Debt of Honor

For the 1936 film, see Debt of Honour.

Debt of Honor
1st edition cover
Author(s)	Tom Clancy
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Jack Ryan universe
Genre(s)	thriller, novel
Publisher	Putnam
Publication date	1994 (1st edition)
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	766 pp (hardback edition) 990pp (paperback edition)
ISBN	ISBN 0-399-13954-0 (hardback edition)
OCLC Number	30739194
Dewey Decimal	813/.54 20
LC Classification	PS3553.L245 D43 1994
Preceded by	The Sum of All Fears
Followed by	Executive Orders

Debt of Honor (1994) is a novel by Tom Clancy. It is a continuation of the series featuring his character Jack Ryan. In this installment, Ryan has become the National Security Advisor when the Japanese government (controlled by a group of corporate tycoons known as the Zaibatsu) goes to war with the United States. One of the sub-plots in this novel (on occupying the Siberian "Northern Resource Area") would later form part of the main plot of Clancy's later novel The Bear and the Dragon.

Plot summary

In New York City, Japanese industrialist Raizo Yamata completes the purchase of a controlling interest in the Columbus Group of mutual funds from founder George Winston, who is now in a position to retire. Yamata then flies to Saipan — where, many years ago, his parents had jumped off a cliff with many other Japanese when U.S. forces invaded the island — to buy a large tract of land. On a mountainous tract in the Japanese Home Islands, Yamata plans to build hardened silos to hold Japanese-made versions of Russian-designed satellite-launching vehicles that had originally been designed as ICBMs, carrying payloads made to Yamata's specifications.

Meanwhile, in East Tennessee, a car accident involving two Japanese-made cars results in the deaths of six people. The accident involves the design failures and safety flaws in the fuel tanks of both cars; these revelations stir long-standing resentment against Japan's protectionist trade policies. Trade negotiations between the U.S. and Japan grind to a halt, and Congress passes a law enabling the U.S. to mirror the trade practices of the countries from which it imports goods. The bill is immediately used to replicate Japan's non-tariff barriers, cutting off the U.S. export markets upon which Japan's economy depends.

Facing an economic crisis, Japan's corporate cabal decides to take military action against the U.S. Along with China and India, Japan plots to curtail the U.S. presence in the Pacific and reestablish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In the wake of these developments, Jack Ryan is recruited as National Security Advisor by President Roger Durling. CIA officers John Clark and Domingo "Ding" Chavez are sent to Japan, covered as Russian reporters. Their mission is to reactivate a former KGB spy network, pretending to be Russian spies for this purpose, in order to gain intelligence.

Japan launches the first phase of its assault, sending units from the Self-Defense Forces to occupy the Mariana Islands, specifically Saipan and Guam. The invasion, conducted with commercial airliners, is virtually bloodless. Meanwhile, during a joint military exercise, Japanese ships "accidentally" launch torpedoes at the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet at the conclusion of a joint U.S.-Japan naval exercise, destroying two submarines and crippling two aircraft carriers. This drastically reduces the U.S. capability to project power into the western Pacific.

An immediate retaliation is forestalled by the second phase of the Japanese offensive: an economic attack. Even as the military offensive begins, the Japanese engineer the collapse of the U.S. stock market by hiring a programmer in an exchange firm to insert a logic bomb into the system, which ends up deleting all trade records. The Japanese also attempt to assassinate the chairman of the Federal Reserve, but their target survives the attempt with a broken back. With a massive economic crisis and subsequent mass panic, the Japanese hope that America will be too distracted to quickly respond to Japan's military actions.

Japan immediately sues for peace, offering international talks and seemingly free elections in the Marianas in attempt to delay a U.S. response. Negotiators secretly reveal to the U.S. that Japan has obtained nuclear ballistic missile capability. The oligarchs, led by Yamata, believe that offers of negotiation and the nuclear deterrent, defended by a seemingly impregnable AWACS system, will cause the U.S. to concede Japan's advantage. With two of America's twelve carriers disabled, and the rest pinned down by international crises elsewhere, Ryan has few resources with which to defend American interests.

Despite his typical focus on military issues, Ryan advises President Durling that the economic crisis must be dealt with first. Ryan also realizes that Japan's deletion of trade records could prove to be an advantage in responding to the economic threat. He engineers a "do-over", where all of the transactions on the day of the mass deletion are ignored, and all assets are restored to their state at the start of business that day. George Winston's computer wizards help implement the plan. Accompanied by a presidential address to the nation and behind-the-scenes bullying of investment banks, the plan is a success: America's economy is restored with only minor disruption.

Ryan then turns his attention to eliminating Japan's AWACS system, through a series of "accidents" using widely dispersed U.S. assets. Stationed near the end of a runway, Clark and Chavez blind incoming Japanese pilots with a laser, causing the planes to crash on landing. This is followed by B-2 Spirit attacks that destroy the Japanese nuclear-missile range. Clark and Chavez work with U.S. special-operations assets to assassinate most members of the ruling cabal. Finally, they rescue Japan's moderate former Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Admiral Robby Jackson leads the liberation of the Marianas, which is accomplished with little bloodshed. Cornered, the current Prime Minister resigns, ceding power to his predecessor. Yamata is arrested, and the new Japanese government accepts America's generous offer of status quo ante.

Throughout the book, President Durling has faced another, less important political crisis: his Vice President, Ed Kealty, is forced to resign after being accused of drugging and raping a former member of his staff. With the crisis over, President Durling nominates Ryan as vice president during a joint session of Congress. However, an embittered Japan Air Lines pilot -- driven mad by the deaths of his son and brother during the previous conflict -- flies his Boeing 747 directly into the U.S. Capitol during the proceedings. Nearly the entire presidential line of succession is eliminated; Ryan, who had just been confirmed as vice president moments before, narrowly escapes the attack and is immediately sworn in as president.

Legacy

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Tom Clancy commented on CNN about the very close similarity between the events in the novel and those attacks.^[1]

References

1. ^ Michael DiMercurio (September 12, 2006). "The Hidden Meaning of 9/11". Military.com. http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,113310,00.html.