The Sum of All Fears
 First edition cover art | |
| Author | Tom Clancy |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Jack Ryan universe |
| Genre | Techno thriller |
| Publisher | Putnam |
Publication date | 1991 (1st Edition) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 798 pp (Hardback Edition) |
| ISBN | 0-399-13615-0 (Hardback Edition) & ISBN 0-425-13354-0 (Paperback Edition) |
| OCLC | 23287312 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3553.L245 S8 1991 |
| Preceded by | Clear and Present Danger |
| Followed by | Debt of Honor |
The Sum of All Fears is a best-selling thriller novel by Tom Clancy and part of the Jack Ryan universe. It was the fourth of Clancy's "Jack Ryan" books to be turned into a film.
The book was released days before the Moscow uprising in 1991, which signaled the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Etymology
The title is a reference to nuclear war and to the plot by the novel's antagonists to reconstruct a lost nuclear weapon. The title comes from a Winston Churchill quote serving as the first of the novel's two epigraphs:
Why, you may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together—what do you get? The sum of their fears.— Winston Churchill
Plot
During the Yom Kippur War, the Israeli Defense Force prepares to conduct a tactical nuclear strike to stave off defeat. The necessity for the strike is averted, but an Israeli copy of a Mark 12 nuclear bomb is accidentally left on an attack aircraft, which is subsequently shot down over Syria. The nuclear weapon is lost, buried in the field of a Druze farmer. Eighteen years later, an Israeli captain (coincidentally the brother of the downed Israeli pilot) shoots and kills a Palestinian activist during a public demonstration. The United States finds itself unable to diplomatically defend Israel, yet knows it cannot withdraw its support without risk of destabilizing the Middle East.
Following the advice of Jack Ryan, the U.S. enacts a plan to accelerate the peace process by converting Jerusalem into a Vatican-like independent polity to be administered by a tribunal of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian leaders, and secured by an independent contingent of the Swiss Guards. As a nod to Israel, the U.S. Army supplies the IDF with more sophisticated equipment and agrees to construct a training base in the Negev Desert run by the Army's tank warfare specialists. To everyone's surprise, Ryan's plan seems to work. With their religious contentions appeased, the factions in the Middle East find it much easier to negotiate their disputes.
However, National Security Advisor Elizabeth Elliott holds a grudge against Ryan and attempts to discredit him, exploiting her romance with the widowed President Robert Fowler to do so. With her encouragement, Fowler disavows Ryan's role in the peace settlement. Unsatisfied, Elliott then engineers a smear campaign accusing Ryan of engaging in an extramarital affair. Jack's friends, John Clark and Domingo Chavez, convince Ryan's wife Cathy that the allegations are false. Ryan decides to resign, but not before he puts together a covert operation to uncover corrupt dealings between Japanese and Mexican government officials.
Meanwhile, a small group of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorists, enraged at the looming failure of their crusade against Israel, come across the lost Israeli bomb and use it to construct their own weapon, using the bomb's plutonium as fissile material. The terrorists enlist the help of disaffected East German physicist Manfred Fromm, who agrees to the plot in order to exact revenge for his country's reunification as a capitalist democratic state. With Fromm's expertise, the terrorists are able to enhance the weapon and turn it into a thermonuclear device.
The terrorists agree to detonate the weapon during the Super Bowl in Denver, Colorado, planned to coincide with a false flag attack on U.S. forces in Berlin by East Germans disguised as Soviet soldiers, aiming to begin a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The East Germans hope that the war will eliminate both superpowers and punish the Soviets for betraying World Socialism, while the Palestinians hope the attack will destroy the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and end American aid to Israel.
Thinking his work is done, the Palestinians kill Fromm. However, Fromm had not yet told them that some of the material he planned to use needed to be purified first. The Palestinians finish the bomb assembly and when it is used, the impure material causes the weapon to fizzle. However, almost everyone at the Super Bowl is killed, including the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of State, and the commander of NORAD. With the attacks in Berlin, the United States briefly assumes DEFCON-1 status as Fowler and Elliott prepare for a nuclear war. The crisis is averted by Ryan, who learns of the domestic origin for the bomb's plutonium, gains access to the Hot Line and convinces the Soviet President to stand down his country's military.
When the terrorists are captured and interrogated by Clark in Mexico City, they implicate the Iranian ayatollah in the attack. President Fowler orders the Ayatollah's residence in the holy city of Qom to be destroyed by a nuclear strike. After Ryan averts the attack by enforcing the two-man rule, Ryan lies and claims that Qom was destroyed. The terrorists then reveal that Iran was not involved, and that their deceit was meant to discredit the United States and destroy the peace process, allowing the campaign against Israel to continue. It is implied that President Fowler is subsequently removed from office following the process established in the U.S. Constitution after suffering a nervous breakdown.
The terrorists are beheaded in Riyadh by the commander of Saudi special forces using an ancient sword owned by the Saudi royal family. Later, the sword is presented to Ryan as a gift. In the sequels, the gift inspires Ryan's Secret Service codename of "Swordsman".
A database file with certain limited details about John Clark is included as background information within the first Rainbow Six game, and moreover the same database entry is also found in many of the sequel games. That entry mentions in passing that “the Denver, Colorado atomic detonation [occurred] in 1989.” That information might not be canonical. If it canonical, though, this means that the book is not set in the same year it was published. A second inference is that 1989 was likely the year in which President Fowler’s administration ended.
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