Battlefield Pacific

Overwhelmed

A steward brought in a fresh pot of coffee to the President’s war council, which had been hard at work in the Situation Room through most of the night. They had been sifting through the latest intelligence summary from the Bangkok Embassy on this secretive meeting that had been held in Xi’an. From what they had gathered, it wasn’t looking good for the Allies. Tom McMillan, the National Security Advisor, had spent an hour on the phone with the Bangkok station chief, going over what had transpired during Thai Prime Minister Nopparith’s secret meeting in China.

The Thais were very concerned about what had been transpiring in Southeast Asia. One by one, the People’s Liberation Army had acquired their neighbors, and they knew it was only a matter of time before the Chinese turned their attention on them. In addition to the enormous tourist value of Thailand, they also had rich, fertile farmland and a strong manufacturing base — all economic motivations for these other nations to try and control the country. When the Chinese government had requested the PM’s presence in Xi’an, Thai officials had reached out to the US embassy and asked for help. The station chief had suggested employing a very sophisticated and highly undetectable listening device, to be placed on the PM during the meeting so the information could be relayed back to the Allies.

As Tom McMillan skimmed through the transcript, he began to feel like a knot was forming in his stomach. Things were much worse than he had anticipated. If the new alliance were to be formed, he wasn’t sure how the Allies could ever win the war. “The boss is going to go through the roof when he learns about this,” he thought.

Admiral Peter Meyers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had been trying to wait patiently for McMillan to say something, but he was getting a little impatient. “So, Tom, what are your thoughts on this ‘secret’ meeting?” he asked. He poured himself another cup of coffee, knowing that it was going to be a late night.

“It’s not good,” McMillan replied bluntly. “If these plans really do come to fruition, then this war is going to drag on for a lot longer than we initially thought… I mean, we just averted a disaster in Korea, and we finally solidified the front lines in Europe, but there’s only so much we can do with the resources we have.”

Admiral Meyers took a swig of his coffee to give him a second to calculate his response. “The boss isn’t going to like this. We’re going to need to go ahead and expand the military a lot more than we already have. Whether we like it or not, the war is spreading. Not only that, but we’re also tearing through our war stocks of equipment and our reserve forces faster than we can replace them.”

McMillan sighed. “The President isn’t going to want to hear that, Peter,” he said in frustration. “He’s going to tell you that you asked for a five-million-man army and he’s given you that. If you try to go back now and ask for more troops, he’s going to take a lot of heat in the press and with Congress.”

“That may be so, but it doesn’t change the reality on the ground,” Meyers asserted. He held up the transcript. “If even half of this is true, we’re toast. How in the heck are we supposed to defeat China, Indonesia, and India if they mobilize their populations and declare total, all-out war on us? Add the Iranians to the picture, and now we have the Middle East to consider. We haven’t even talked about our current forces still operating in Afghanistan — those poor guys have been almost completely neglected since the start of the war. We need to get our forces out of Afghanistan now, before they become trapped there.”

Before they could continue their conversation, Jim Castle, the Secretary of Defense, walked into the room with a couple of his aides. Judging by the scowl on his face, he wasn’t happy. Jim was probably the most dominant person in the President’s cabinet. Since the outbreak of the war, his prominence in the White House and media had only increased, and so had his influence with the President.

Holding his own copy of the transcript, he slapped it down on the table and bellowed, “This better be fiction I’m reading!” He fixed each of them with a steely gaze, waiting for them to explain the transcript.

McMillan held up a hand in protest. “Perhaps you should sit down, Mr. Secretary. This is the unvarnished intelligence we just obtained from the Thailand station chief. We’re still sifting through it ourselves, and our staffs are still working through the implications of this.”

Secretary Castle looked past McMillan to Jedediah “JP” Perth, the Director of the CIA, who had been sitting against the back wall of the room, talking quietly with one of his analysts. “Is this the big news out of China you mentioned was headed our way a couple of days ago?” Castle demanded.

JP just nodded. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t be quite this bad. We’re pinging all our sources in the affected countries, trying to determine if this is really happening, or if these nations were just agreeing to this out of fear of military retaliation if they said no. I’m hoping for the latter, because if that’s the case, then we may be able to work around this development and turn it to our advantage,” he offered.

Sighing deeply as he took his seat, Castle replied, “We need to all get on the same page with this when the President arrives. He’s going to want answers, not more questions.”

The group sat there silently for a few minutes, thinking about that. This Xi’an accord was not something they had anticipated. The casualties from the war and the loss of equipment were far beyond what the country had experienced for many generations, hitting the country like a punch to the gut. During this last major battle in Korea, nearly sixteen thousand Americans had been killed in only two weeks of combat. The viciousness of the battles was horrific. In this GoPro generation of soldiers, raw combat footage was constantly being uploaded to social media, despite the attempts by the defense department to keep soldiers from doing it. Those videos were having a terrible impact on the psyche of the country.

A couple of minutes later, President Patrick Gates and his Chief of Staff, Retired Army General Liam Greeson, walked into the room. Everyone stood, silently waiting for the President to signal for them to take a seat. Gates stood at the head of the table for a second, surveying the faces of his war council. It was pretty obvious that no one was feeling especially optimistic.

“Take a seat, everyone. It looks like we’re going to be here for a while, so let’s get this going. What are we looking at, JP?” he asked.

JP put his two index fingers together, forming what looked like a steeple. “We have a new and dangerous development, Mr. President. Roughly a week ago, the Chinese government extended an invitation to the leaders of a number of Asian and other adversarial nations for a secret meeting. The Thai PM and senior military leaders knew something was up, and they reached out to our station chief in Bangkok. The PM agreed to wear a new type of undetectable listening device that we’ve developed to the meeting. When the PM returned from the meeting, he summoned our station chief and proceeded to tell him exactly what transpired.”

The President saw the various transcripts of the conversation in front of everyone. He hadn’t had a chance to look at a copy yet. He grabbed one and started thumbing through it.

“OK, so what are we looking at?” he pressed.

“President Xi and Petrov are proposing a new global alliance — an economic and military alliance — with the sole intention of defeating the West and removing the United States and Europe as the leaders of the ‘free world.’ President Xi has masterfully laid out a case for why the US should be removed from the global stage by any and all means necessary, and they’re inviting a host of nations to join them in retooling their economies for total war and the complete destruction of Europe and America,” the CIA Director explained.

Chief of Staff Greeson leaned forward and asked the obvious question. “How is this going to affect the current war operations?”

McMillan chimed in, “If these nations do move forward with joining Russia and China, then in the short run, it wouldn’t affect us much. In the long run, it would be devastating, unless we were able to end the war quickly. Look at it from this perspective, Mr. President. Right now, the Chinese have nearly 1.6 billion people. They’re in the process of mobilizing their entire population for war. It’ll take time to retool their economy and produce the needed additional aircraft, ship, and tanks — not to mention train their soldiers. In the meantime, they have to fight with what they have, and right now they’re losing troops and equipment at an astonishing rate. However, in another year, that equation will shift dramatically in their favor.”

He cleared his throat and then continued, “If you add India to that mix, you have a country of 1.3 billion people with an incredibly large manufacturing base. They also have an enormously large army, and when combined with the Chinese and the Russian—”

The President cut him off to interject, “—I understand the numbers are bad. Isn’t our technological advantage enough to counter them?”

Admiral Meyers reached out and placed his hand on McMillan's arm to let him know he’d handle this question. “Mr. President, during World War II, the German Tiger and Panther tanks were unrivaled on the battlefield. Even against the Russian T34s and KV tanks, they were far superior in their fire control system, weapon power, and accuracy. They were devastating to the Russian and Allied tanks that faced them. It was said that during the Allied advance toward Germany, the Germans were averaging a ten-to-one kill ratio, and in the east, sometimes as high as twelve-to-one. The problem for the Germans was that there was always an 11th, 12th, or 13th tank that kept coming at them. There would be times where a group of five or six Panther tanks would destroy fifty-plus T34s, but ultimately they would get overwhelmed by the sheer numbers the Russians were able to throw at them.”

Meyers paused for a second before continuing. “My point, Mr. President, is that technology does not provide us such a huge advantage as one might think. At some point, the volume being thrown at us will eventually overwhelm and defeat us,” he concluded.

The President snorted incredulously. “So, in this scenario, you’re saying we’re the Germans of 1941 and we’re about to be overwhelmed by the Allied and Russian hordes in another year?”

There was an uncomfortable pause after that question. Gates took the silence as confirmation, and his face fell.

“OK, gentlemen,” the President began, “if this is the new reality we have to work with, then I need solutions. How are we going to counter this new development, and what is the plan to defeat them before they’re able to overwhelm us?”

Jim Castle decided that he had sat on the sidelines of this conversation long enough at this point, and jumped in. “We ramp up production of everything, and we simply out produce them, and outfight them on the battlefield. Let’s look at Korea, for example. The Chinese just threw a massive counterattack against us that lasted for nearly four straight weeks. In that time, they sent nearly 300,000 soldiers against us, the Japanese and the ROK, and they ultimately lost that battle. They didn’t remove us from North Korea, and they didn’t defeat us on the battlefield. They suffered nearly 82,000 casualties and lost over a thousand tanks and hundreds of aircraft in a monthlong battle.”

“They hurt us, but they did not defeat us, Mr. President,” Castle continued, tapping the table for emphasis. “The equipment and aircraft they lost in this battle is going to take them a long time to replace, and that’s going to hurt them in the short run. What we have to do now is keep the pressure on them. We have to keep going after critical functions of their economy with our strategic bombers and continue to deprive them of the natural resources and minerals they need to keep their economy running,” Jim said.

Gates thought Admiral Meyers looked like he was holding something back. “What’s on your mind, Peter?”

A bit surprised at being called out, Admiral Meyers figured this would be about as good a time as any to make his pitch for the second round of military drafts. “Sir, I think we need to look at another draft. If this intelligence is correct,” he said, holding up the report from China, “then we’re going to need a lot more soldiers. We also have to keep in mind that we can’t just snap our fingers and have a million new soldiers just appear. It takes a lot of time to train a soldier to fight the kinds of wars we’re now fighting. If India, Indonesia, and Iran do fully join in this war, then the current size of our military isn’t going to be enough. Plus, I’m very concerned with the quality of the soldiers we’re currently sending to Europe and Asia. We’re rushing them through basic and advanced training and sending them straight to the front.”

Holding a hand up so as to not be interrupted, Meyers continued, “I know that we had to do this in order to stabilize the lines. Going forward, though, I would like to return to our standard training program and incorporate the type of fighting our soldiers are most likely to encounter so we can better prepare them. My concern right now is that we’re spread so thin in Europe and Asia that we’re going to be stalemated because we can’t focus on one theater. We’re still at least two years away from being able to fight and sustain a two-front war.”

The others in the room pondered that statement for a minute before anyone responded.

Gates let out a deep breath, more in frustration than anything else. “Lord, help guide me and lead our great nation out of these troubled waters we now find ourselves in,” he silently prayed.

“Peter, you mentioned a second draft. We just completed the last draft of five million men and women. Most of them are still waiting to start basic training. How many additional men and women are you suggesting we draft?”

All eyes turned toward the admiral to see what he’d say next. Jim Castle smirked a little at his friend, knowing he had just walked into a minefield.

Admiral Meyers took a deep breath. “We need additional computer programmers and cyber-warfare experts. Drone operators and other technical fields. We also need more combat arms soldiers. Because of the training length of some of these professions, I believe we need to move forward with drafting an additional six million.” A collective gasp was let out.

The President realized that his mouth had been hanging open in shock and quickly snapped his jaw back in place. “Admiral, the press and Congress have been eating me alive over the last draft. Have you seen what they’ve been saying about the casualties we sustained during this last battle in Korea? They’re calling it the ‘Gates Massacre’ because I hadn’t ordered enough soldiers to Korea. If I ask for another draft of six million more young people, they’re going to try and impeach me. I’m not even sure I could get Congress to authorize an increase,” the President said incredulously.

“If I may, Mr. President,” the SecDef said, finally coming to the aid of Admiral Meyers, “it takes time to train and equip an army. There’s going to be a bit of a lull in the fighting for a few months. This is a good time to increase the size of the military again and ensure we have the soldiers we need to win this time next year. If you want, I’ll convey that to Congress, and I’ll be your pit bull in the public eye to get this done.”

Gates looked back and forth between Castle and Meyers for a few moments, calculating out what other options he might have. “OK. If you can sell it to Congress, I’ll go along,” he finally conceded.