Debt of Honor

• Main
• YMMV
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

Debt of Honor

Written by:	Tom Clancy
Central Theme:
Synopsis:	After an economic crisis, Japan decides to launch a new war of territorial acquisition. Ryan must help his country figure out how to fight back on two fronts: economic and military, with a navy dangerously drawn down by past presidents.
Series:	Jack Ryan
Preceded by:	The Sum of All Fears
Followed by:	Executive Orders
First published:	August 17, 1994

The Cold War is now fading into memory, and everyone thinks the nuclear threat is over. The American economy is booming, and aside from a few foreign hotspots, the world looks pretty good.

From an American point of view, at least.

Unfortunately, India, China, and even the Japanese are all being directed by a single mastermind with a grudge left over from the second World War into creating a new dominant sphere of influence in the Far East, and America will be forced to team up with its former Cold War enemy to stop an enemy that wants to permanently cripple them both.

No matter the cost.

This 1994 book is the first in a new Myth Arc that Tom Clancy started writing after The Sum of All Fears, in which he started trying to find new antagonists for his heroes to contend with post-Cold War.

It was succeeded by Executive Orders, the second part of the myth arc.

Tropes used in Debt of Honor include:

• Actual Pacifist: Prime Minister Koga. It's partially because of this hat his political enemies temporarily oust him around the start of the book in order to prevent him sabotaging their plans. By the end of the book, he comes to reluctantly accept that violence - distasteful though it is - is also necessary to serve the cause of peace and justice, especially when American CIA officers use it to rescue him from unlawful imprisonment and possibly being murdered at a later date.
• Airstrike Impossible: One Comanche sneaks up on a Japanese E-767 by flying low and following railway tracks.
• Apologetic Attacker: Sato apologises to the co-pilot he stabs in the back before carrying out his final deed.
• Black Helicopter: The Comanche is depicted as this, being so stealthy it can be used to assassinate major corporate figures in their central Tokyo homes where any normal helicopter should have been intercepted long before it gets anywhere near.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In the previous book, Japanese sources fed the CIA information via a Russian Double Agent that prevented a world war. Not only is this referenced, but the source of the leaks is shown meeting the CIA for the first time.
  • The time frame is a bit off, but Roger Durling's re-election is coming up soon, and it roughly coincides with how he took over after Bob Fowler resigned in the previous book.
• Continuity Snarl: A few dates are messed up, per Clancy tradition, but the more important issue happens towards the end of the book, when Jack Ryan becomes Vice President. It's stated he has to be confirmed by the Senate, when in reality he would have had to be confirmed by both houses of Congress. Clancy admitted this line was an error due to publishing demands to get the book out ASAP, and has said it should be ignored.
• Deconstruction: Of Michael Crichton's Rising Sun. Both feature similar plot lines and characters, even a few similar plot twists, but differ in regards to the question of whether Japanese and American business interests are compatible. While Crichton casts doubt on the topic, Clancy takes the "mutual misunderstandings of the other side make that an easy conclusion to reach" perspective.
  • And in a theme that continues from The Sum of All Fears, he also deconstructs the conceit that the end of the Cold War would be better for all parties concerned. Clancy takes extra time throughout the book - multiple times - to explain how this is dangerously naive to believe at best.
• Enemy Mine: Despite the public resentment China and Japan still feel for one another, conspirators in both countries secretly ally for mutual gain, though China secretly hopes to welsh on the deal as soon as they get a chance.
• Exact Words: To deceive the Japanese forces into believing they've already won, the Americans get the media to report the correct amount of time it would take to get their forces back to the strength they were before. It works, because the Americans instead opt to get their forces back to the bare minimum necessary required to strike back, so From a Certain Point of View they never lied per se, they just told the truth the Japanese were expecting to hear.
  • Specifically, the news reported truthfully that the amount of damage inflicted on two American aircraft carriers would take several months in drydock to repair. They just "forgot" to mention that the carriers were still capable of reaching the conflict zone and launching aircraft despite the damage.
• Fair-Weather Friend: The Chinese break things off once Yamata's plans go pear-shaped.
• Feed the Mole: Towards the end of the book it becomes obvious Japan has a few moles in the American government undermining the US, so instead of immediately arresting them, they elect instead to use them to feed the Japanese false information, due to how complacently the Japanese regard the reliability of said moles.
• Foreshadowing: A Japanese admiral gets annoyed by low-flying planes because he's concerned their passage might cause damage. Later on, that does become an issue.
• Heel Realization: Towards the end of the book, one of Yamata's allies realizes he bet on the losing horse and pissed off the wrong enemy when a retaliatory American strike by stealth aircraft nearly assassinates him.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Nobody realises what the Japanese are up to until it's too late because they use a joint military exercise with the US as a pretext to make preparations for the offensive.
• History Repeats: Several characters note how the leadup to open war contains uncomfortable parallels to World War II. The code phrase used by the Japanese to start offensive operations is the same as that which started the Attack of Pearl Harbor, and several submarines whose namesakes were Pearl Harbor survivors play important parts in the counterattacks.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Yamata's plot to ruin the American stock market with junk becomes its own worst enemy when Jack realises, building on an earlier discussion, that because there are no records, the government can just reset the clock by fiating that none of the bad trades actually happened.
• Insane Troll Logic: Basically what motivates the Big Bad of the book, Raizo Yamata, from start to finish. Because he wanted to avenge the deaths of his family from World War II, he schemes to trigger a war with America to accomplish this, and tries to justify the whole thing to anyone who doubts him by casting America as the villain and what anyone who works with him as doing as morally justified and to the betterment of the Japanese people as a whole, based on logic even Yamata's own Japanese allies come to realize is ludicrously optimistic once they give it a little thought. And once the emotional outrage he suckered them into going along with his scheme wears off. Koga rather easily and simply proves Yamata is full of it when they finally confront one another most of the way through the book, pointing out all the long-term damage his plans would effect even if he triumphed in the short term, points out the stunning idiocy of trusting the Chinese to go to bat for him if things go south, and that Yamata is so sure he's gonna win he underestimates America, the same country that nuclear bombed Japan before, to which Yamata really has no counter. And Koga turns out to be so correct that what little is mentioned of Yamata's fate in the next book is a non-stop legal and deeply personal Fate Worse Than Death for the man.
• It's Personal: Yamata's plot is driven by his desire to avenge his family, who chose to commit suicide off the cliffs of Saipan rather than be taken alive by US Marines in World War II.
• Kaiju Defense Force: Given an extremely sympathetic perspective, given their antagonist role. Most are portrayed as patriots of one sort or another, and while only a few are portrayed as having truly malicious intentions in the short and long term, most are merely motivated by their national and personal pride.
  • The JSDF in the book also makes extreme efforts to avoid even remotely coming near any action that might possibly be a war crime or abuse of noncombatants, as directly opposed to the historical actions of the Imperial Japanese military in WWII - precisely because they're entirely aware of that history and are doing their best to overcome it.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Both the Japanese and Americans use this ploy, in different ways.
  • A hitman shoves a senior executive of an American financial firm into traffic, making him look like a victim of Car Fu.
  • The Japanese conspirators off the American mistress of Goto and try to make it look like a drug overdose to wrap up that loose end, and prevent her from being used as potential blackmail material. It becomes a non-issue ultimately, and it actually tips their hand somewhat, confirming Goto is a pawn of Yamata and due to evidence of a struggle and rape at the scene discovered by the CIA, only gives the Americans more reason to be pissed off, albeit not publicly.
  • The Americans later counter with an operation to cripple Japan's anti-aircraft radar screen by having Clark and Chavez use their flashlight device to blind several pilots who try to land at a Japanese runway, causing them to crash, then fake a technical fault regarding the model of the aircraft used by the pilots so that any investigation will be considered accidents later on.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: The mass majority of the Japanese characters who are remotely sympathetic do what they do, even if it means killing people, with this in mind, though a few of the villains driven by personal or less honorable reasons are shown to profess this publicly while having other motivations.
• Myth Arc: Part one of three, in which, with the Soviet Union being no more, Communist China takes their place as the main antagonist, albeit at a "once removed" fashion, using Japan's ambition or at least that of those secretly controlling things there as a proxy for their own goals of seizing most of Siberia. India also makes its initial play at imperial ambitions as well, and the post-Cold War US military, which downsized in the previous book, now realizes it was a mistake to do so.
• Non-Lethal KO: Clark and Chavez use a souped-up flashlight that induces a non-lethal incapacitatory effect several times throughout the book. It proves to be not so non-lethal when it's used to blind pilots flying into a Japanese airport, which causes them to fatally crash; Clark and Chavez both note the grim irony in this.
• One Nation Under Copyright: Japan is revealed to be this, with the zaibatsu (the corporate leaders of major industries) being the The Man Behind The Man to the government, which largely exists to rubberstamp whatever the zaibatsu want.
• Playful Hacker: Yamata hires one to make his attempt to crash Wall Street work even better, by having them insert a bug into the Depository Trust Company's records that rendered them unreadable nonsense. It works too well, which allows Jack Ryan to realize he can use this to effect a little Loophole Abuse and sidestep all the damage by pretending most of the financial damage this caused never happened since no records exist to prove it did in the first place.
• Putting on the Reich: The usage of this trope is noted by Clark and Chavez when they observe Goto having a political rally that disturbingly reminds both of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them: Played with when the US Government realizes that the solution to Japan's hack of the trading records and subsequent crash of the economy is to claim that the bad trades simply never happened at all and rewind everything back to the morning the financial crisis began, because there is no official record proving the trades exist. When the head of one of the brokerage houses quite understandably asks if doing this is actually legal, the Secretary of the Treasury replies with an evasive answer of 'I officially promise that we will not prosecute anyone for participating in this' but doesn't actually answer the original question. It's strongly implied that no, it's not legal at all, but in the interests of keeping the global economy from being deliberately crashed by hostile action every government involved is going to be creatively blind for the duration.
• Shown Their Work: In-universe, despite being really rusty at the trading business and never having been a big name Wall Street trader (as he worked as a trade consultant for one of the firms represented on the Street at most), Jack Ryan himself gets this reaction when he describes how the stock markets went to hell around the midpoint of the book, even from people who know how it all works on paper.
• Stranger in a Familiar Land: One POV character is Chester "Chet" Nomuri, a fourth-generation Japanese American serving as a CIA field officer in Japan. His narration has him grappling with the cultural differences between ancestral homeland and birthplace.
• Taking You With Me: Towards the end of the book, Captain Sato attempts this. He murders his copilot, bullshits his way into a flight path that takes him over Washington D.C, then tries and succeeds to do a 9/11 style attack on the Capitol Building with his 747 as one last attempt at revenge.
• Tempting Fate: On being informed of the stock troubles, a senior executive for an American financial firm says that since he's near the office, he'll just handle it in the office rather than on the phone. He doesn't get there.
• Thanatos Gambit: Reference is made to how this was purposeful strategy for the kamikaze pilots Japanese used in World War II. And a Japanese airline pilot who lost his brother and son decides to engage in his own towards the end of the book.
• Unreliable Narrator: We get a big look inside Raizo Yamata's mind throughout the book, and while he publicly tries to come off as harmless, in private he comes off like a Well-Intentioned Extremist patriot of his country with a tinge of Wide Eyed Idealism. His internal monologue, on the other hand, reveals he's really satisfying a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and is using his privately expressed motivations as a very convenient excuse for his actions, given they dovetail nicely with his own actual goals.
• Unwitting Pawn: Hiroshi Goto is essentially an idiot used as a front man to make Japan an extension of Raizo Yamata's plans. Most of the way through the book, many of Yamata's supporters come to the conclusion they have become this themselves, with varying degrees of self realization.
• Yellow Peril: Japanese mastermind orchestrates the remilitarisation of his country and a new war of conquest against America with Chinese and Indian backing.
• You Are in Command Now: Happens to Jack Ryan at the end of the book, who becomes President just after becoming President, by virtue of surviving Sato's kamikaze attack on the Capitol Building.
• You're Insane!: Koga says this word for word to Yamata at one point. Yamata counters that he's a patriot, to which Koga deconstructs this by breaking down the Insane Troll Logic Yamata is using to justify himself. Yamata doesn't really have a counter to this.