Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 is a real-time strategy video game by Westwood Studios as the follow-up to Command & Conquer Red Alert. Red Alert 2 picks up at the conclusion of the Allied campaign of the first game. After the attempted conquest of Europe depicted in Command & Conquer Red Alert, the Soviet Union is in utter ruin. Joseph Stalin is dead, and the Soviet military has been all but destroyed.

The Allies determine that a regime change would cause mass unrest in the Soviet Union, and in order to gain both support and stability in the region, the victorious Allies name Alexander Romanov, a distant relative of Tsar Nicholas II, as the puppet Soviet Premier. Romanov acquiesces to the Allies' demands at first, though he builds up the Soviet military for "defense purposes" a cover for an intended invasion of the United States.

The game's story line starts off in 1972, with the United States Armed Forces caught completely off guard by the sudden massive Soviet invasion of the United States, with Soviet aircraft, naval vessels, amphibious forces, and paratroopers coming in on both the East Coast and West Coast and with the majority of Soviet ground forces coming in through Mexico, which had recently voted in a communist government, starting World War III.

The U.S. attempts to retaliate with the use of nuclear missiles, but Yuri, leader of the Soviet Psychic Corps and Premier Romanov's top advisor, uses his mind control to manipulate the personnel charged with launching the warheads and leaves them to explode in their silos. Within hours, the U.S. is overrun with Soviet Army troops. In response, the U.S. President Michael Dugan establishes an emergency response team headed by General Dan Carville and the Commander known as "The Ghost"