Red Storm Rising presents a plausible scenario and result, which is part of what drove its appeal. Clancy and Bond based the strategies and tactics on doctrine as well as interviews with military officials. Bond also drew on his experience as a naval officer and his board game Harpoon which realistically represented naval combat. The book actually took its inspiration from a war game conducted by the Center for Naval Analysis, a DoD funded think tank, which examined the importance of the Iceland gap and the strategic importance of the island in defending convoy routes to Europe.

Reviewers noted that the book was "good news" for Caspar Weinberger as all the new defense technology worked superbly and outclassed their Soviet equivalents. Thought there was no way to be certain of this in 1986, over time it did become apparent that the US technology was certainly better than the Soviet equivalent, and if anything Clancy may have understated the difference.

The book had a strategic impact, as Reagan read it almost immediately upon its release. He felt the scenario was accurate and the perceived ability of NATO to win a conventional war in Europe helped fuel his nuclear abolitionism. Reagan discussed the book with advisers while traveling to Reykjavik, where he and Gorbachev almost agreed to abolish nuclear weapons. After the conference, he tried to assuage a worried Margaret Thatcher by telling her to read the novel, which would show that a non-nuclear Europe would not be destabilized and that the present forces were enough to win.

As to your bonus question, I'm not sure I agree the book implies the Soviets would actually win. The U.S. did have the stealth fighters discussed (not in large numbers yet and Clancy named them incorrectly) and the fuel shortage was more of a forcing function driving the Soviets to war, the conflict ended before the fuel shortage would have impacted their forces. Clancy and Bond believed the US would win a conventional war, something I think the book reflects. Clancy mentioned this in passing to Reagan during his White House visit in 1984. Reagan asked about Clancy's next book and upon being told it was about WWIII asked "who wins?" Clancy responded "The Good Guys."

I think you have to take RSR with a huge grain of salt, given what we now know about Russian capabilities, logistics, and overall preparedness.While the book portrays what was at the time a "highly likely scenario", we now know that the "Soviets" had no where near the capabilities that we had granted them. Somewhat of a hollow fighting force. So RSR is a realistic presentation of a war scenario during it's day, but in retrospect not realistic.

Clancy had this massive hard on for the US military. I met him once at a Navy function in Washington DC. He painted such a glamorous picture of war and particularly US capabilities, that I actually think he did a disservice to the military. War is not glamorous. Weapon systems only work exactly as designed in video games. It is not a fun thing to do...but Clancy did make it great reading.

Red Storm Rising is a novelization of a specific wargame. There's a book titled War Games that discusses the scenario in depth, but I haven't been able to find the proper book on Amazon - there are a lot of books by that title. Red Storm Rising follows the wargame faithfully, but a lot of things magically go wrong for the Russians.

In the wargame, the US resorted to nuclear brinkmanship to 'win' - making use of tactical nuclear weapons and threatening to escalate to strategic nukes if the Soviets responded in kind. I highly suspect there is more too this that hasn't been released, but that's getting into speculation.

The book paints a pretty stark picture of actually seeing the Cold War go hot, at least in Europe. That said, they (War Games and Red Storm Rising) were both written before the Iraq War, where we actually got to see American tactics in action against Soviet equipment - however dated. It paints the vaunted numerical superiority the Russians held in a very different light.