Dodging bullets

I enjoy a good yarn (i.e. something not to be taken too seriously) so when on my Microsoft clickbait feed I saw a Daily Telegraph story headlined ‘Tom Clancy’s CIA secrets: why The Hunt For Red October had the US Navy running scared’ I decided to watch the film (again). The film is, it has to be said, a not so subtle piece of propaganda made in the dying days of the Cold War—it was released in 1990 but was written in novel form by Clancy in 1984. As we’ve been informed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, its demise wasn’t exactly anticipated by the West at the time. (Just like the financial crisis of 2007/8, but that’s another story.) The Daily Telegraph, as its headline suggests, hints at CIA involvement in providing or at least assisting in the development of the story, although Clancy denies that (but would he necessarily know?) The bit about the Navy ‘running scared’ is because some of the technology portrayed in the film was being researched in hush-hush circumstances at the time. Top secret stuff that would allow submarines to run silently, and the film made out that the Ruskies had got to it first.  This theme is redolent of the old fiction that the Soviets had a military advantage over the West, the so-called ‘missile gap,’ subsequently revealed to be false. The Soviet arsenal never matched the West’s. Another aspect of the film, which many might say is borne out by events in Putin’s war in Ukraine, is that the Russians are rather incompetent—despite their alleged ability to manufacture superior weapons. These days, instead of silent running submarines we are to be made fearful of Putin’s hypersonic missiles. Hence, we need to up our defence budgets. In the case of the US this has led to the Pentagon being given more dollars than it has asked for. So far as I know no Russian ‘hypersonic’ missiles have been launched in the Ukraine war—Putin has relied instead rather heavily on cheap Iranian-made drones. None of this is to underestimate the damage a determined militaristic incompetent can do—he’s like a semi-bankrupt glazier who goes round smashing windows at night. He’s a boon for the military industrial complex. But he ought to watch The Hunt For Red October, which as it happens was one of Ronald Reagan’s favourite films. He would learn that our chaps are far better at dodging bullets (or in this case, torpedoes) than the bad guys.