Dragon Fire

Camp David, Maryland, USA

‘You’ve got to pick up the phone and talk to the Prime Minister, John,’ said Joan Holden, the Secretary of State. ‘Conflict between India and China is a whole different ball game than between India and Pakistan.’

‘If I talk to Dixit, I have to talk to Tao.’

‘Then talk to them both. China has violated the sovereignty of Bhutan just in order to capture a Buddhist monk. It’s a ludicrous way of conducting foreign policy. Indian and Chinese warplanes are having dogfights over Bhutan this morning. Nepal has already asked for international intervention. A Chinese squadron has crossed the border into Arunachal Pradesh and they’ve buzzed the border guards in Sikkim. One Indian pilot chased a Chinese plane almost to Lhasa. The only government with any authority to intervene is the United States of America.’

‘On the side of India, or as a neutral party?’

‘Neutral,’ said Holden.

‘One minute,’ said Ennio Barber, a map of the Indian subcontinent spread out on his lap. On the coffee table by his side were the latest opinion-poll ratings on the Chinese crackdown in Tibet. ‘The American people are already outraged after the massacre in Lhasa. The anti-China lobby in Congress is calling for sanctions, carrier groups and withdrawal of the Ambassador. The works. I can’t see the President getting on the phone to Tao and Dixit saying, “America is friends of both countries.”’

‘But it’s true,’ said Holden.

‘Maybe. But he cannot call for India to stop its military action against China. Firstly, India is a democracy. Secondly, if Chinese aircraft attacked Bhutan, India has a treaty obligation to protect.’

‘What exactly is that obligation?’ said the President.

The Defense Secretary, Alvin Jebb, spoke for the first time in the late evening emergency meeting. ‘China claims suzerainty over Bhutan, which basically means it claims to have control over it, which the international community does not recognize. To give you a parallel, we recognize Chinese suzerainty over Tibet, but not over Bhutan. Because they’re terrified of China, the Bhutanese signed two agreements with the British, when they ran India — the Treaty of Sinchula in 1865 and the Treaty of Punakha in 1910. After Indian independence, the provisions of the two treaties were formally incorporated in a new agreement with India, known as the Treaty of Darjeeling, signed in 1949. The upshot is that Bhutan runs its internal affairs, while India is responsible for defence and foreign policy. India has a similar arrangement with Nepal, but Nepal is less afraid of China and more protective of its own sovereignty.’

‘Alvin, you’re right,’ said Joan Holden. ‘But your emphasis is wrong. India is not obliged to go to war on behalf of Bhutan. It’s got the option.’

‘What’s happened to Lundrup Togden?’ said Hastings.

‘We presume he’s dead, together with a man called Major Choedrak who devised the whole operation,’ said Jebb. ‘After the helicopter attacked with a machine gun, the pilot gave the coordinates for an airstrike. Some people managed to escape and headed to the town of Lhedam about fifteen miles south of the border. A Bhutanese helicopter came in from a place called Jakar Dzong, which is the local administrative capital, and picked some of them up.’

‘Is Togden alive?’ said Hastings.

‘We don’t know. But the Chinese MiGs came back. They blasted the Bhutanese helicopter out of the sky. Everyone on board was killed.’

‘After all that, and they get killed as they cross the finishing line.’ Hastings was clearly upset.

‘The Chinese went on to bomb the bridge across the river which heads out of the town,’ continued Jebb. ‘They strafed the roads, killing a number of people, who are mostly Bhutanese nationals of Tibetan origin. It was between these sorties that Bhutan asked for India’s help. Indian planes got to Jakar just as the Chinese were heading back and that’s when the dogfights started.’

‘And they’re still going on?’

‘Seems so, Mr President.’

‘All right. Let’s put that on hold for a moment. What’s happening in Kashmir?’

‘The Indian assault is ongoing,’ said Jebb. ‘They’ve set up a buffer zone along the most sensitive part of the LoC. Casualties on both sides are heavy. I understand that General Khan has spoken to Hari Dixit on the Prime Ministers’ hotline, but we don’t know how it went or whether there’ll be a ceasefire.’

‘We can’t be seen to be sympathizing with China in any way, Mr President,’ pressed Barber. ‘This is democratic values against dictatorship.’

‘We’re not sympathizing with anybody, Ennio,’ Hastings replied impatiently. ‘Frankly, I don’t think we should say a damn thing. We’ve got two border skirmishes in faraway places. Most people know Tibet through the movies and Nepal because of Mount Everest. By the time I get round to explaining what Bhutan is, the whole thing might be fixed.’

The President’s Private Secretary rang through on the intercom. ‘The National Security Advisor asks if he could have a quick word. He knows you’re in a meeting and wants to join it.’

Bloodworth came in a sports shirt and shorts and looked as if he had been trying to get an early night. He pulled out a batch of photographs. ‘These are our own images and show the build-up of Indian armour and artillery along the border with Pakistan. I’ve just spoken to Chandra Reddy, their Foreign Intelligence chief. He warns us to back off any condemnation of India’s military actions. He is convinced that China has flown into Pakistan either a proven tactical nuclear warhead or their version of the neutron bomb, and possibly the DF-21 missile. If that’s true, Pakistan now has a credible strategy to deter an Indian armoured advance into its territory.’

‘How quickly could he use them?’ said Hastings.

‘If China has handed them over ready-to-use, as it were, they would be ready now. These pictures are about twenty-four hours old.’

‘I don’t buy it,’ said Holden. ‘Why would they break every rule in the book? Peddling nuclear technology. How far does the DF-21 go?’

‘Twelve hundred miles,’ said Bloodworth.

‘Then they’re breaking the Missile Technology Control Regime as well. I can’t see why they would do it.’

‘Why do you say that, Joan?’ said Hastings.

‘China craves stability. She has enormous internal problems of modernization and unemployment. She needs our technology and trade to develop. Why should she risk all that to support a basket-case like Pakistan?’

‘Alvin. What’s your view?’ said Hastings.

‘The Chinese leadership enjoys believing that it could soon be a world power and it expects to play a leading role in Asia much sooner than that. For us in the West, there is nothing so destabilizing as the arrival of a new economic and military power on the international scene. China is in a state of transition, switching suddenly between confidence and insecurity. It is an adolescent, and adolescents are dangerous. It is suspicious of India and distrusts Russia and Japan.’

‘What does it think of us?’ said Barber, his eyes down studying the map.

‘Like many of our friends, allies and enemies in Asia, it sees America as a power in decline, drifting towards an obsession with domestic issues, no longer interested in being the world’s policeman. Your policies since coming to office, Mr President, have underlined that view. Your predecessors were thought to be overly strong on human rights and democracy, but short on vision and realpolitik. At least with you, they think they know where they stand.’

‘But I’m with Joan,’ said Hastings. ‘Why now? Why take the risk?’

‘Unelected national leaders rarely act rationally,’ said Bloodworth. ‘Tao sees a window. As Alvin said, he could be taking advantage of our more inward-looking policies. You might not be here three years from now, and a new President could be much tougher and more involved with the China issue. Nor is Hari Dixit a warrior Prime Minister. Hamid Khan is, despite his vision for development. He needs China to balance the power of the Islamic fundamentalists. The United States has proved to be an unreliable ally, so he is willing to ditch us completely and use China to win Kashmir and prove his Islamic and national credentials.’

‘In order to control the fundamentalists?’

‘Correct.’

‘And China?’ said Hastings.

‘China realizes that India’s democratic status is beginning to attract American interest as a counterbalance to its own relationship with us,’ said Jebb. ‘It is also worried that in the long term India’s economic reforms promise a much more successful economy because they are based on an established and impartial judicial and financial system.’

‘So India’s threat to China is not so much military as economic and diplomatic?’

‘Correct,’ said Jebb. ‘It is very difficult to see India and China confront each other seriously through conventional means. India is, and will remain for some time, the much weaker power. But it could become the moral political beacon for Asia, in a similar role to that played by Japan — a functioning democracy and the rule of law underwritten by the United States and the European Union.’

‘For the US, though, China has the far larger interest?’ said Holden.

‘That’s right, at the moment. But China believes that the world needs it as a global player. It studies incremental shifts in the balance of power and is gradually becoming more assertive.’

‘What we should bear in mind is that Tao is doing nothing new in sending Pakistan a weapons package,’ said Bloodworth. ‘China is the main supplier to the military. It designed Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons programme. It broke the MTCR in 1988 with a three-billion-dollar sale to Saudi Arabia. It has gunned its citizens down in Beijing’s main city square, continued to ban political dissent and carries out ethnic repression in Tibet, Xinjiang and numerous other places. And Joan tells us our largest interest is with China and not India.’

‘Let me get this right,’ said Barber, folding up his map. ‘It seems that for years India has been kept preoccupied with Pakistan. If India was rid of this problem and sorted out its economy it would move from having a local-power role to a much bigger regional role and China doesn’t want this. So China fuels the Pakistan conflict and keeps India weak.’

‘That’s about it,’ said Jebb.

‘I still don’t buy it,’ said Holden.

‘All right. Let’s move on,’ said Hastings, ‘because I assume Tom wouldn’t be in this room with twenty-four-hour-old imagery unless he thought there was a problem.’

‘If India invades Pakistan, I don’t believe Pakistan’s first use of tactical nuclear weapons can be confined to the battlefield,’ said Bloodworth. ‘There are no safeguards to stop it escalating into a full-scale nuclear exchange.’

‘Then it’s up to China to stop them, isn’t it?’ said Hastings.