Ultimatum

by Matthew Glass

  “That’s absolutely wrong,” said Ball. “This is way too public now. It’s in their media, it’s all over their domestic scene. They have to win on something or they’re discredited at home. And one thing the party will not accept is to lose face at home. We have to give them something.”

  “So you give them this?” demanded Olsen. “Because they’ve set themselves up domestically, we have to make sure they get it? That’s the greatest argument for appeasement I’ve ever heard!”

  “It’s the reality.”

  “It’s fucking outrageous! I’m sorry, that is not an argument! That’s not a reason to give them Taiwan.”

  Benton broke in. “For the hundredth time, this is not about Taiwan!”

  “With respect, sir, it is!” Olsen gazed at him. “Mr. President, I know the linkage pains you, but it’s there. They’ve created that linkage. The way to carbon is via Taiwan. And I’m telling you straight, Mr. President, right now you’re the only person in the world who refuses to accept it.”

  There was a hush in the room. Benton knew that every eye was on him. He took a deep breath. Maybe Olsen was right. Maybe he couldn’t keep resisting it anymore.

  “Then explain it to me,” he said quietly. “If we do nothing, what do they do? Do they take Taiwan, or do they keep talking?”

  “They take it,” said Olsen.

  “They take it,” said Enderlich, and Jay MacMahon nodded his head.

  The president looked at Alan Ball.

  “It’s possible,” he said reluctantly. “They’re talking themselves into a corner.”

  “They engineer an incident,” said Stu Cohen. “Easy to do. Then they move.”

  Enderlich nodded. “That’s probably how they’ll do it.”

  “All right,” said the president. “Say they do. What then? Do they turn around and agree to the Carbon Plan?”

  “Why should they?” said Olsen. “We’ve just let them take Taiwan. What credibility do we have?”

  “The United States government has never stated outright that it wouldn’t let them take Taiwan.”

  “With respect, sir, I believe that’s a subtlety that might be lost on your average Chinese citizen in the tsunami of triumphalist nationalism that will swamp China if they take Taiwan.”

  “Then that lets them back down on carbon, doesn’t it?” said the president. “There’s our linkage. And at this stage, having watched China invade Taiwan, the rest of the international community is on our side.”

  “Are they?” said Jay MacMahon. “Mr. President, I don’t see too many countries coming out in support of Taiwan right now. Frankly, I don’t see too many of them who even give a damn.”

  “But they won’t condone force.”

  “Even if they don’t, what are they going to do?” Olsen shook his head, almost in amusement. “The EuroCore? Taiwan’s gone, Mr. President. Fait accompli. What are they going to do now? Boycott Chinese business? Can anyone here really see them doing that? If we let them do this, the Chinese get away with it. They will get away with it with impunity, and the last thing they’ll do then is sit down with us to sign up to the Carbon Plan.”

  “Alan?” said the president.

  Ball frowned. He thought for a moment before he spoke. “It depends, deep down, whether they really think they need to sign up to the plan. If they think they can keep holding out and force us to take bigger cuts, then I think they will. No matter what happens.”

  “See?” demanded Olsen. “Even Alan agrees!”

  “But that’s what it’s always been about, hasn’t it?” retorted Ball. “Do they really think they need to act on emissions? If they do, then this is a way for them to get something that helps them come to the table. It’s a way of giving something to their base so they create the space in which they can do something painful, something, remember, that threatens the very legitimacy of the regime. But if they can get this, then maybe they can do it.”

  “And if they don’t believe they really need to cut emissions?” asked the president.

  “Then they get something for nothing,” said Larry Olsen.

  “Alan?”

  Ball shrugged. “I guess they do.”

  Joe Benton stared at the dark varnished wood of the table. “I wish I knew what they were thinking,” he murmured.

  “Mr. President?” It was Oliver Wu, who had been silent throughout the session. “Sir, I’m not sure if it’s quite as straightforward as this.”

  Benton looked up at him. Straightforward? That was an odd way of putting it.

  “I think we’re giving the Chinese leadership too much credit for having a single coherent approach. Taiwan is simple for them. If they can get it, they’ll take it. There’s not a single Chinese leader who isn’t committed to getting the island back. But there are big differences among them on how much risk they’d take to get it back. On the one hand, you have some generals who’d invade this afternoon if it was up to them. On the other hand, you have people like Hu and Xuan who wouldn’t put at risk even a fraction of China’s economic stability for the sake of it.”

  “Surely someone’s driving this now?”

  “Yes, to the extent that this is a serious attempt to recover Taiwan— and remember, we haven’t seen any real action take place. This might all be saber rattling for domestic consumption, or some kind of opportunistic attempt to see how far they can go. But the leadership isn’t going to be sitting around a table like this, all the leadership, and agreeing that first we do this, then this, then this, then we get Taiwan, then we do this, and this, and this on the Carbon Plan. If they’re able to get agreement on what to do about Taiwan, that in itself is a huge achievement, and it’s probably taking all their attention. Beyond that. . . don’t assume there’s a game plan. Anything can happen.”

  “And they’d risk that, to get Taiwan?”

  “Definitely. China prides itself on its antiquity. They waited ninety-nine years to get back Hong Kong, but they got it in the end. It’s only eighty-five years since they lost Taiwan. To them, that’s like yesterday. It’s the blink of an eye.”

  Benton looked at Olsen. “Dr. Wu seems to be saying there’s no linkage, Larry.”

  “No, sir,” said Wu quickly. “That’s not exactly what I’m saying. The linkage is that the disruption over the Carbon Plan has put them in a position where maybe they think they’ve got the opportunity to get Taiwan, or maybe they feel they have to get it to shore themselves up, and that’s what they’re focused on. My point is, it’s probably opportunistic. I doubt they have a plan that says what happens next. More likely, what happens next depends on who comes out on top once whatever happens over Taiwan has happened.”

  “If Oliver’s right,” said Olsen, “and if we assume whoever’s pushing the hard line on Taiwan would also push a hard line on the Carbon Plan, then our best bet is to make things tough over Taiwan so that person loses credibility.”

  “Mr. Secretary,” said Wu, “with respect, taking a hard line on one thing doesn’t necessarily imply that the same person would take a hard line on something else. And on the other hand, if things start to look tough over Taiwan, that person may move to shore up his position and crack down internally even harder while he still can, which means, if he succeeds, there’s even less domestic pressure to push him toward the Carbon Plan. Or we could see a scenario where the tensions build until the party splits into its factions and you get something approaching a civil war, which means you’ve got no one to negotiate with until that’s resolved, and that could be years. In China, that’s a real possibility.”

  Benton frowned. He tried to find a simple way through the maze that confronted him. This wasn’t about Taiwan, it was about carbon. Taiwan had become opportunistically entangled with it. But it was about the future of the planet. He wasn’t going to sacrifice that over a part of China that, one way or another, was always going to be recovered by the Chinese. Yet defending Taiwan might be the best thing he could do to safeguard the future of the planet. Maybe it reall
y was his most important bargaining chip. Resist now, trade later. But how Congress, how the American public would react to armed intervention in Taiwan, that was another thing he didn’t know. The media was already divided along predictable lines, some demanding vigorous action, some warning against yet another American involvement in someone else’s backyard. He remembered the hall in Princeton, the sense of division that he had felt descending on the union. In the last weeks, he had asked an awful lot from the American people. He had asked them to follow him into a period of pain now in order to prevent greater pain later. He didn’t know what would happen if he had to add even more.

  Yet if Wu was right, it was impossible to say what effect the loss of Taiwan would have on China’s position on the Carbon Plan. And if that was right, then the only thing he could predict was the effect it would have on America’s position. And that wouldn’t be good. If Taiwan was forcibly taken, it would result in a massive loss of U.S. credibility.

  On the other hand, it would show China as an aggressor, and possibly make other leaders less likely to support them.

  But the United States would look weak. And why ally yourself with a weakened power?

  He was conscious of everyone waiting, watching him.

  He looked at Enderlich. “Take me through your plans on Taiwan, Admiral.”

  Enderlich nodded.

  “That’s not a commitment, Admiral Enderlich. I just want to see them.”

  ~ * ~

  Wednesday, October 26

  Situation Room, The White House

  Overnight, there had been a near miss between a Chinese and American plane over the South China Sea. Something had then malfunctioned on the American aircraft and the pilot had been forced to eject. The Chinese media portrayed it as some kind of victory. A Chinese government spokesman asserted that if hostilities broke out between China and the United States, they wouldn’t be restricted to East Asia.

  In the Situation Room, the president puzzled over the wording. “What exactly does that mean, do you think?”

  “Could be they’re meaning to attack us on Guam, sir,” said Enderlich. “It’s certainly within range for their aircraft.” He smiled. “Bring it on.”

  “What about Hawaii?”

  “Ditto. Alaska’s different, they could do better in Alaska, but what are they going to achieve? Blow up a bunch of icebergs.”

  “What about the continental United States?”

  Enderlich shook his head. “As far as we’re aware there’s no naval activity within range. It’s been a long-standing understanding that we would react strongly if the Chinese put vessels in a threatening posture. There’s only one way they could hit us here, Mr. President.”

  “What about knocking out our satellites?”

  “We’d take out theirs. And we have plenty of redundancy in the system. Ever since that little show they put on when they destroyed that satellite in ‘07, we’ve built that in. They’d have to knock out fifty.”

  “What if they did?”

  Enderlich shrugged. “They know the Shawcross doctrine. They take out enough satellites to blind us, we nuke ‘em.”

  The president looked at the wording of the Chinese statement again. “So you’re saying there’s only one way?”

  “That would be just as bad for them,” said Larry Olsen. “They maybe crazy, but they’re not that crazy.”

  “One warhead lands here, they get a hundred back,” said Enderlich. “They know that.”

  “What if a hundred land here?”

  “They still get a hundred back.”

  “They’re rational,” said Olsen. “They believe they can absorb more pain than us, which is true, but if the pain is total destruction, that doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Mutually assured destruction,” said Enderlich. “Kept us safe through the Cold War, and at their height the Soviets had five times the number of warheads the Chinese have got pointed at us now.”

  “Let’s not make the mistake of fighting the last war,” said Alan Ball.

  “Where’s the difference?”

  “Different protagonists, Admiral. The Soviet Union had proven itself when the Cold War began. The Chinese haven’t. They’ve been trying to show they’re a military superpower for years. They’re looking for an opportunity.”

  “And you think nuking us is the opportunity they want?” Olsen rolled his eyes. “Who’s going to be left alive on their side to see it, Alan?”

  “They might not think we’d hit back.”

  “They’d be wrong.”

  “Sure. They could be. Hitler was. That’s why he invaded Poland, and look what happened to him.”

  Enderlich looked at Ball with a smile that was almost condescending. “I thought you didn’t want to fight the last war, Dr. Ball.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Mr. President,” said Olsen. “They’re rational. Right? This is ridiculous.”

  “They hit us,” said Enderlich, “that’s the ball game. We know it. They know it. This stuff about taking it out of East Asia, that’s talk.”

  “All of this is talk,” said Olsen. “Look at this near miss. Why make a noise about it? Mr. President, they’re not doing anything. Why haven’t they attacked Taiwan already? You’re standing firm, that’s why.”

  “They have to attack, though, don’t they?” said Benton. “They’re as mobilized as they can be without actually moving. They’ve crossed every limit. They can’t go back without losing face domestically.”

  “That’s why I suggest we put the preemptive plan into action,” said Enderlich.

  “I’m suggesting something else,” said Benton. “They need a way back. Let’s give them one. We’ve lost sight of what this is about. It’s not about Taiwan, it’s about carbon. Remember? They’ve forgotten it, just like everyone else has. It’s time to remind them.”

  “What do you have in mind?” asked Alan Ball.

  “We come out and say Taiwan’s open to negotiation. Larry, before you start, hear me out. I issue a public statement. I say we’re sure some kind of arrangement can work. We’re prepared to work with the Chinese government on that—but only after we get agreement on the Carbon Plan. There’s a linkage, right? You said it yourself. Well, I’m going to turn it around. Taiwan doesn’t lead to carbon—carbon leads to Taiwan.”

  “You sure that’s a way out for them?” said Olsen skeptically.

  “Why not? They can present it any way they like internally. They don’t even have to mention the Carbon Plan as part of the deal in their press. They can show it as us climbing down. I don’t care about that. I don’t mind giving them a cheap victory, if that’s what it’s going to take.”

  Jay MacMahon shook his head. “So we’re betraying Taiwan?”

  “Call it a betrayal if you like, Jay. I’d call it something else. Taiwan’s been in a situation of limbo since 1949. It’s an anomaly, this entity which we kind of do recognize but kind of don’t. The United States has never guaranteed it. At some point, this was always going to need to be resolved, and the fact that we’ve never committed to a Taiwanese state suggests that it was always going to be resolved by reversion to China. Well, if that was always going to happen, let’s get something back for it. I’ll talk to President Tan again. We’ll help in whatever way we can to smooth the transition. We can use Hong Kong as a model.”

  “Yeah. That worked,” muttered Olsen. “Mr. President, this is a hell of a change in policy.”

  “It’s a hell of a different world we’re living in, Larry. It’s a different one than the one I thought I was living in when I took office.”

  There was silence.

  “Umm. . . Mr. President?” It was Oliver Wu. “What you said, that only works if they see the whole picture, if they accept the way you’re trying to connect the issues.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

  “I guess so. But they might not accept that.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean, but... so they reje
ct it. So what? What’s the downside?”

  “The downside is you make it worse. What you’re doing is, you’re implicitly recognizing they have a right to Taiwan, but now you’re dictating to them when they can have it. If they choose to interpret it like that, it’s more Western colonial imposition. It’s an insult.”

  “It’s a way out.”

  “It can also be seen as an insult.”