said Kolchak. “During communism our economy was a hollow shell. Today, under the federation, our leaders are viewed as criminals by the rest of the world. In New York City, or in London, they don’t respect any of us, not even President Putin. To them, President Putin isn’t the grandfather of our Federation; no, to them he is simply another poor Russian, a gangster at best, even though he has retaken our ancestral territories in Crimea, Georgia, and Greater Ukraine; even though he has crippled America’s political system, so that now their president doesn’t even have a party but has to run as one of these enfeebled ‘independents.’ We are a cunning people. Our leader is one of us and is equally cunning."On America:"The America they believe themselves to be is no longer the America that they are. Time changes everything, doesn’t it. And now, it is changing the world’s balance in our [Russia's] favor.”America’s hubris has finally gotten the better of its greatness. You’ve squandered your blood and treasure to what end? ... For freedom of navigation in the South China Sea? For the sovereignty of Taiwan? Isn’t the world large enough for your government and Beijing’s?On War:"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. -Sun Tzu"By the way, the dynamics of escalation in the book match the "If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat" formula.And finally, the ideal the book pursues is in this passage:"He could feel his loyalties shifting, not from one nation to another, but between those who wanted to avert an escalation and those who believed that victory, whatever that meant, could exist along this spectrum of destruction. Receiving the appropriate authorizations to visit the Defense Ministry suddenly seemed like an irrelevance. He increasingly felt as though his allegiance didn’t reside with any government but with whoever could reverse this cycle of annihilation."Spoiler alert, the geopolitical surprise comes from India:"We are not supporting Beijing. And we are not supporting Washington. We are allied with no one. Our support is for de-escalation. Do you understand?”Yes the book has a mighty big magic wand in the form of Chinese cyber attack ability, but fiction often relies on these implausible rhetorical devices to get the reader to that place the story needs to go, so the reader receives a much needed message.This book has many such needed messages.

Well, I read the novel, then read the reviews, especially the negative ones. I see what the negativity people are saying, it really is an absurd plot line. Apparently the U.S. and China are about to escalate into the land of strategic nuclear war, the total annihilation kind. As it happens, they have only lost three cities between them so far. But they both know where things are headed, and they know they're going to go there, and they are both fearlessly willing to go there. But suddenly they both become frightened when they realize that India will attack whichever of them escalates to the next level first. Collectively they are afraid of India, apparently.But if you allow that real life, and real history, is chock full of unbelievable real events as they happen (consider the expression "President Trump"), you might as well go along with this one just to see how any historical oddity might go in real life. The run up to this war is incredibly peculiar, as World War Threes go.This isn't the nuclear war of our collective fantasies, one which escalates and ends in twenty minutes. No, this buildup is slow, in the manner of World War One.You don't expect to see a nuclear power destroy a major city of another nuclear power without the latter's immediate response. You don't expect to see the world hanging around for days or weeks wondering what the second country's response will be but not doubting for a moment that there will be a response...and that it will be catastrophic. In fact each country knows more or less what the other one will do in response to whatever provocation it's planning. But they do it anyway. This sort of puts to rest the idea of a "cooling off period" following a nuclear attack, accidental or otherwise.As in 1945, the U.S. goes first, but we insist that China has given us no option since they have destroyed our ability to attack them by conventional means. But unlike the Twin Massacres of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our side doesn't get off scot free. This is in fact what first got me thinking of this book in terms of the weirdness of war.Here's the thing: San Diego and Galveston are no more. They have been turned into radioactive craters. Yet in this story, these losses seem little more than mere annoyances on the part of the United States. It really is like a game of Checkers. They take ours, we take theirs, and so on. The authors hardly mention it, life on the ground in Southern California. Or even life in the nation, the esprit de corps, you know, the kind of demoralizing that went on after 9-11. Did anybody mourn these cities? And over in China, did anybody mourn the passing of Shanghai? Not a word. There is a brief mention of managing our two radioactive craters---and the fallout fanning out in various directions, not to mention a dead and dying population---as a technical matter, like cleanup, like humanitarian aid and so on. Very expensive for our government. Lots of tents after World War Three.What really annoys me about this book, though, when it's all said and done, after there has arisen a completely and entirely new world order with the United States assuming a third world status where you can't even buy toothpaste if you're planning to travel there, these authors revert, via the mind of maybe their favorite surviving character, Sandeep Chowdhury, to an American Exceptionalism even in global defeat. After the mighty who have fallen and the nobodies who have become superpowers, suddenly the United States is an "idea" that shall surely withstand all of this. The fact that it is an "idea" makes it eternal. That makes Chowdhury happy, and it makes the authors happy too. The destruction wasn't as awful as it might seem.As the authors say, "America was an idea. And ideas very seldom die." Where did the authors hear this? Who taught them that? Is that part of military training? Anyway, Chowdhury delights in knowing that ideas seldom die whenever he is in despair.But isn't China an "idea" too? Europe is an idea, the Roman Empire was an idea. In fact it took centuries of wondering why and how the Roman Empire could possibly have fallen for Augustine to realize that it simply wasn't the Eternal City after all. The Eternal City is in Heaven. That was it, in terms of explanatory sufficiency.Even racism is an idea. You better hope ideas can die.So these authors are really revealing that, unlike Chowdhury looking back on World War Three as a historical event, they themselves are located in the here and now, in the 2021 world of American Exceptionalism, which is bound to get us in trouble sooner or later. Rather than root for the dead country, it might have been better had they signed off, "How sad that the United States, the city upon a hill, had to die." It's certainly more honest to admit that fallen civilizations do not lie in the ashes to resurrect like Jesus just because they've been so inspiring. It's not as though if we just keep the faith, the Federalist Papers will automatically figure into somebody's history someday.It is, of course, a universal practice for citizens of any civilization to regard their society as permanent and divine. But this is exactly what drives nations into wars, including the nations in this novel. The authors should not have succumbed to it.