The year is 1997. Hong Kong has collapsed after reverting to Chinese rule. Asia, a continent of ancient and ingrained rivalries and hatreds, has become dangerously unstable. The Far East is embroiled in savagery and bloodletting on an unimaginable scale.Within China herself all the old passions were revived in a calamitous civil war, setting North against South, Manchu against Han, Shanghai against Szechuan. Hotheads from one of the factions, seeking to rally China behind one flag, made a suicidal bid to retake Taiwan, bringing forceful retribution from the Republic's American-trained army and air force.While this drama was unfolding in the South, in the North the newly elevated enfant terrible of the region, the monstrous North Korean leader Kim Jong II, followed in his father's footsteps by invading the prosperous miracle-country of South Korea The Western allies, committed to defending South Korea, sent troops and ships and planes - thereby being drawn into a conflict neither of their making nor any longer a subject of their particular concern.All the time, waiting in the wings, was Japan - all-powerful, all-patient, gazing across at the countries now locked in turmoil, who had, not long before, been colonies, vassal states, or dominions of the old Japan. The newly emergent Japanese right wing was quick to recognize the imperial possibilities in the weakened state of her neighbor nations. And so, under the all-too-familiar guise of "protecting Japanese commercial interests," troops were sent from Tokyo - to the horror of the watching world in general, and the United States in particular.But Washington, in a stroke of unparalleled diplomatic boldness, decides that Japan's new imperial adventure cannot be permitted - and, moreover, that it should be stopped by use of force. The President, in an effort to prevent the whole world from sinking under the crushing weight of this devastating Pacific nightmare, orders the unleashing of possibly the most spectacular single military act of all time. Read Less