Operation Red Dawn and the Siege of Europe

Unintended Consequences

Secretary of State Jim Wise was elated. It was a longshot trying to persuade the Islamic Republic to surrender. The military, of course, would rather keep the war going and thoroughly crush them. Jim, however, wanted to end this war so all of America’s effort could be shifted to fighting the Russians in Europe and repulsing the Chinese invasion in Alaska.

As Jim walked into the Situation Room, he saw the various generals and national security advisors discussing the surrender. All eyes turned towards him. “You really did it this time,” Mike Williams, the National Security Advisor, said in a jovial voice.

Smiling, Jim sat down. “It’s not signed just yet, but you have to admit Mike-being able to shift those forces to Europe and Alaska is going to greatly aid our cause.”

“I’m still against this agreement. They are just going to rebuild and we’ll be stuck dealing with this again in 15 or 20 years,” General Branson said in a not-too-congenial tone.

Just as the groups with differing points of view were about to start arguing the merits of the plan, the President and his Chief of Staff walked into the room.

“I can see that not everyone is happy about the news,” the President said after quickly assessing the facial expressions of everyone in the room as he sat down.

General Branson spoke up first, saying, “It’s not that we are not happy about the surrender; we just feel we will end up fighting this same war again later. The surrender leaves their government intact; the Caliph will use the time to rebuild, and we will end up repeating this conflict all over again.”

Secretary Wise jumped in, “Not necessarily. First, we will have an occupation force in the country, as well as observers. As long as we do a good job of monitoring them, they will still take several decades to rebuild after the occupation. In the meantime, we have 15 years to help mold and change the IR from the inside out.”

“Gentlemen, I asked everyone to pursue their specific courses of actions. The military was ready to invade, and the State Department secured the IR’s surrender.” The President signaled for one of his aides to bring him a Red Bull; he was still living on caffeine to get through the 20 hour days. Despite the President’s own time in the military as a young man, he had never developed the habit of drinking coffee; he just didn’t care for the taste of it.

“We are going to move forward with the surrender. The IR has agreed to our terms, terms that everyone in this room came up with and agreed to. General Branson, I want you to have General Gardner determine what units he wants to leave behind for occupation duty and a garrison for Israel. I want the rest of his force made ready for combat operations against the Russians and Chinese.”

Sighing slightly but still compliant, the general replied, “I will issue the order immediately.” Wanting to change the subject, he inserted, “We should talk about Alaska, Mr. President.” He pulled up the holographic map of Alaska and the situation there. “As you can see, the Chinese have disembarked a large armored force near Susitna. We have a large defensive garrison there, so it will take the Chinese some time to get past them. They have also pushed our forces on the Anchor Point Peninsula back to Cooper Landing. This is a very defensible position, with several mountain ranges providing a layered defensive network for us. We have to hold it. If we lose that section, then they will be able to get in behind Anchorage, and more importantly, they will be able to drive straight across the lower portion of the state to Yukon and cut our entire Alaskan force off.” The map showed several potential strategies the Chinese forces were expected to use and how they would affect the continued operations in Alaska.

The President asked, “What are we doing to ensure we continue to hold this position?”

“We are rotating the 12^th Infantry Division out of the line and sending them to Ft. Benning to receive training on the new Raptor combat suit. Once they are trained, we are going to send them back to Cooper Landing and the Susitna Defensive line, and hope that they are enough to stop the Chinese juggernaut. Following their training, we will pull another division from the line and repeat the process. We need to hold those two anchor points, or our defensive positions in Alaska will become unsustainable.”

The DHS Director, Jorge Perez, interjected, “Do we have enough military forces in the State? Are we able to send them additional reinforcements?”

“Well, I’m not for accepting the surrender of the IR; However, it does mean we will have substantially more soldiers and equipment that we can send to Alaska. We have four additional divisions completing their advanced training over the next two weeks. We had allocated three of them to head to Europe and the Middle East, with one heading to Alaska. I can shift them around now and send one to Europe and the other three to Alaska. Our bigger problem is maintaining air superiority. Our fighter drones are slightly better than theirs, mostly due to our ECM capability-but they have numbers on us. Plus, their J38 (which is essentially a fifth generation Su-38) is a real killer. The Chinese took the Russian aircraft and really improved upon it a lot.”?

“It always seems to come down to numbers, doesn’t it?” mused Monty with a bit of a sigh.

General Branson wanted to reassure everyone in the room. “We knew at the start of this war that the statistics would be against us. The Chinese have 2.3 billion people, and over the last six months alone, their Army has recruited an additional ten million soldiers. Given, most of these soldiers are green- not nearly as trained as ours nor as equipped as ours. However, they don’t have to be, they just have to overwhelm us with their numbers. We have some new weapon systems coming online here shortly; the Wolverine will be ready to deploy to Alaska and Europe in a couple of weeks, and the new Raptor suits are in as well. The first ten Archangel fighters will be ready in a month. As long as we can keep the Chinese from securing a permanent foothold in North America, our oceans will continue to be an advantage to us.”

The President stood and signaled for everyone to stay seated; he walked around his chair and stood behind it, leaning over it slightly and resting his hands on top of it. “General Branson is right; we need to stay the course. This war is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. We need to continue to do what we are doing; we cannot lose hope or our will to fight.”

He stood up a little straighter as he prepared to make an announcement. “I am also going to start making more regular speeches about the war. Starting every other Monday afternoon, I will hold a one-hour press conference with General Branson where I will go over the successes of the war. On the opposite Monday, I will be holding a press conference with Joyce Gibbs and Jeff Rogers to discuss the economy, jobs and infrastructure projects. As everyone knows, we are going to rebuild New York City and Baltimore from the ground up in new locations (since their present locations are unfortunately going to be unlivable for some time to come). I would like to detail the progress on these projects to the American people. The point is, these meetings are to inspire our nation with hope, and assure them that their government is doing everything in its power to protect them and to end this war, on our terms. With that said, I will get off of my soapbox and let everyone get back to their tasks. Dismissed.”

The energy in the room was high after the closing statement by the President. The senior staff were starting to get beaten down with the burden of running the war and everything else, especially in light of the horrific casualties that were still pouring in. Nearly 103,000 Americans had been killed in the Middle East, close to 34,500 Americans had lost their lives in Europe thus far, and 24,543 Americans had died in the Pacific. In less than eight weeks of combat operations in Alaska, another 22,352 more Americans had already been killed. These were just the KIAs; the number of wounded was significantly higher. For a war that was less than nine months old, it was proving to be the bloodiest war in American history. They needed something to believe in again.

Secretary of Treasury Joyce Gibbs walked into the Oval Office to meet with the President, Jeff Rogers (the Senior White House economic advisor), and Monty, the President’s Chief of Staff, to discuss the state of the economy. Fortunately, she had good news to talk about. There was legitimate reason to be optimistic; the economy was really starting to run on all cylinders. With the absence of Asian manufacturers, products still needed to be built and those products were now being made in America, South and Central America, the EU and the UK.

The America First Corporation (AFC) was a real boon for the country. As a sovereign wealth fund, it had helped stabilize social security and provided for a secured retirement for aging American workers. A person who worked their whole life could now rely on a social security retirement of $35,000 a year if they retired at 67, and $42,500 annually if they retired at age 73. AFC was also providing hundreds of millions of dollars a year for free college education for students who chose to pursue certain degrees in career fields where there was a national shortage such as nurses, doctors, engineers and other STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) degrees.

The New American Dollar (NAD), was once again the world’s reserve currency now that it was backed by gold, silver and platinum. Many countries who were not aligned with the Axis powers had switched their reserve currencies from Chinese dollars to the NAD as it had become a more stable currency. The US had also effectively wiped out its debt shortly after the war started. The government had seized all Russian, IR and Chinese government monies that were in US financial institutions at the start of the war, along with those of any shell companies that were associated with their governments. This included monies, buildings, land, companies, houses, cars, yachts, and other items of value. Once they had been seized and retitled, the government began to slowly liquidate these assets among private investors and American citizens. Victims from the IR’s terrorist attacks and those who received some sort of collateral damage during Chinese and Russian military operations in America were also receiving money as compensation from the seized assets. It was a small step in trying to correct the many wrongs the Axis powers had inflicted on the American people.

As Joyce walked into the room, she could see everyone was already seated and ready. She walked over to the couch and sat next to Jeff Rogers, opening her tablet.

The President nodded towards the Secretary of Treasury. “Joyce, it’s good to see you again. Jeff was just bringing us up to speed on a number of items. It appears we are going to have another good economic quarter.”

“Yes Mr. President, it does,” Joyce said while skimming through some notes. “Mr. President, I would like to speak with you about the new war bonds. As you know, we are financing some of the war through the war tax, the confiscation of assets from the Axis powers, and war bonds. I would like to propose we kick off a new war bond initiative by bringing in celebrities from across the country, along with some personal visits from you and the Vice President.”

“Right to the point, I always liked that about you Joyce. I agree, let’s see who we can get from Hollywood to help run the war bond drive and I will, of course, make myself available as well. I believe the Vice President has fully recovered from his injuries, so we’ll get him involved as well. How many bonds do we anticipate needing to sell each month, rough estimate?” asked the President.

“As many as we can, but in reality, the war is burning through $4.31 billion a day. With the national debt paid off, we could run a new deficit, but I would rather not do that. Thanks to the war tax that Congress passed a couple of months ago, I think we can avoid that. I know you caught some flak for it, but that $3 % sales tax is essentially covering the increased spending at the moment.”

“The fact that Alaska is being invaded by the Chinese has really started to hit home with most folks. Foreign troops are on American soil and beating our own soldiers has sent a chill down their collective backs… and they should be scared,” said Jeff Rogers.

“The situation will change once some of our newer weapon systems start to show up on the battlefield,” Monty countered, trying to keep the mood of the meeting positive.