Trigger Point

by Matthew Glass

  ‘I’d even consider an aerial attack out of Diego Garcia. I know we’ve taken that off the table but maybe we should put it back on.’

  ‘John, that’s unbelievably aggressive,’ said Rose.

  ‘So is shooting the hell out of a bunch of guys who were only trying to rescue their buddies. So is sending two carrier strike groups across the Indian Ocean to attack a force carrying out a UN-sponsored mission. And by the way, what were they doing waiting in such close range? Two of them? We can have our bombers out of Diego Garcia over their ships in six hours. Six hours and it’s done. No one will even know about it.’

  ‘John, I don’t think we’re going to destroy a bunch of ships out there and no one’s going to find out.’

  ‘Whatever. We issue the ultimatum, they might turn them around. In that case, we don’t destroy them and they back down. That’s good enough.’

  ‘They’ll be back for more,’ said Ellman.

  ‘That’s your assessment, Ambassador. What’s the intelligence you base it on?’

  ‘Nothing we know suggests they’d be prepared to slink away and forget.’

  ‘Nothing we know suggests they won’t.’

  ‘Zhang is under some kind of internal pressure over this. He can’t just back down and pretend it never happened.’

  ‘Or so you think on the basis of a single conversation with one of their ambassadors, if I recall correctly. A conversation that may well have been staged precisely to lead you to that conclusion.’

  ‘Secretary, is there some reason you want to go to war with them?’

  ‘We need a fact-based discussion here, Ambassador. If you’ve got facts rather than conjecture to present I’d be keen to hear them.’

  ‘John, all of this is subjective,’ said Abrahams. ‘Let’s not pretend otherwise. Mr President, let’s step back and look at the options in broad terms. We can drive for a naval victory at Lamu Bay, whatever plan we use, and we can win it. Fine. Do we create an enemy that’s going to look for another pretext or do we put them back in their box? That’s a judgment and frankly I don’t think anyone in this room has the answer. If we choose to go that way, time will tell. Second, we can look for a non-military solution. We can try to negotiate, but so far that hasn’t worked. There’s still time to try that again. Or we can call their bluff, and if it turns out it isn’t a bluff we can back down then. Release their ships, try to work through some kind of deal over our men. Okay, that could take months and personally, in terms of your standing with the American people, you would take a terrible hit. More importantly, does that give them the sense they can do anything they want if they show a little military force? Do they progress to something else? Will we have to do something even more drastic next time to prove we won’t be pushed around?’

  ‘Ed,’ said Rose, ‘all you’re saying is what the president said at the start. Whichever way you look at it, there’s a risk this escalates. Whether we stand up and fight or back down, whichever way we do it, the risk is there.’

  ‘And I would say,’ said Devlin, ‘that the fact that we can’t get a negotiation going suggests we’re on the path to an escalation. This military situation is all around a pretext. If they didn’t want it, Dewy and Montez would have been returned to us at the very beginning. And that doesn’t even begin to deal with the economic issue.’

  ‘Let’s not forget that we’re the ones who created the naval standoff,’ said Ellman. ‘If I understand it, we did that, right?’

  ‘In response to their ambush.’

  ‘But that’s an escalation. Is it proportionate? Two destroyers against seventy-three men? Why didn’t we take one?’

  ‘Does it make a difference?’ demanded Oakley.

  ‘It may to them.’

  ‘Jesus Christ!’

  ‘Okay,’ said the president. ‘Stop. This isn’t helping right now. I’ve got to make a decision.’ He paused. ‘I think from what I’m hearing, on balance, is that I’m with John. We have to look at what’s in front of us. If they’re set on using this as an opportunity to prove something, that they can either beat us or they can stare us down, then the only thing we can realistically do is not allow them to prove whatever point they want to prove. And that means beating them.’

  ‘Beating the crap out of them,’ said Oakley. ‘Then they can go back to Beijing and figure out some other point to make.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said Ellman. ‘I think that’s the wrong conclusion.’

  Oakley snorted.

  The president looked at her. ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘Listen to us. We’re not looking more than an inch in front of our nose. We’re saying, they want to prove this point, we won’t let them. How do we know what point they want to prove? And by the way, what’s the point we want to make?’

  Oakley rolled his eyes. ‘I think we know what point we want to make.’

  ‘Then articulate it!’ Ellman looked at Oakley angrily. She was getting more than a little irritated with his air of superiority. Besides, she had spent the last two days thinking she had resigned and she still believed that she was going to, so her mindset was that she had nothing to lose. ‘Mr Secretary, I believe the way you put it was “we want to beat the crap out of them”. Personally, I’m not sure that’s quite a sufficiently well-developed analysis, but perhaps the president will think it’s okay when he stands up to explain it in front of Congress.’

  Roberta Devlin suppressed a smile.

  Ellman turned to the president. ‘Sir, we need to be thinking way broader here. What do they want? Not in terms of whether they want to blow up three ships or four ships, but what do they want from this whole situation they’ve created, the economic as well as the military, which I suspect very much they feel has got just as much out of control as we do?’

  ‘I suspect it’s turned out exactly like they planned,’ said Oakley.

  ‘Well, if I can use your own words, Mr Secretary, that’s your view and you’re entitled to it. We need to ask, what do they want out of this? What do we want? Where’s the overlap? Or if there isn’t any, where could we create an overlap if we’re both prepared to move a little?’

  ‘They’re not prepared to move,’ said Rose. ‘We know that.’

  ‘That’s what they say.’

  ‘They want to prove a point, and beating us, or even standing up to us and getting beaten, allows them to do that. The point they want to make is they’re not intimidated by us.’

  ‘That they have military power,’ added Abrahams, ‘to put alongside the economic power they’re already exerting.’

  ‘Probably,’ said Ellman. ‘If they could make those points, they’d love to.’

  ‘Well, great,’ said Oakley. ‘Isn’t that just a convoluted way of saying what I already said?’

  ‘No. Because the question is why? Why make these points about your power? Why now? And what are you going to do with them once you’ve made them?’ She paused. ‘Mr President, we know they want greater say in international institutions. We know they feel they were short changed after 2008. We know they want to be seen as a partner in world leadership.’

  ‘Then they need to learn to act like one,’ said Oakley.

  ‘Exactly. That’s what we want. We want them to act like a responsible leader in the world. A responsible leader that doesn’t destroy the financial markets of a friendly country just for the hell of it. That doesn’t imprison its servicemen. That works with us on climate change instead of rejecting every proposal because it isn’t enough. But to paraphrase Joel Ehrenreich, they’ll be looking at us and saying similar things about what we should be doing in relation to them. Now, somehow getting those things together, that’s our objective. To come out the other end of this process – and it’s a long process, it’s not one month or one year – as partners solving global issues from one perspective. So the question is, how can this situation help us get there? How do we take this crisis and use it? Not how do we use it to slap them down as hard as we can, but how do we use it to star
t turning them into a partner? How do we use the fact that they want to make some kind of a point about their power or about their lack of intimidation – whatever it is – to help us advance our agenda, to help start making them behave in the way we want them to?’

  ‘We beat the crap out of them,’ said Oakley, ‘so they’ll listen next time when we start talking.’

  ‘And that’s exactly the wrong attitude.’

  ‘And what we have exactly from you, Ambassador, is a whole bunch of fine-sounding theory, and back down here in the real world, meanwhile, we have two aircraft strike groups bearing down and a bunch of guys surrounded in Sudan, and if you think backing down is going to get those guys out then, I’m sorry, but that’s just not the world anyone else lives in. It’s sure as hell not the world President Zhang lives in.’

  ‘Secretary Oakley, don’t twist my words. I never said we should back down. They have to be accountable. They absolutely have to be accountable.’

  ‘Well, you don’t want to back down and you don’t want to hit them, so I’d like to hear what you do want to do.’

  ‘I want to give them a way out.’

  Oakley laughed.

  ‘If there’s going to be a way out of this, they can’t lose face. Zhang is facing pressure over this and he can’t lose face.’

  ‘To hell with his face.’

  ‘You can say that, but if we’re asking him to lose too much face, he just won’t do it. That’s the reality. He can’t do it.’

  ‘Can’t he? Zhang chose to start this thing and it’s about time he learned what that means. I say we make him lose so much of his goddamn face he won’t dare ever come back for more.’

  ‘And our economy?’

  ‘The here and now is the military issue. We make them lose so much face they don’t dare touch our economy either.’

  Ellman stared at him for a moment, then turned to Knowles. ‘Mr President, this is a historic moment. Whether it developed opportunistically or in some other way, it’s here and now. The United States is being challenged in a way it has never been challenged before, not even in the Cold War. The challenge in the Cold War was military. This is way bigger. Take away all the weapons, take away the guys in Sudan and those strike groups, and it’s still there. We respond to this as if it’s a military challenge, and we miss the point. We miss the opportunity.’

  The president frowned. There was something about the way Ellman had put that. Take away the military challenge, and the underlying challenge was still there. That was true. That was an important point, one that seemed to have been lost sight of in the rush to a military response.

  ‘I’m intrigued,’ said Ed Abrahams. ‘Ambassador, what’s your idea for letting them get a way out?’

  ‘It means taking a chance.’

  Oakley snorted. ‘Backing down, you mean.’

  ‘No, sir. Not backing down. I said it means taking a chance.’

  ‘We’re going to take a chance with them? That’s great. Let’s not worry about what they’ve already done. Let’s not worry about the eleven men they killed when we went in to get our boys back. Let’s give them a chance to screw us over again.’

  ‘John,’ said Rose, ‘you haven’t even heard what she’s got to say yet.’

  ‘We need to give them a way out of this,’ said Marion. ‘To paraphrase Mr Abrahams earlier today, we need to invite them into the tent and hope they piss out. I suggest that–’

  ‘Mr President,’ snapped Oakley. ‘Ambassador Ellman in her ivory tower can hope all she likes. I can tell you what’s really going to happen. If we invite them into the tent, they’re going to piss all over us.’

  The president ignored him. He looked at Ellman. ‘Tell me what you mean.’

  57

  PRESIDENT ZHANG SAT at the head of the table at the daily meeting of the Central Military Commission. On one side of him was Defense Minister Xu Changjiang and on the other side General Fan Keming. In theory, as chairman of the commission, Zhang was the most senior figure in the military chain of command.

  One of the two admirals on the commission was giving an outline of the battle plan for the Mao Zedong and Chou Enlai strike groups against the American forces. He expected forward elements of the Kennedy strike group to be in position to join battle off Lamu Bay in support of the Abraham Lincoln within two hours of the arrival of the Chinese ships. The objective of the plan was the recovery of the Kunming and Changchun. Should the two ships or any others be destroyed during the fighting, the objective would be continuation of the battle until a surrender of the American forces on terms providing compensation for the losses suffered by the Chinese forces.

  ‘And you believe our forces will be capable of bringing the American fleet to surrender.’

  The admiral glanced at Xu, then back at the president. ‘Yes, President Zhang.’

  From the looks that he could see around the table, Zhang doubted it. He doubted that any of the other twelve men shared the admiral’s faith, including the admiral himself. But standing up to the American fleet and inflicting at least some losses on them could be portrayed as a victory. He knew the way the Chinese press would be ordered to present it.

  He looked at Xu. A couple of years previously the defense minister had developed a twitch that made his left eye blink frequently. He was blinking now, more often than normal.

  ‘Thank you, Admiral,’ said Zhang.

  The admiral nodded.

  Fan gave an overview of other developments. He described the current deployments of the Russian, Japanese and Taiwanese navies and the deployment of land forces on the Indian and Russian borders. People’s Liberation Army troops had been dispatched to reinforce both sectors. After a Chinese victory, action by the United States could be anticipated in a number of sectors including punitive strikes on mainland army installations. The commission staff had drawn up plans for a series of pre-emptive strikes on US military facilities in the East Asia region to prevent this, as well as having a number of pre-selected targets in Hawaii and the west coast of the United States for immediate retaliation if US forces responded. Submarines would be in position to launch missile strikes at the naval bases in Pearl Harbor, San Diego, China Lake and Puget Sound.

  Zhang listened with a growing sense of unease. ‘When will you launch the pre-emptive strikes in our region?’ he asked.

  ‘As soon as battle commences between the ships,’ replied the general.

  ‘And the retaliatory strikes?’

  ‘If the Americans respond with any other action.’

  ‘Do you think the Americans will be able not to take action if we launch these pre-emptive strikes?’

  ‘They may retaliate,’ said Fan calmly. ‘But they should not. The strikes will be in our region. Their defensive intent will be clear.’

  ‘But if they did take action, we would retaliate on their west coast?’

  ‘Yes. But if we do not launch the pre-emptive strikes, we do not protect ourselves. We must launch them. If the Americans are wise, they will not retaliate. They will see that the pre-emptive strikes are defensive.’

  ‘The strikes will be forceful,’ said another general. ‘They will see that we will defend China with every means we have available.’

  Zhang glanced at Xu. The defense minister blinked.

  Zhang turned back to Fan. ‘What will the Americans do after we retaliate for their retaliation?’

  ‘After these strikes are launched, it will take them some days to put in place new deployments.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘That will be a new phase, if they wish to open it.’

  Zhang nodded. ‘General Fan, these pre-emptive strikes do not sound defensive.’

  ‘We are defending ourselves. The aggressive action was the hijacking of the two ships. Everything we do now is defensive.’

  ‘Maybe we should not do the pre-emptive strikes.’

  ‘Then we will be hit.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘We will be hit and the people
will see that we are hit,’ said Fan pointedly.

  Zhang was silent. He envisaged a terrible series of escalatory actions. But he was not in control of the situation. It was unclear to him to what extent Fan had engineered it. Before President Knowles had made his public demand that China force Sudan to release the two American airmen, he had told Fan that he wanted the airmen released. He had told the Sudanese president as well. The American president’s demand had made it easier for Fan to keep helping the Sudanese army hold them, if that was what he was doing. Zhang had not authorized that, much less had he authorized a Chinese-led ambush of an American rescue force to be planned, although it was clear from the military reports he had seen, and from what President Knowles had told him, that this is what had happened. By then, the Chou Enlai and Mao Zedong were under way towards the Kenyan coast. They must have been placed on station to be ready to intervene. He had not been consulted prior to their departure. From the beginning, therefore, the order that would have been required from him was not to let the carriers go, but to turn them around.

  All of this had changed the balance of power in the crisis. While it had been economic, he had held the levers. Once it became military, it was Fan who had the initiative.

  Zhang couldn’t be sure what would happen if he made the demand for the ships to turn around. He could not be sure it would be obeyed. If that happened, if he gave the order to turn the ships around and it was not obeyed, he would be facing a coup. He would have to finish Fan or he would be finished himself.

  Those ships would not be sailing without Xu’s agreement. Zhang knew that didn’t mean Xu had put his support definitively behind Fan, but it did mean he had put himself in a position to do that. If Zhang demanded that the ships turn around, Xu would have to decide. The question was whether this was the right moment to put the defense minister in a position where he would be forced to make that decision.

  Zhang was certain that Fan would not move against him if Xu’s support was not assured. To do that would run the risk of provoking a civil war with roughly equal military factions confronting each other on either side. He, Zhang, would be supported by the security forces, and Xu would have the leadership of the air force and key naval units. Fan would have the hardline wing of the army, which believed after 2014 that the military, as the guarantor of the state, should hold open political power. Fan would not want to see the Chinese air force, on Xu’s orders, bombing army barracks. On the other hand, if Fan believed that he had Xu behind him, or if he believed the defense minister had been abandoned by his supporters, he might move. The internal security forces alone would be no match for the army. The fight would be bloody, but the army would prevail.