Red Storm Rising/YMMV


 * Alas, Poor Villain:
 * For a politically motivated General Failure,  dies "a soldier's death," shooting at the   that kill him with a machine-gun.
 * His successor,, is given a poignant parting when his plans are ruined and he faces arrest by the KGB, and the last Alekseyev sees of him is his empty holster as he leaves the command tent.
 * I Knew It - Several of Clancy's theories, such as high ammunition expenditure and attack helicopters being surprisingly vulnerable, were later proven correct during the various conflicts in the Middle East.
 * Moral Event Horizon - Soviet soldiers in Iceland break into a civilian farmhouse, kill the parents and dog, and rape the pregnant daughter. The Soviets as a whole are portrayed as decent and honorable men throughout the novel, but it's hard to feel the slightest bit of sympathy towards the soldiers in this incident.
 * In that case, it was the KGB officer leading the men who seemed to have been assigned the most blame. In fact, most of the negatively portrayed Dirty Communists in the book (aside from the callously self-serving Politburo members) seem to have been members of the KGB.
 * Blowing up kids in the first place to "create" a casus belli. Which comes back to bite Director Kosov spectacularly in the end.
 * Although the KGB Colonel who actually did it gets a Karma Houdini and is even portrayed as a bit of a Colonel Badass later on.
 * Romantic Plot Tumor: Handily Averted, surprisingly. You might expect Edwards and Vigdis' relationship to bog down the story. It doesn't, and it is quite clear that the war is the focal point of the story, not the ex-weatherman and the farmgirl.