sufficiently meaningful about the men behind the Soviet guns. When asked what the Soviet military is “really like,” I have often joked that it’s a lot like sex: Much that you’ve heard about it isn’t true; when it’s good, it can be amazing; but when it’s bad, it’s inexpressibly embarrassing. Yet such a pat answer only deflects an important question. What are they really like? While it would be impossible ever to fully answer such a query even were I Russian-born, the format of fiction, with painstaking fidelity in detail, seemed my only hope for bringing “the other guys” to life for my comrades and countrymen. This novel does not pretend to answer all of the questions. Instead, it is aimed at provoking thought and a new consideration of those men so tragically made our opponents by the events of this grim century.
Could they pull it off? Could they achieve the success the book allows them? If we examined only the achievements of Soviet military theory, the answer would be an emphatic “Yes!” The body of contemporary Soviet military theory is tremendously impressive — far more sophisticated and comprehensive than the often-dilettantish concepts cobbled together in the West. But wars are not won by theory alone, and the area in which the Soviet military is perhaps the least impressive is in the lack of suppleness and honing of their tactical units and subunits. The gap between soaring aspirations and limping reality has long been manifest in many fields of Russian, then Soviet endeavor, such as philosophy, politics, economics, science — and the military. A Russian is rarely short of fabulous ideas — and Soviet “military science and art” dazzle us with their intensity and incisiveness. But between those brilliant theoretical constructs and the muddy boots lies a range of operational question marks that only combat could satisfactorily answer. Were a war to occur in Europe “tomorrow,” the Soviet military could conceivably pull off the victory related in the book — but the luck of the battlefield would have to be running almost entirely on their side. The Soviet military system seeks methodically to reduce the impact of “luck,” of chance, of friction, and even of what they term “native wit” — the individual human talents of which we are inclined to make so much, rightly or wrongly. Yet the overall military balance in the European theater is such that luck in its broadest sense would have a great deal to do with the outcome on the battlefield: who would be “lucky” enough to have the right men in the right positions; whose analysts would properly assess the disparate bits of intelligence information appearing amid impressionistic conditions of confusion and evident disaster; who will have figured out the most acute employments for modern battlefield technologies; who might take the proper risks at the decisive times; who would get to the good ground first…
This book is hard on NATO, because everyone else is so anxious to handle it with exaggerated delicacy. I am personally firmly committed to this most successful of all alliances, but I also believe that we have allowed NATO to evolve into something of a spoiled child at an unacceptable relative cost to the security and economy of the United States. NATO has tremendous latent combat power that may fail to show to full effect on the battlefield simply because we have all been so anxious to avoid sober self-criticism in peacetime. As a citizen of the United States, I place a value beyond words on the preservation of western civilization (with all its discontents), yet I cannot rationalize the sacrifice of a single American soldier’s life because we acquiesced to folly in fear of an ally’s tantrum.
This book does not presuppose that a war is either imminent or inevitable — indeed, the declarations of Mikhael Gorbachev offer grounds for careful optimism — and it should be clear from the events described in these pages that war is not becoming any more attractive an option for the solution of our problems as military technology improves. Authors are marvelously privileged in that they can kill tens of thousands without shedding any real blood, but the paper war in which the reader engages is only a comfortable shadow of the potential horror of modern land warfare. This is ultimately a work of fiction; a cautionary tale on one level, an effort at creative investigation on another, it frankly means to entertain. If there is a conscious message between its covers, it is not that there will be a war with that differently uniformed collection of human beings east of the Great Wall of Europe, but that, should such a war occur, we will be opposed by other men of flesh and blood, with their own talents, ambitions, and dreams. Thankfully, I believe that the great majority of them resemble the great majority of us in their desire simply to get on with the business of living.
Ralph Peters is a veteran U.S. Army intelligence officer, with extensive tactical experience in Europe. A Soviet analyst and linguist, he has published widely on military affairs, and his work has been translated into various foreign languages. An earlier novel, Bravo Romeo, appeared in 1981.
“RED ARMY is about the men behind the Soviet guns,” he writes. “My fundamental goal was to bring those men to life, in their rich human variety… to see how they might respond in the context of modern battle.”
