I read this as a cautionary tale, written by two highly qualified authors, to show how simple steps, and complex interactions, can move the world into deep war as countries escalate conflicts.
It was worth my time.
( )

The authors are a distinguished retired admiral and a distinguished veteran and accomplished writer. Their premise, and ax to grind, is that the computerized weaponry that makes the US military so powerful is actually their Achilles’ heel. They show this by imagining an undescribed black box invented by the Chinese that can completely inactivate all “cyber” systems without inactivating their own but does not affect traditional radio signals. The story is gripping, but ultimately unsatisfactory, especially when the plot further astounds us by requiring that the Indians have easy access to all of our White House communications and also have dramatic stealth capabilities of which we were completely unaware. Other disturbing peculiarities are present, the misunderstanding of what a tactical nuclear weapon is, and a Chinese character who launches the weapons that destroy Galveston and San Diego but who seems to be a closet American patriot. I suspect that the work is that of two paranoid personalities and it beggars the imagination. I can imagine that atomic weapons might be used as the waters rise around us, but not in this way. ( )

This was a surprisingly good novel about war breaking out between China and the USA in the year 2034. One of the authors is a distinguished admiral so brings his knowledgeable perspective to the book. Particularly surprising was how the authors bring in an international cast of characters from Iran, China, Russia, and India. They all receive very sympathetic treatments. ( )

2034: A Novel of the Next World War
Author: Ackerman, Stavridis
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publishing Date: 2021
Pgs: 303
Dewey: F ACK
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
=======================================
REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Summary:
On March 12, 2034, US Navy Commodore Sarah Hunt is on the bridge of her flagship, the guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones, conducting a routine freedom of navigation patrol in the South China Sea when her ship detects an unflagged trawler in clear distress, smoke billowing from its bridge. On that same day, US Marine aviator Major Chris "Wedge" Mitchell is flying an F35E Lightning over the Strait of Hormuz, testing a new stealth technology as he flirts with Iranian airspace. By the end of that day, Wedge will be an Iranian prisoner, and Sarah Hunt's destroyer will lie at the bottom of the sea, sunk by the Chinese Navy. Iran and China have clearly coordinated their moves, which involve the use of powerful new forms of cyber weaponry that render US ships and planes defenseless. In a single day, America's faith in its military's strategic pre-eminence is in tatters. A new, terrifying era is at hand.

So begins a disturbingly plausible work of speculative fiction, co-authored by an award-winning novelist and decorated Marine veteran and the former commander of NATO, a legendary admiral who has spent much of his career strategically outmaneuvering America's most tenacious adversaries. Written with a powerful blend of geopolitical sophistication and human empathy, 2034 takes us inside the minds of a global cast of characters--Americans, Chinese, Iranians, Russians, Indians--as a series of arrogant miscalculations on all sides leads the world into an intensifying international storm. In the end, China and the United States will have paid a staggering cost, one that forever alters the global balance of power.
_________________________________________
Genre:
War
Politics
Militaria
Fiction

Why this book:
I love a good war novel. For being co-authored by an Admiral as far up the food chain as Stavridis was, I expected more detailed descriptions of the vehicles and weapons involved. If that’s what you come for, you aren’t going to find it here. This is more focused on the geopolitical ramifications and the fallout of those actions.
_________________________________________
Least Favorite Character:
The “villains” of the piece are cardboard men. The authors tried to put meat on their bones, but they were stalking horse characters.

Favorite Scene:
Blinding the elephant, holy shit. That would be a horrifying concept to run up against.

Hmm Moments:
Reading this amidst the shadows growing out of Russian adventurism in Ukraine is sobering.

Cutting undersea cables... It's like this book is reading my mind. I had a similar conversation regarding the Russian navy exercises off Ireland.

Uhm Moments:
Not sure if you could do that to an F18, stripping out the advanced avionics so it becomes an analog fighter plane and still have it fly much less get it off the deck of a modern carrier and into combat. And the idea that a stripped-down, dumb plane, regardless of pilot skill, would stand up to and fight back against modern military aircraft isn’t kosher.

Suspension of Disbelief:
I think Ackerman and Stavridis are naive in the extreme. They and I, both, live among the fanatics scattered throughout the American populace. They would see it as their holy duty if there was a nuclear bomb burst on American soil to send the entire world to heaven in a rapture of nuclear fire. America is a religion to many: Prosperity Christians, fanatical evangelicals, the America F Yeah crowd, etc. A quasi-Christian death cult effectively, they would see it as their right and moral obligation to have vengeance. Put it down to Reagan, Chuck Norris, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne and the Heroic Anglo Narrative illusion drilled into all of us as school children. And we'd all burn because of it.

Strikeout:
Strike 1. The Iranian squirrel incident was so telegraphed and overwrought that it has come close to killing my interest in the story. The jury is out and deliberating.
_________________________________________
Pacing:
Very well paced.
======================================= ( )

one of its authors, Adm. Stavridis, a former destroyer and carrier strike group commander who retired from the Navy in 2013 as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. . . . Adm. Stavridis not only understands how naval fleets work; he has clearly given a great deal of thought to America’s biggest strategic risks, and at the top of the list is war with China, which, as this book seems designed to point out, could occur quite by accident and at almost any time . .. One of the messages of this book is that war is utterly unpredictable and that opportunist adversaries of the U.S. are likely to play important roles in any widening confrontation . . . 2034 is nonetheless full of warnings. Foremost is that war with China would be folly, with no foreseeable outcome and disaster for all. ( )