Novel Idea

In 1994, technothriller author Tom Clancy published "Debt of Honor," a novel about a brief war between the United States and Japan. The ending of that novel had a terrorist crashing an airliner into the Capitol building, presaging the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

The beginning of the novel, however, presaged something else which Publisher's Weekly described at the time thusly:

Jack Ryan, now the President's National Security Adviser, finds himself embroiled in the buildup to a new world war -- one in which the stock market and national economic policy are as critical as advanced weaponry.

That intermixing between economics and warfare is taking on greater importance in the real world, and is the subject of an InsideDefense.com investigation.