Trigger Point

by Matthew Glass

  The president was silent for a moment. ‘You put that forcefully,’ he said.

  ‘Marion should have warned you what I’m like.’

  ‘You make it sound like we’re in some kind of global endgame.’ Ehrenreich shrugged. ‘Maybe we are. A long one. If that’s what this is, we’re at the very start of it, but how we start might make a big difference to how we end and how long it takes us to get there. You know, there’s a saying attributed to Bismarck about what makes a great statesman. Do you know it, Mr President?’

  Knowles shook his head.

  ‘Bismarck said, the truly great statesman is the one who hears the distant hoofbeat of the horse of history, and through an extraordinary effort manages to leap and catch the horseman by the coat-tails and be carried along for as far as he can be. Not ride the horse, Mr President, not replace the horseman, but just to catch him by his coat-tails is a great feat. Sir, most statesmen who think they’re great – who their own times think are great – when the horse has gone by, and the horseman looks around behind him, it turns out they actually just stood in the way and got trampled into the dust.’

  ‘And you hear the hoofbeats?’ said the president quietly.

  ‘I do, sir. They’re loud.’

  ‘Then what would you do to catch on to the horseman?’

  Ehrenreich smiled. ‘I’m not a great statesman.’

  ‘Pretend you are.’

  Ehrenreich shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’d make a start.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘However it looks like.’

  ‘Do something in the G22? The UN?’

  ‘No. That’s not going do it.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Call a summit with Zhang? Get him involved. Make him part of the solution, not part of the problem. Throw open the question of regulation of funds. Their funds, other funds. Make some changes that suit them.’

  ‘Roll over, you mean?’ said Rose.

  ‘No. We have to stand firm as well. It’s not one way. Whatever else it is, it can’t be that. It’s give and take.’

  ‘What if he refuses to get involved?’ said Abrahams.

  ‘I don’t know. Ask again? And again? I said it’ll take more than one big politician. This isn’t all our fault, Mr Abrahams. I’m not saying it is, and we have to remember that.’ Ehrenreich looked back at the president.

  ‘You know what my fear is? That it will take some kind of massive catastrophe, some kind of horrible and bloody confrontation, before we get enough big politicians to realize what has to be done. Historically that’s how it’s always been. The tragedy of our species is that we can react to a catastrophe that we’ve actually experienced and yet we seem consistently unable to react ahead of time when it’s obvious we’re heading towards a new one. Somehow we can never really believe it’s going to happen.’ Ehrenreich paused. ‘If we do start on that road towards a new way of doing things, no one will know what the end will look like. It’s a transitional process. We’ll have to live with uncertainty for a good long while. Not just our generation, but generations after us. It doesn’t happen all at once. You’re changing the governance of the world. We’ve had presidents who have tried to do that before. Woodrow Wilson tried and failed. FDR arguably succeeded because of the unique moment of power he enjoyed, which gives us the system we have to change today. George W Bush, you could argue, was the last one who tried, even on a relatively limited scale, and he failed miserably because he completely misunderstood how much our military power could really be expected to achieve. But the change needs to happen. With every year that goes by it needs to happen more. Someone’s got to start. We’ve got to get them in the tent. We’ve got to have them in the tent pissing out. But that does mean, and we have to accept, the tent’s going to look different after a while.’

  ‘Wet,’ said Abrahams. ‘And smelly.’

  Ehrenreich smiled. ‘Maybe. So we have to live with a wet, smelly tent for a while. At least we’ve still got a tent. That’s the road we have to take. I’m not pretending I can see where it goes. I can see the start but I can’t see the end. That’s a difficult thing. But then I look at the alternative, the road we’re on, and I can see the end. And you know what?’ Joel Ehrenreich took off his glasses and gazed at the president with his myopic eyes. ‘I may not have the best eyesight in the world, but I can tell a dead end when I see one.’

  ‘That’s well put,’ said the president.

  Ehrenreich put his glasses back on. ‘You can use it if you like. Be my guest. Keep taking us down that road, Mr President, take us down that road until we slam into the dead end, and I fear for my children. Not my grandchildren, sir. My children.’

  55

  JOEL EHRENREICH HAD been shown out. Only the president and Marion remained in the Oval Office.

  ‘He’s big on the history stuff, your professor.’

  Marion nodded.

  ‘That kind of talk can sound a little delusional.’

  Marion smiled. ‘On the other hand, it can be right. Once in every five hundred years.’

  ‘You think it is?’

  ‘Broadly. Not every word, not every implication, but a lot of it. The gist of it.’

  ‘And that bit about making a start and seeing where it goes?’

  ‘After two years on the Security Council, Mr President, I’m with Joel a hundred per cent on that.’

  Knowles was silent for a moment. ‘Marion, last time we met you told me you were thinking of resigning.’

  Marion nodded. Until she got to La Guardia that afternoon and discovered that Joel Ehrenreich was with her on the plane to the White House, she had thought the president had asked her down to fire her.

  ‘I want to tell you about something that’s happening right now but I can’t do that unless I know you’re not resigning. Not yet anyway. I need you to stick around a little longer. Are you prepared to do that?’

  Marion frowned.

  ‘I need to know you’re going to do that, Marion.’

  The president was almost imploring her. She nodded. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Thank you. I want to tell you something.’

  Marion listened as Knowles told her about the events of the past two days and the clash that was coming as the Chinese and American strike groups converged across the Indian Ocean.

  ‘We would have about forty-four hours now until they get to Lamu Bay,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Call it forty hours. The navy boys can’t be sure exactly how quick they’ll get there.’

  Marion was silent, trying to take it all in.

  ‘What do you think Professor Ehrenreich would say if he knew about it? You think this is the war he was talking about?’

  ‘It could be,’ said Marion. ‘One of the battles, at least. I think he’d say if it wasn’t this it would soon be something else.’

  ‘He has a damn pessimistic outlook, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Actually, he can be quite a humorous guy. He does quite a good Eddie Murphy impression.’

  ‘You’re kidding me.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  The president shook his head, laughing. Then he was serious again. Ehrenreich had talked about an awful confrontation, a massive catastrophe that would have to happen before things changed. ‘What do you think he would say if I told him what I just told you?’

  ‘I think Joel would say now’s the time. Now’s the time to do something different.’

  ‘Now? With everything that’s happening?’

  ‘Extraordinary events make for extraordinary opportunities. He’d say something like that.’

  The president’s eyes narrowed slightly.

  ‘But as you’ve seen, Joel takes a long, historic view of things. If I can be frank, sir. If I can be completely frank …’

  ‘He doesn’t think I’m the guy to grab on to the coat-tails. That’s what you’re about to say, isn’t it?’

  Marion nodded. ‘He’s never been one of your fans. I think Joel would say you’re not big enough to
do it.’

  Knowles took that on the chin. ‘General Hale and the Joint Chiefs have developed four plans,’ he said. He outlined them.

  ‘What happens afterwards?’ asked Marion.

  ‘The military boys have got plans for that as well. They’re anticipating an escalation. They’re briefing me as soon as I’m finished with you.’

  ‘What if we lose this engagement? The plans all seem to envisage us winning.’

  ‘We will. On a military level, we will.’

  ‘Then we create an enemy that’s going to come back for more.’

  ‘You don’t think they’ll learn a lesson?’

  ‘No, sir. They’ll be back for more. And in the meantime, whatever happens militarily, we’re going to have the biggest economic war we’ve ever seen.’

  ‘So which of those four plans would you choose?’

  Marion thought for a moment. Then she looked back at the president. ‘None.’

  56

  THE MEETING WITH the Joint Chiefs took hours. The president saw plans for the defense of Taiwan, the abandonment of Taiwan, the defense of Japan, response to Russian aggression against China on its northern border, Indian aggression against China on its southern border, Chinese aggression against India and Russia on both borders, attacks on US facilities in east Asia, submarine-launched attacks on the US west coast, a crackdown by the Chinese regime and collapse of the Chinese regime. But none of these was likely to take place in isolation. The more plans he saw, the more Tom Knowles realized that only one thing was certain: when shots were fired, the first casualties would be the very plans he had just seen.

  In Sudan and off Lamu Bay, the standoff continued. The situation was exactly as it had been that morning, except the strike groups were now ten hours closer to each other.

  He went up to the residence floor and took some time out in his study. As far as he was concerned, each of the military plans was as bad as the next. He didn’t want to get there. He thought over the discussion with Joel Ehrenreich. He didn’t know quite what to make of what the professor had to say. It was appealing to think you could change everything with good will and a couple of smart decisions. But the world didn’t work like that.

  And yet Ehrenreich’s logic was obvious. Blindingly simple, which was what made it so hard to dismiss. And maybe extraordinary moments do create the opportunity to do extraordinary things. Not to change the world, perhaps, but to nudge it in a different direction.

  But was he the man to do it? And more importantly, was Zhang? What if neither of them were the men to catch the horseman’s coat-tails, as Ehrenreich had put it? Maybe they were going to be merely two more that the horse left trampled in the road – together with all the men and women whose lives might be lost because of their miscalculation.

  At about nine o’clock he called down and asked Roberta Devlin to get everyone into the Oval Office. No military men. Just his closest advisors. And Marion Ellman. He had asked her to stay after Joel Ehrenreich was flown home.

  No one had gone far. By nine-ten, everyone was there.

  ‘I know we’re all tired,’ he said. ‘Let me explain where I’m at.’ He frowned for a moment, gathering his thoughts. ‘We’re in a multi-front confrontation with China. The truth is, I don’t know why. Couple of months back, everything seemed fine. Now it looks like we’ve got a financial crisis, we’re starting up a trade war and we’ve got a full-blown military confrontation going on. And every time I try to get some kind of a compromise and try to find a way out, it just gets escalated. And within the next thirty-six hours, when those ships get together, it’s either going to get very, very escalated or something else is going to have to happen first. And the hell of it is, apart from us backing away and leaving our guys in Sudan – which just isn’t acceptable – I don’t know what that something else is. I can’t see it.’

  He paused again. Everyone in the room continued to watch him.

  ‘Now, as most of you know, I had a meeting today with someone who told me he thought war with China some time in the not too distant future was inevitable unless we start to do business in a radically different way. By the way, he didn’t know about what’s happening out there in the Indian Ocean, so it was kind of eerie to hear him say that. His view is that we share certain global problems but we deal with them through the prism of national interests, and that means by definition we can’t solve them. And eventually, when nations can’t solve their problems, they fight. That’s why he said at some stage we or our proxies are going to have a war – unless we find a way of dealing with these problems through a global prism. It sounds logical but it also sounds theoretical and I don’t know how you do what he’s talking about. I don’t think he does either. Marion, is that a fair summary of what he said?’

  Ellman nodded. Oakley gazed at her. Gary Rose had told the defense secretary about the meeting with Ehrenreich. The defense secretary thought it had about as much relevance to the crisis they faced as a seminar on quantum physics.

  ‘So I don’t know what to do. I do know that I don’t want to fight a pitched battle with a hundred-odd ships out there on the Indian Ocean. I’ll do it if I have to, I’m not saying I won’t. It’s my role as commander in chief to make that call and I’ll make it if I judge it’s in the best interests of this country. And if I thought it would put an end to this, I’d certainly do it. But I don’t see how it does put an end to it. It seems to start a whole bunch of other things, and to be honest, I’m damn scared those other things will get out of hand and anything can happen. On the other hand, if I don’t do it, I don’t see how that puts an end to it either, and it just raises the prospect of a whole bunch of other things that might happen.’ He paused. ‘In all honesty I don’t see the way out. And that makes me think, maybe we are in this historic confrontation between two powers, and maybe there is no choice and it’s going to end up in a fight. But that’s a damn depressing thing if you can see the fight coming and you can’t do anything to stop it. It puts us back into the way World War One started. It means we haven’t learned a thing in all the years and all the wars that have happened since then. And I know if something like this starts it’s going to be a long fight and a hard one and I don’t know that anyone’s going to win, but I do know we’re all going to suffer. Economically, militarily, in every damn way.’ He shook his head, then threw up his hands. ‘So that’s where I am. I’ll fight them there on Tuesday if I have to, but I don’t want to do it. I don’t know if history would look on that as a good judgment or a bad one. So that’s it. Now I want to know what you all think.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Mr President,’ said Oakley, ‘I think you can get completely lost in trying to figure out where things will go over time and what history’s going to say when what you’ve got to do is deal with a real, live situation in front of you. We need to deal with that first and let the historians write their books later. There’s a military situation right now and we have to resolve it. That’s the first thing. And if you do want to consider some new way of doing business with China, you have to do it from a position of strength. So in resolving this military situation it’s all the more important to do it strongly, decisively, to win it clean, so they know who’s boss. Let’s win the battle, then start talking about the war.’

  ‘We might lose the war,’ said Abrahams.

  ‘We don’t have a war yet, all we have is a battle. Do the battle right and we may not have a war.’

  ‘Mr Secretary,’ said Ellman, ‘I would argue that the war, if we’re going to talk in those terms, has already started. The conditions for it started years ago when China overtook us as the biggest emitter of carbon, when it became the biggest holder of our government debt. When its interests and our interests became inextricably entwined and we didn’t develop a new way of solving our problems.’

  ‘Ambassador, that’s your view and you’re entitled to it. Personally I haven’t noticed too many battles being fought since those things happened.’ Oakley turned to
the president. ‘Mr President, let’s deal with this first, show how strong we are, then you can start addressing these other things.’

  ‘Hold on, John,’ said the president. ‘Let’s back up. You said you hadn’t noticed too many battles being fought in the past few years, so why are they doing this now?’

  ‘That’s a good question. We’re in Uganda, that’s one thing.’

  ‘That’s a sideshow,’ said Gary Rose. ‘They chose to escalate there. If they didn’t want to escalate, they would have handed our boys back the minute the LRA took them across the border into Sudan.’

  ‘It depends on what really happened with Fidelian,’ said Roberta Devlin. ‘We pretty much assume the political leadership gave orders to the PIC to bring Fidelian down. They may not have originally planned to.’

  ‘But by the end they knew they had to take action.’

  ‘And the fact they didn’t may well have been opportunistic.’

  Marion agreed. In her view that was the most likely way it developed. But if it was a matter of opportunity, then it would only have been a matter of time. ‘If it hadn’t been Fidelian,’ she said, ‘sooner or later it would have been something else.’

  ‘Is this relevant?’ demanded Oakley impatiently. ‘It’s here. It’s now. We have to deal with it.’

  ‘So you would go an immediate repulse when their carriers arrive?’ said the president.