A few years after Red Army, my brother dropped The War in 2020 in my lap. We only knew of Ralph Peters as a novelist, and he bought it on the strength of Red Army. The War in 2020 is the story of American intervention in central Asia in 2020. This is another gripping read. The weapons of war are new and exotic, but the people wielding them are the same.
In The War in 2020 the world has changed a lot by the year 2020, with Japan the archrival to an exhausted United States. The Soviets are on the ropes, Israel is no more, Europe is insignificant and officially neutral (some things never change), and Islamic fundamentalists are on the move. America has been through plague and its accompanying social disintegration, a disastrous war in the Congo, a prolonged war in Mexico, and its military might has grown weak. Japanese technology has the upper hand and is used by proxy against America throughout the world.
There is plenty of action in The War in 2020 to satisfy — from cavalry charges to commando raids, from vast sweeping advances to man to man combat. Peters writes clear and exciting military combat scenes. He also throws in new and futuristic combat systems. If The War in 2020 has a flaw, it's the American characters, who are a little too perfect. But you know what, I forgive him because the rest of it is so good.
So what are you waiting for - read the books already!
Article comments
1 - Porphyrogenitus
Actually, per the novel, by 2020 the U.S. has rebuilt and has gained an edge, if a fragile one.
The Mexico War is a begining of a rebound from the nadir: a recovering country can still seem weak. By 2020 America and its military can no longer be accurately described as "weak", though there is a question as to whether it has gained enough strength to take on its competitors, and even more, the political will to stick it out in the face of some particularly gruesome casualties.
That last is a question we face today: we have unmatched materiel strength. The question is whether we're going to be able to stick it through in a war, amid the unprecidented handwringing over casualties, as if casualties are somehow unprecidented in war, or our casualties unprecidentedly high (rather than what they actually are, by historical comparison: unprecidentedly low).