Dragon Fire

Camp David, Maryland, USA

‘I think we can get away with it,’ said Ennio Barber, spreadsheets and polling graphs laid out on the table in front of him. He was in the room alone with John Hastings, knowing he had less than ten minutes to get his argument over.

‘Go on,’ said the President.

‘Operation Brass Tacks, 1986/7, hardly got a mention on the networks. Yet Pakistan and India were within a hair’s breadth of going to war. 1990, India was within one button-push of ordering an airstrike on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Not one word in the press until it was well over. Kashmir, 1999, is an interesting one. A genuine fighting war between two nuclear powers, hand-to-hand combat, artillery and airstrikes, armour moved to other parts of the border. It was utterly eclipsed by the non-global-threatening conflict in Kosovo. Behind the scenes, President Clinton brokered a peace, yet the general public knew very little about it. October 1999, a military coup in Pakistan. The State Department didn’t even elevate it enough to set up a task force in the crisis management centre. George W. Bush, then campaigning for the Republican nomination, made a press-conference gaffe that the coup leader had been elected, and nobody gave a damn.’

‘But this time they’re shelling across the border right down to Rajasthan.’

‘I don’t think it matters, John,’ said Barber, reverting to the familiar first-name terms the President preferred for private meetings. ‘Pakistan crossed the LoC in 1999 and the American people didn’t give a damn.’

There was a knock on the door and Tom Bloodworth walked in: ‘Sorry to disturb you, Mr President, but India has just declared war on Pakistan.’