The Sum of All Fears

The Sum of All Fears is the best-selling thriller novel by Dan Fogelman and Tom Clancy, and part of the Jack Ryan series. It was the fourth book of the series to be turned into a film. An interesting historical note is that this book was released just days before the Moscow uprising in 1991, which finally signaled the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russian politics in the aftermath of the destruction of the Berlin Wall is a main element of the book.

Plot summary

The title is reference to the one thing all major Governments have feared during the Cold War, Nuclear War. It's also a reference to the components of the bomb the antagonists of the novel make and their final product. The book begins with two epigraphs: First a quotation from Winston Churchill:

followed by a quote from Herman Kahn's On Thermonuclear War, describing the Field of Camlan, a peace parley that turned into a battlefield:

The Prologue occurs in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War: at its height the Israelis opt for a tactical nuclear strike, but this decision is changed at the last minute. Unfortunately, one Mark 12 nuclear weapon is not removed from an Israeli attack aircraft—piloted by young Motti Zadin. (The bomb is incomplete: the "physics package" is there; but the electronic detonator is missing.) That aircraft is shot down and crashes into mountains in Syria, and the nuclear weapon is lost (an empty quiver). The bomb buries itself in the field of a Druze farmer.

The plot then moves to 1991. The Palestinians start using non-violent protests and one of the unarmed protesters is killed by Israeli police official Benny Zadin, the brother of Motti Zadin. The U.S finds that they can no longer support Israel at the UN or politically against its Arab neighbor nations. However, the U.S. also cannot leave Israel without support since doing so would risk destabilizing the region. A clever plan to accelerate the peace process is put into action, based on Jack Ryan's indirect contact with the Vatican and with support from the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia. To everyone's surprise, it seems to work. However, the venal National Security Advisor, Dr. Elizabeth Elliott, hates Ryan (since Clear and Present Danger) and makes sure he does not get credit for crafting the "Vatican Treaty"; the fact that she has begun a romance with the widowed President Fowler makes this plan more achievable. She later launches a smear campaign that makes it seem like Ryan is having an affair with a woman whose husband had died in Clear and Present Danger and almost costs him his marriage before John Clark and Domingo Chavez reveal the truth to Ryan's wife. Ryan is later told he has to resign, but not before he puts together a covert operation involving the uncovering of a deal between corrupt Japanese and Mexican officials, giving backstory to the next book, Debt of Honor.

A small group of Palestinian terrorists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine are not pleased, though. With peace looming around the corner and the state of Israel still in existence, they are looking at a failure in their campaign. Their anger is directed towards the U.S., which has supported Israel throughout the years and is now instrumental in creating a lasting peace that makes it impossible to eradicate the Jewish state.

When the terrorists come across the lost Israeli bomb, they manage to recover it and construct their own version, using the plutonium as fissile material. They also enlist the help of a disenfranchised East German physicist named Manfred Fromm. Fromm, an expert on nuclear technology, agrees to help the terrorists because their plan is designed to exact revenge on those responsible for the downfall of East Germany and the unification of his country into a capitalist, democratic state. With Fromm's expertise, the group is able to enhance the weapon and turn it into a thermonuclear device. The terrorists decide to use the weapon at the Super Bowl in Denver, Colorado, while also planning a false flag attack on U.S. forces in Berlin by East Germans disguised as Soviet soldiers. The terrorists' goal is to start a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This will accomplish two things. First, it will eliminate the American ability to support Israel, and second, it will eliminate those two nations as the superpowers, thus punishing them for bringing an end to the Cold War and betraying World Socialism, which is a driving motivator for the East German characters in the book, who are led by a bitter Red Army Faction terrorist named Günther Bock. Incidentally, the Arab conspirators kill their various associates as soon as they are no longer needed.

The device, however, does not detonate fully or properly, due to an assembly error (in their haste and arrogance, the terrorists kill the project's chief engineer before he can properly add the tritium needed to make the device a fusion bomb, mistakenly believing that they can take over from there), It is an enhanced-fission explosion, but not a fusion explosion, as analysis of the fallout confirms: analysts deem it a fizzle and trace the plutonium to the Savannah River plutonium production reactor. Nevertheless, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State are both killed, as well as thousands of fans in attendance and thousands more residents of the Denver area, due to the primary and secondary effects of the fission detonation. Through a series of coincidences, misunderstandings, and the attack on American forces in Berlin, the plan is almost a success, and for a brief moment the U.S. assumes DEFCON-1 as both President Fowler and National Security Advisor Elizabeth Elliott have lost control and are ready to begin a nuclear war. The crisis is averted when Jack Ryan, after receiving evidence that the bomb's plutonium had originated in the U.S., gains access to the Hot Line and manages to defuse the situation by communicating directly with the Soviet president and suggesting a phased stand-down of strategic forces and an end to the fighting in Berlin.

The terrorists devise a backup plan in the event of failure. When this happens and they are captured by John Clark in Mexico City, they put it to work by implicating the Iranian Ayatollah Mahmoud Hajj Daryaei as responsible for the attack. The American President, Bob Fowler, is enraged and, because the Ayatollah is known to reside in the holy city of Qom, orders the city destroyed by a nuclear attack. After Ryan averts the attack by enforcing the two-man rule, the terrorists reveal the ruse (under torture by John Clark, who breaks all their fingers). They also reveal the ruse's purpose: to discredit and shame the U.S. in the eyes of the world, as the attack would make the U.S. an enemy of Islam for all time. This would destroy the delicate peace process, allowing the campaign against Israel to continue. The plan can be seen as employing the commonly used terrorist tactic called agent provocateur, the inciting agent. President Fowler resigns from office after suffering a breakdown.

The book ends with the terrorists' beheading in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, by the Saudi special-forces commander, using an ancient sword held by the Saudi royal family, which is then presented to Jack Ryan. The sword is meant to honor all who had died, but it also serves to remind Ryan of all who had not died because of his actions. It is later revealed in the sequels that the gift, along with his background as a marine, inspires Jack Ryan's Secret Service codename "Swordsman."^[1]

References

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

• The Sum of All Fears (film)
• The Sum of All Fears (video game)