Battlefield Korea

Pure Shock

The ruling members of China hurried to the command bunker for yet another emergency meeting. They knew the Americans would most likely launch a pre-emptive attack, but what they could not anticipate was Pak Lee being dumb enough to launch his nuclear missiles at the Americans and South Koreans. They had warned him to keep the war conventional-a conventional war could have ground on for weeks (if not months) and with China and Russia’s assistance, it would have led to a satisfactory outcome.

Once two nuclear missiles detonated over South Korea, the Chinese immediately knew the Americans would respond with an overwhelming nuclear response. The members of the CMC had just started the discussion of how to handle the situation when a report came in that the DPRK had launched the ten DongFeng missiles they had given them the year before and the missiles were on trajectories that would take them to the US mainland. Legitimate panic set in.

President Xi slammed his fist on the table and let out a long stream of obscenities that was so angry and vulgar that several men in the room actually blushed. “That was a terrible idea to give them those missiles!” he finally yelled, when he had calmed down enough to speak in non-curse words. “The fools have just doomed us all! The Americans will know we gave them advanced missiles, and if one of them destroys an American city, they will take their retribution on us!” He aimed most of his shouting at the generals who had advocated to give the Koreans the missiles.

General Xu, the commander of the Chinese Air Force, calmly declared, “We have to get our defense ready for an American attack. If one of those missiles does hit an American city, the U.S. will either go after our nuclear missile capability, or they will look to hit one of our cities in retaliation. We must alert our nuclear forces immediately.”

Everyone in the room looked at the President for direction.

General Kuang, the Defense Minister, spoke up before anyone else could respond to General Xu. “No,” he asserted. “We need to keep our alert level where it is. We need to assure the Americans that China is not a part of the Korean’s attack. That we have not coordinated with them or encouraged them to use these terrible weapons. We need the Americans to understand that we had no part in this or they will retaliate against us with even greater furor.”

The President sighed loudly and rubbed his temples. “This is not how things were supposed to happen,” he thought. “The Koreans were supposed to bog down American, South Korean, and Japanese Forces so we could carry out our annexation of Formosa.”

President Xi finally looked up at his military leaders. “Here is what’s going to happen. We are going to inform the Americans that we are not coordinating a nuclear strike with the Koreans. We have no intentions of using nuclear weapons against America or anyone else, just as Russia has insisted with their ongoing war with NATO. Second, if, one of those ICBMs does hit the US and an American city is wiped out, we will not respond to an American counterstrike unless it is a disproportionate response. If they lose one city and they choose to hit one of ours, we will let it stand and not retaliate. We can use it as a propaganda tool, but we will not use that as the pretext for a nuclear war, one we would undoubtedly lose.”

“The Americans still have ballistic missile submarines and enough nuclear missiles to wipe our country out. We can only win a war against America if we keep it conventional. If it goes nuclear, then no one wins, and all of this will have been for nothing. This drastically hurts us, but it does not derail our current plans. Does everyone understand?” he said looking at his military leaders with a gaze that seemed to reach through their very souls.

The men in the room just nodded.