Dragon Fire

The Situation Room, The White House, Washington, DC

‘Hamid Khan’s stuffing us around,’ said Hastings. This was the second meeting of the Principals’ Committee since the Pakistani strike. It had been timed to take in Khan’s broadcast and then decide on as long-term and substantive strategy as possible. Hastings had added the Commerce Secretary, Stuart Hollingworth, to the committee for this reason.

‘The Indians aren’t accepting it,’ said Joan Holden, when the broadcast ended. ‘Kashmir is the main sticking point.’

‘As always,’ said Tom Bloodworth. ‘At least the weather has cleared, so we have a good satellite view over most of the two countries. They’re still fighting in the Kashmir Valley, hand-to-hand in some places.’

‘Mr President,’ said Ennio Barber impatiently, grasping printouts from the latest network opinion polls, ‘if we dither any longer about backing India, we’re going to take months to recover.’ He unfolded a facsimile of the Monday’s first edition of the New York Times. ‘The Times pulled existing advertising to insert this on their op-ed page.’

The advertisement showed the picture of an atomic mushroom cloud superimposed on destroyed buildings and piles of bodies. The slogan read: ‘India and America are nuclear democracies. Pakistan and China are nuclear dictatorships. Which do you support?’

‘It was paid for by the Indian community in New York,’ said Barber. ‘The most successful economic ethnic community in the United States. They are paying for similar messages, television, radio and print across the country. Within twelve hours, about every American will be cheering for India just like it was a ball game.’

‘Joan?’ said Hastings.

‘If we give our full support to India, we may have to take action against Pakistan to halt a nuclear escalation. I have no problem with that. I do have a problem with the knock-on effect. We will alienate the Islamic countries, possibly leading to the destabilization of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We have been down that road before. It may be manageable. We will also alienate China, which has a defence agreement with Pakistan and all the baggage which goes with it. China’s declaration of war on India and its invasion in the east has been eclipsed, but is very dangerous. What we need, therefore, is a comprehensive ceasefire. Then we pursue permanent settlements on all issues through the UN.’

‘Stuart?’ said the President.

‘I am with Joan. Our trade with China is enormous, such that if it stopped buying our goods tomorrow between a million and two million people could lose their jobs. The comparison for India is barely a hundred thousand. In Seattle, for example, China keeps more than a hundred thousand people employed. Expand that out to families and you’re talking of half a million people. That is the personal and domestic implication. Contracts guaranteed to American firms would go to our European and Japanese competitors, those who don’t have to make the difficult decision.’

‘We have already intercepted a communication between Paris and the commercial section of its Embassy in Beijing telling them to exploit the situation,’ said Bloodworth, ‘to stay neutral and snap up the contracts from any foreign firm whose government sides against China.’

‘Exactly,’ said Hollingworth. ‘Then we have to look at China’s new membership of the World Trade Organization, freeing up a whole new area of trade, and the positive impact that has on the world economy. From the view of global business, it seems insane that one military dictator in a basket-case of a country can bring the world to the brink of nuclear war and economic chaos. There must be a better way.’

‘Alvin,’ said Hastings to the Defence Secretary. ‘Give me your view.’

‘I think we’re all with Joan and Stuart,’ said Jebb. ‘Entering into hostilities with China would be a completely different ball game, as we found out during the Dragon Strike campaign. They have tested nuclear missiles which can reach the continental United States, and like it or not, the nuclear option is out there on the table. They have been good allies in securing peace elsewhere around the world, particularly on the Korean peninsula. When India declared China as the primary threat to its security in 1998, the Chinese were remarkably measured and mature in their response. When we bombed their Belgrade Embassy in 1999, they cut off all contact with us. Everything, apart from the ongoing negotiations on North Korea. We must assume that everything will stop again if we back India now. For defence purposes, it would mean policing three areas of potential hostility, the Indian Ocean, the South China Sea and the Gulf, which we would have to keep an eye on because of the Islamic support Joan mentioned which would swing in favour of Pakistan. Our satellite surveillance and our intelligence gathering and analysis capability would be stretched. We would have to step up substantially our anti-terrorist preventative measures on the assumption that America and Americans would be targeted. Should genuine hostilities break out, then we would be looking at calling up reservists, spending a lot more money and raising taxes — all of which would impact on your campaign for re-election.’

‘Not good,’ muttered Barber, who was scribbling notes and new estimates against his poll results.

‘Let me give you a quick example,’ continued Alvin Jebb. ‘We’re twenty aircraft short on the C-17 transport plane project, used to ferry troops and supplies to areas of operation. Budget cuts have left us with three less carrier groups than we had ten years ago, yet our commitments are increased. We have even had to reduce the gate-keepers on hostile ports.’

‘Gate-keepers?’ said Hastings.

‘The attack submarines which keep watch on ships coming and going from any port, India, China, Russia. You name it. They record the signatures for naval intelligence. If it’s a ship we can usually track it by satellite. If it’s a submarine, we might deploy a second sub to track it and keep the first as the gate-keeper. We don’t have enough money to watch every key port any more. There are numerous other examples, but our ability to get involved in two simultaneous regional conflicts is severely limited. To contemplate three would be madness.’

‘Three?’ said Barber, looking up from his notes, as he hadn’t been fully concentrating.

‘The Middle East, the sub-continent and the Asia— Pacific,’ said Jebb.

‘I’m with Alvin,’ said Joan Holden. ‘But I’m not convinced China would take it to the brink. As long as Saudi Arabia and Egypt stay on-side, we have no more risk of a flare-up in the Middle East than we did before. I think Stuart is veering too much towards the Sino-centric picture. The Council for Foreign Relations published a paper by the late Gerald Segal in 1999 entitled Does China Matter?. I don’t agree with everything he said, but he’s on the right track. In a nutshell, China accounts for not much more than 5 per cent of world trade. Only 2 per cent of our exports go there. Britain sells 0.5 per cent of its exports there, the same as it sells to Sri Lanka. Even for Japan the figure is only 6 per cent. True, multinationals such as Boeing, Bechtel and Motorola are heavily invested there, but 80 per cent of the foreign direct investment is from the East Asian ethnic Chinese. Last year, forty-five billion dollars went in and thirty-five billion went out in capital flight. If we contained China, like we did the Soviet Union, our economies would barely notice it. Theirs would collapse.’

‘Alvin,’ asked Hastings, ‘do you go along with that? Does China matter? Because if it doesn’t, we can wrap this goddamn war up by breakfast.’

‘China is a second-rate military power, and as such is more like Iraq or Serbia was — a regional and not a global threat. We could defeat it in a conventional air, land or sea war in a matter of days. We could cripple its economy with sanctions. But I’m afraid life is not that simple. It has just brought on line the (East Wind) DF 41, the solid-fuel missile with a range of 8,000 miles. It already had the less accurate DF 5, which could hit the Continental United States. We think they have a DF 41 silo in Luoyang in Henan province under Unit 80304 of the Second Artillery, which handles the nuclear programme; one at Tonghua, about fifty miles north of the Korean border with Unit 80301; and one with Unit 80303 in the hills just outside of Kunming. Because the DF 41 is so new, the missiles would share silos with the lesser-ranged existing weapons. Unit 80303, for example, which also holds the DF 21s, range about 1,200 miles, would be used to attack India. China’s doctrine is to be able to absorb a first strike and hit back. There is no way we could guarantee eradicating every silo and launch station in a first strike. Absolutely not. Nor could our own land-based theatre missile-defence system protect us against a Chinese strike. The whole emphasis of Chinese long-range power projection is its missile programme. To give an example of the detail they are concentrating on, their transporter erector launchers have been refined to make an erection and retraction within two minutes, meaning they can drive it out of a tunnel, fire the missile and get back into hiding again before we even know where it is. So yes, Mr President, we can defeat China, but we may lose a city or two in doing it and I am pretty certain no president would ever think the fight worth it.’

‘And India, I take it, has nothing so lethal with which to threaten us,’ said Hastings.

‘More importantly, it has no reason to,’ said Joan Holden. ‘It is a democracy with an independent judiciary, a constitution which protects political debate, freedom of religion, the ownership of property. It might be flawed, but politically it’s our way of life.’

‘They also act like a bunch of assholes,’ added Jebb.

‘If I could add an extra warning to our dilemma,’ said Tom Bloodworth. ‘The technology which Alvin has referred to in the Chinese missile programme is only a fraction of what we believe they stole from us in the eighties and nineties. They haven’t really started working with it yet. The classified information taken included material on seven different thermonuclear warheads: the W-88 Trident D-5, the W-56 Minuteman II, the W-62 Minuteman III, the W-70 Lance, the W-76 Trident C-4, the W-78 Minuteman III Mark 12A and the W-87 Peacekeeper. One of the twists is that it was probably American technology which helped create the neutron bomb used against the Indian forces. There is no way they could have gotten it so far advanced so quickly without it. I apologize if I sound angry about this, Mr President, but our stolen technology has led to China building smaller, more versatile warheads, so, like Alvin said, they can fit more missiles into less silos. On top of that, they now have mobile and submarine launchers which can hit the United States.’

‘We have, incidentally,’ said Jebb, ‘stepped security right up at the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Oak Ridge and Sandia laboratories where this type of research is taking place.’

‘Fine,’ said Hastings looking up at the clock. ‘I’m well across the scandal of Chinese espionage, but I don’t see the point of bringing it up right now.’

‘For the past fifteen years, China has been pulled between inward-looking factions who want to concentrate on economic reform and more aggressive hawkish factions who are impatient for power status,’ said Bloodworth. ‘That debate is still going on and, if that damn prison rescue hadn’t happened in Lhasa, I believe that President Tao would not have been prompted to push things to the brink. Ten years from now, however, the Chinese missile programme could be so advanced that we couldn’t face it down. The moderate faction might have collapsed and war with China would be far bloodier than any hostilities which we embark on now.’

‘I don’t want a war with China,’ said Hastings. ‘Not ten years, not twenty years from now. Not ever.’

‘We struck a deal after the Dragon Strike campaign,’ said Bloodworth, ‘and in a few years Beijing has bounced back again. Germany struck a deal after the First World War. Fifteen years later, Hitler was preparing for the Second World War. We nuked Japan, and it’s been compliant ever since.’

‘I don’t like what I’m hearing,’ said Hastings.