by Chris James
This represented an important tactical advance by the Caliphate. Among the NATO powers, lasers required a substantial and secure power source to be effective, and their use was therefore restricted to ships, tanks, and mobile battlefield support units. Over Tel Aviv on this Tuesday morning, the Caliphate introduced the world to an effective laser built into a relatively small and highly mobile ACA, something which NATO military scientists regarded as being at least five years in the future.
In The Fall of the State of Israel, Udell goes on: ‘In moments, tens and then hundreds of these hideous monsters roamed unopposed over Israeli cities and towns. People collapsed and shrieked as they burned; windows shattered and the shards melted; roofs fractured and whitewashed brickwork exploded. The world looked on, aghast, as the live-feeds terminated in a cacophony of a nation’s fiery anguish upon its execution.’
It is not necessary here to dwell on Israel’s agony. The significant military distinction lies in the Caliphate’s approach to the two targets: the objective with Turkey was its assimilation into the Caliphate, thus the assault on that country aimed to disable Turkey’s military and civilian infrastructure merely enough to facilitate assimilation with the minimum inconvenience. With Israel, however, the military objective was wholesale annihilation: of its people, cities, and buildings. Throughout Tuesday, the lethal laser-armed ACAs roamed supreme over Israeli conurbations, prioritising military installations, transport hubs, civic facilities, and finally individual dwellings.
In the midst of this fury and as vast plumes of smoke from the firestorms began to drift across the eastern Mediterranean, at 10.31 the Caliph released a comprehensive media package, containing extensive footage of Israel’s nuclear-armed ACAs which its own defences had brought down and disabled earlier that morning, as well as an announcement ‘deeply regretting’ Israel’s decision to force the Caliphate to act. This had the effect of undermining calls for a ceasefire from the UN, US and other nations sympathetic to the Israeli cause. Ultimately, it proved to be the beginning of what surviving Israelis and other Jews around the world would shortly come to term the ‘Second Shoah’; another Holocaust costing the lives of millions of Jews, only on this occasion effected over a matter of days rather than years.
Still reeling from the previous day’s attack on Turkey, Western leaders had little time to come to terms with this new and altogether more shocking event. In the Pentagon, chaos reigned at the heart of the US military as it sought to comprehend and respond to the unfolding disaster. Lynne Cantwell, at the time a twenty-eight-year-old analyst in the Operations Directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earned respect when she told the US Congressional hearings after the war: ‘I don’t think any of us had slept since the Sunday afternoon, and that was starting to take its toll. Some folks had real trouble taking it in just how blindly Israel had walked into the Caliphate’s trap. But I must stress that the Services never had any shortage of bravery. We were fielding demands to be allowed to attack. The Services were straining at the leash to get at the Caliphate, but the signals coming back from the White House and the NSA were not to allow any suicide missions, because, in truth, any further activity by us must surely have ended as badly as it did for the Navy.’
Cantwell and others in the Pentagon also knew something which the rest of the world did not: emergency Israeli defence procedures included a scenario where a dedicated US rapid-reaction unit would extract the Prime Minister and any other VIPs to hand from Tel Aviv in the event of an overwhelming enemy assault. This unit responded from a US base at the naval support facility in Naples. However, it too could not withstand the Caliphate’s saturation of the battlefield, and the forty-eight US Marines tasked with recovering the Israeli Prime Minister perished along with him and his entourage.
For the following three days, the Caliphate resisted significant international pressure to disengage from Israel and allow humanitarian aid to enter the country. It kept its laser-equipped ACAs on continual rotation as they methodically crisscrossed the terrain seeking and eliminating survivors. During this period, the Caliphate released more details of Israel’s attack and estimates of how many millions of Caliphate citizens would have been killed had it succeeded, which provided a strong counterpoint to Western accusations that the Caliphate’s attack was itself unjustified.
V. SHOCK
There is little for the student of history to gain by analysing in any great depth the vitriol and hatred which filled international media in the second week of February 2062. Accusation, denial and counter-accusation reverberated around the globe as governments, conglomerates and ordinary people sought answers that would explain their overwhelming shock at the abrupt destruction of naval battle groups, the assimilation of a secular sovereign state, and the immolation of Israel. In the final examination and with the benefit of over thirty years’ distance, what happened in those days was not dissimilar to the opening moves in a game of chess: one player executed an attack which his opponent singularly failed to see or, moreover, make a serious effort to counter. As noted above, the Western powers’ impotence depended in the first place on their lack of raw data. However, the control of the flow of information is the defining characteristic of the bulk of human affairs. From relationships between individuals to those between nation states, the ability to manage information tends to govern one party’s perceived success over the other.
The previous century’s totalitarian regimes could effect this control with relative ease given the poverty of their societies and the level of technology in the mid-twentieth century. However, for the Caliphate the need to regulate the information available to its citizens necessitated the expenditure of great effort, which manifested itself in complex jamming systems over its territory, eavesdropping surveillance systems to ensure compliance, and highly coordinated weapons’ systems to protect and defend its isolation.
The underlying reason for much of the shock in the West at the events of February 2062 can be traced back to the turn of the twenty-first century and the expansion of the First Internet. With this universal means of communication and data sharing, a sense of entitlement evolved which would last until the war with the Caliphate. The citizens of the democracies came to accept the free availability of and access to information with complacency (even though many only accessed information which confirmed and supported their own prejudices), and lost sight of the fact that, no matter how sophisticated the software became, the flow of information would always rely to a great degree on hardware. Many people in the democracies forgot that substantial portions of their lives and societies depended on physical things which, in the event, transpired to be vulnerable, especially to electromagnetic interference. Even the most expert hacker was rendered helpless if a burst of microwaves burned through his connection. The most sophisticated super AI, containing the sum of human knowledge in a semi-liquid glob the size of a golf ball, had a heat tolerance of only two-hundred-and-fifty degrees Celsius.
As appalling images of charred corpses and blasted buildings in the streets of Tel Aviv overtook Turkey’s suffering in the world’s attention, others were not slow to comprehend the potential for global chaos that now presented itself. In the capitals of the world’s most powerful countries, fraught meetings took place and super-AI advisers were consulted. From Beijing to Brasilia and from Moscow to New Delhi, realisation dawned that the New Persian Caliphate had announced its arrival on the world’s stage as the newest military superpower. The illusion of its peaceful intentions had been shattered in the most shocking way imaginable. While Israel smouldered and Ankara was purged, millions held their breaths to see in which direction the Caliphate would take its next step.
The Caliphate Enters Europe
I. CONFUSION SPREADS
At 09.00 GMT on Thursday 9 February, the Caliph issued his next pronouncement, which bears quoting here in full: ‘The New Persian Caliphate announces its intention to correct an historical wrong. Ever since the Crusades nearly a millennium ago, the Christian infidel
has stamped his boot in the Muslim face. Now the day is at hand when this mortal insult will be corrected. The Caliphate gives notice to Europe and the world that the Crusades as well as the additional injustice that took place in the year of Mohammed 1062 will now be corrected. The Christian infidel in Europe, his power and influence waning for the last fifty years, will find his new role as the subordinate of the superior Muslim. The Caliphate will join with our Turkish brothers to correct this historical mistake, to bring a new balance to a small part of the world which for too long reaped the harvest of slavery and the money-lender’s irreligious charging of interest. Now, finally, Europe will be brought to heel and shown the true faith. God is great.’
The referenced date of 1062 in the Persian calendar refers to the Battle of Vienna in September 1683, the culmination of over a century of the Ottoman Turks attempting to overrun Europe, in which a coalition of Holy Roman Empire powers, led by King Jan Sobieski III of Poland, defeated the forces of the Grand Vizier’s army after a siege of two months. Regarded as a pivotal moment in Europe’s history, it was the last time the Ottoman Empire, and by extension Middle-Eastern Muslims, threatened Europe directly.
Writing in The Rise of the New Persian Caliphate, David Benn explained the state of affairs more succinctly: ‘The Third Caliph created a convenient narrative to suit his situation. Having built an army of three million brainwashed and extremely violent young men, he found himself obliged to provide them with gainful employment. Considering his options, the Caliph did not wish to antagonise the Chinese by expanding into Africa, he did not see any advantage to provoking a war with India, and did not want to aggravate Russia by advancing closer to her borders. Thus, his only viable option was to give his warriors the pillage and booty he thought they deserved by sending them towards Europe - weak, indolent, complacent Europe. The Caliph knew well that China and Russia might huff and puff at the violence and loss of life, but they would ultimately allow him to enjoy the spoils of a localised war.’ Benn’s assessment is accurate, because in the eyes of the rest of the world, Europe had descended to the level of its geographical position: a backwater landmass on the edge of a continent.
The Caliph’s pronouncement compounded the disbelief in Athens, Warsaw, Prague, Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Paris and London. At a hurried conference of political leaders in Paris on Thursday afternoon, European governments quickly established the overriding priority: defence. All the militaries of the NATO members were to be afforded every assistance, beginning with strengthening Europe’s southern borders. A young Martin Dreher attended the conference as a junior aide to a Bundesrat member. With a clarity of understanding which would later help to make him such a successful leader of Germany, he confided to his journal: ‘All of them seemed nervous but defiant. I thought one or two, especially the British PM, Napier, may have been wondering deep down why history had chosen them to face this catastrophe, but on the surface at least she held her composure well. The fact that the main issue hinged on a numbers’ game brought a sense of surrealism to the business. If the Caliphate hits us with thousands of these powerful ACAs, will it really make any difference if our collective defence can field two, three or four hundred of our own? Worse, everyone there knew the Caliphate’s attack could - and can - begin at any minute. One cannot expect to look forward to restful sleep in these circumstances.’
Another important issue concerned refugees. As will be seen below, European countries would suffer from the Caliphate’s threatened and eventual attack in more ways than one, and already tens of thousands of people had begun to move north and westwards. By this time, few had not seen the Spider enveloping Sanaz Tilki and her child in Istanbul, or had not recoiled at images of burning Israelis. While large sections of any population under threat of hostile invasion may not be capable of moving (age, infirmity), or may refuse to do so (defiance, apathy), many will flee headlong in front of an invading army, and this war would be little different.
After the conference, Prime Minister Napier had a private virtual meeting with President Coll. Although not widely reported at the time, papers released under the thirty-year rule show that the English PM had to work harder than expected to get Coll fully on board. A secret memo circulated to Whitehall departments and the Chiefs of Staff later that evening revealed Napier’s frustration: ‘… President Coll reassured the PM that of course the US would stand by its NATO commitments, but material military aid will take time to organise. The PM forcefully told the President that Europe did not have time, and the US had to begin air transports of its most sophisticated ACAs at once. On hearing this, the President appeared to dither somewhat and the meeting ended with a promise that she would do all she could. The PM believes that Coll and many of her countrymen are reeling from the destruction of Israel, and we should not expect early relief from the US.’
This memo confirms that the slow deterioration in the leaders’ relationship began almost at once, but is an otherwise wholly unfair judgement on the US. Air transports of equipment would indeed begin the next day, and shipments of larger material were already being organised with impressive efficiency. In a tradition stretching back over one hundred and fifty years, the US military would for the duration of the war support its European allies with a responsiveness and competence arguably unmatched by any other ally country at any time in history. While Coll and Napier might not enjoy as strong a relationship as Churchill and Roosevelt, their countries’ militaries would cooperate in a manner that would have made the war leaders of the 1940s jut their chins in respect and nod in appreciation.
II. THE SEARCH FOR ANSWERS
As the politicians grappled with the sociological problems which the Caliphate’s belligerence provoked, NATO’s military scientists tackled the practical complications facing them. Four sources of recorded data would prove useful: the attack on the two navel battle groups; the assimilation of Turkey; Israel’s disastrous attempt at a pre-emptive strike; and the Caliphate’s crushing response.
In the first, a memo detailing Captain Wexley’s last-resort instruction to vary the laser coherence length and the resulting effects was circulated to all NATO air forces and battlefield formations which possessed these weapons. In the second, US satellites tracked the ACA invasion, dispersal patterns, and target priorities. Analysts then pored over these figures to update defensive plans for the at-risk southern European nations, as well as protective measures for all capitals and key cities. Regarding the Israeli pre-emptive strike, of most importance to NATO was the Caliphate’s jamming ability. The records showed how the signals from the hundreds of Israeli nuclear-armed ACAs gradually weakened as the machines entered Caliphate territory, before disappearing altogether within a hundred kilometres. Establishing a method to defeat this jamming was correctly considered an imperative. Concerning the Caliphate’s counter strike, Israeli defences were defeated in much the same manner as the navies: an unanticipated and overwhelming numerical advantage. The lethally effective laser-carrying ACA, which was given the NATO reporting name ‘Lapwing’, also boasted a similar level of enhanced shielding as the Blackswan. However, its dexterity in the air left many in NATO perplexed. It fell to a young analyst called Ethan Mack, who told the US Congressional hearings after the war: ‘When we looked at the thing’s pitch, roll and yaw stats, at first none of us could work it out. I went home that night and saw a toy in my son’s bedroom. It was a kinda small spaceship. When I looked more closely, it hit me how the Caliphate’s Lapwing did it. The hull housing the laser was crisscrossed with lines we thought were only markings or cooling vents. I realized they must be open channels holding small but real powerful power units - my guess was a muon-source. If I was right, they were years ahead of us in tech. We were not in a good place.’
Each country’s super AI had access to this data and reached similar conclusions. However, trust in it had been damaged, for many people irreversibly so. The next question to be answered centred on the Caliphate’s designs for Europe: did it intend assimilation or annih
ilation? The Caliph’s pronouncement appeared to suggest the former, but many voices, no doubt suffering shock from recent events, loudly claimed that Europe should expect the latter. Yet others concluded that the distinction between the two outcomes would likely not make a great deal of difference to the majority of people in Europe.
On the Thursday evening the UN attempted to adopt a resolution stopping all imports to and exports from the Caliphate. China vetoed it. After the war, many Western historians blamed the rest of the world for abandoning Europe, and attempted to prove that powerful interests in Asia, Africa and South America were more than happy to see former colonial masters in Europe humbled so completely. However, the evidence does not support this. When media and other records are aggregated and analysed, the only reasonable conclusion is economic prudence. While the leaders of a number of populist parties in several countries made controversial statements to appeal to the prejudices of their electorates, many more national leaders condemned the Caliphate for its abrupt and unwarranted violence. However, this did not extend to risking the ire of export partners, such as China, with which nearly every country in the world traded. Many commentators did draw historical parallels with how often America and European countries had allowed dictators to thrive when it suited their foreign policies, but ultimately, for a majority of the world, the priority was ‘business as usual’.