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At thirty-five, Mike was the chief executive officer for the GE appliance manufacturing plant located near GE's large research center in Shanghai. A clean-cut, up-and-coming star in the GE empire, he was well connected among the party's fast-track young executives, not only here on the mainland but in Hong Kong and Taiwan as well, which made him a valuable ally. Wan's principal purpose, however, for cultivating him was to use him to determine how serious the U.S was about defending Taiwan. As Lenin had so aptly said, hang the capitalists with the rope they sell us.

     "Shi's a hardliner strategist for the party who watches political trends in Taiwan. Shi says Beijing emphasizes blood ties between Taiwan and China. He argues that Taiwan's national identity and drive for self-determination depends on socialization, not blood ties. He thinks education plays the strong roll."

    "I think going to war over Taiwan is a strategic mistake."

    Wan raised his eyebrows. "Taiwan's thrust for independence ebbs by the day. Don't you realize there's a mass migration of professionals and investors to the mainland? Where do you think all those people come from that live in Kunshan, outside of Shanghai?" Kunshan was home to 30,000 emigrants from Taiwan, with their own schools, country clubs, and villas. It was the production and research and development base for Taiwan's largest companies. Over a half-million people from Taiwan out of a population of 23 million lived and worked in China. "You're a naive fool, my friend."

      "The only problem we have is old China is wary of capitalist China." Old China was skeptical of this new breed of young elitists. There was no social safety net for the unemployed or for medical benefits in China, so their welfare had to be taken into account by these brash, young entrepreneurs. The challenges for the joint venture partners were immense. Officials were wary that creative destruction of old China and its inefficient state enterprises would be handled poorly and blamed on them. Labor protests and outrage erupted the same in China as it did anywhere else in the world and the old China bureaucrats feared anything that rocked their boat.

      Mike looked at Wan. "You remember how we talked about the two things that had to be changed to make a market economy work: state-run enterprises and state-run banks? China's done a good job of opening the state-run enterprises, but I'm afraid China has dragged its feet too long on opening state-run banks to private enterprise." Mike twirled the stem of his brandy glass. "The world banks fear that if you open your banks, they won"t be able to compete and your entire domestic banking industry will collapse."

     "Nonsense! We'll create the same success opening private banks as we did opening private enterprises. But it will be on our timetable."

     The Chinese Director of Intelligence sat in the back seat nervously tapping his fingers on the armrest. Wan was tense and upset. It was an elaborate game of chess that he played with the capitalists, full of the complexity that his analytical mind enjoyed. Lure the Westerners into business relationships that seemed rich with potential profit. Seduce them with the prospect of that great, sleeping giant known as China, and entice them with all the opportunities that a market of more than one billion consumers might provide. Then, when the capitalists had sold their souls, the taking of Taiwan would be easier. The greedy pigs would persuade Washington to look the other way when the annexation happened so that their investments would be protected. And, if things went wrong, those same capitalists could be enlisted to protect China or else risk the chance of their business dealings being made public in a messy congressional hearing. Wan sensed these Americans were extremely gullible. Don't they have any notion that China's strategy is to diminish U.S. influence and presence in the Pacific by pushing U.S. influence out of Asia, undermine U.S. alliances through maritime intimidation, and then take advantage of U.S. stretched resources from continuous conflict in the Middle East?

      Wan had escaped the Cultural Revolution and purges of the '70s. He had studied engineering at Beijing's prestigious Oinghua University and been selected to attend the Central Party School at the Imperial Summer Palace. Wan pointed at the newspaper on his desk. "I see you are the featured lecturer this month at the university."

     Tan looked surprised. "A series on comparative political systems. Comparing our unique form of Chinese fascism with other political systems."

     "Should elicit a good response from students."

     "Since scrapping the communist economic system, students want to know why we haven't embraced capitalism."

     "And --"

     "They also question management and shareholders holding government jobs at the same time."

     "How did you extract yourself from that conflict of interest?"

     "I admitted it leads to bribery and graft," Tan replied. "Then, there are always questions about why China maintains a single party dictatorship."

     "We have to control a large diverse society. Of course, you told them we can not tolerate Western-style freedoms and democracy."

      Wan reviewed the details with Tan. An announcement would be made in the UN on the following day that would be designed to be received as a Chinese appeasement. Stop hostilities while the two parties attempted to reach a peaceful resolution over Taiwan. Of course, no peaceful resolution would be reached. China would use the delay to attack Taiwan.

* * *

"My concerns are the same as yours were," Kelly said. "Am I doomed by history to make the same mistakes? I don't want a career of buildbust cycles, policy mistakes. Coming out of WWII the U.S. was invincible. What changed? Korea? How did a third world power nearly defeat us? Then came Vietnam, the Cold War, Gulf War, Balkan wars, terrorist wars, and Iraq. Why have all these wars been so indecisive?"

      "Indecisive?"

      "MacArthur was the Supreme Allied Commander in Japan. He saw himself as the last imperial leader of the twentieth century. Japan was his empire. He ruled Japan and reasoned that because Japan crushed China, he had no reason to fear a bunch of third-world communists in China and Korea. His arrogance set the stage for complacency, while he cleverly built up a cult of personality around himself."

"It's hard to believe MacArthur would use the media to bolster his hero status."

"No, it isn't. He was a politician doing what politicians do to raise poll ratings." After the U.N. forces beat back the North Korean Army, MacArthur was repeatedly warned by the Joint Chiefs not to press toward the Yalu River. The Chinese warned the UN they would attack in force if MacArthur moved the UN forces across the Thirty-Eighth Parallel, north to the Yalu River. "He's the epitome of the military leader we need to avoid. He was permitted to acquire too much power. Achieved imperial prominence through a cult of personality. I blame it on the media and civilian leaders." The Korean War was an endless tale of policy mistakes. "We stumbled at nation building initially in both Korea and Iraq, but we persevered in Korea and we’ll persevere in Iraq."

* * *

The light rain turned into a downpour. One at a time, enlisted men armed with large umbrellas appeared at the bus to escort the senior officers from the Politburo, Central Military Commission (CMC), General Staff, and other commands. The men shed their raincoats and hats in the expansive front hall and joined the PLA Army, Navy, and Air Force officers assembled in a large conference room. Senior officers made their way to designated places at the long conference table, leaving junior officers to find chairs along the walls. The room had the dingy appearance characteristic of old government buildings. The dull yellowish walls were the backdrop for portraits of the party's luminaries, Mao to Jiang Zemin and the current President, Hu Jintao.

     Major General Wan stood patiently at the end of the conference table while the group formally greeted one another. He was tired and tense from a long meeting with the Party earlier in the day. The Director of Intelligence motioned for attention and continued in a strong voice. "Tonight's mission will be a massive saturation raid on the American Battle Group. Air Force Bombers, attack aircraft, and mobile land-based launchers armed with the new version of the Sunburn cruise missile will carry out the attack."

     "How many cruise missiles are we talking about?" Captain Anderson asked.

     "Five hundred." Ernie's reply produced instant shock. Shoulders and mouths dropped.

     "My God! How do we defend against a saturation raid of that magnitude?" the admiral demanded.

     "We don't know. We've never faced a threat like this," Ernie said sheepishly. The Chinese officers all staunchly supported saturation defense against a massive force. The concept had its roots with Sun Tzu, who had written The Art of War more than twenty-five hundred years earlier. The Chinese, and Japanese samurai as well, considered this book their bible for strategy, not only for war but also as a philosophy for warriors to live by.

* * *

White segments suddenly flashed on the outer rim of Kelly's CEC screen. Her heads-up helmet display indicated three Flankers locked on her. The awful sound of the radar-warning receiver startled her. She began to hyperventilate. She was targeted.

     When she turned onto the boat's centerline, the night demon appeared on the windshield and taunted her with its steely yellow eyes. She imagined the boat turned backward. Touches of vertigo made her feel the lift being sucked off the wings. The sky suddenly darkened. She had an impulse to squeeze on more power as she approached the fantail where the sinkhole lurked. Doggedly, she fought off the demon's bidding.

     The air battle was over. For weeks, CNN and the broadcast channels analyzed it. Analysts collected on PBS's News Hour, voicing their acclaim for the Battle Group's success. The claim that a Navy Battle Group with a single large-deck carrier possessed more firepower than the tenth largest air force in the world was not lost on the world's TV viewers.

     President Bush put the UN and its members on notice that the conduct of the Iraqi regime was a threat to the authority of the UN itself. If the members of the body couldn't muster the fortitude to do something about Iraq, then U.S. action was unavoidable. Bush pointed to the UN's founding after generations of deceitful dictators, broken treaties, and squandered lives. Would the UN serve the purpose of its founding or would it prove to be irrelevant? The response was yet another resolution that dispatched weapons inspectors. Diplomacy failed. With no other option left, the U.S. went to war with a small but significant coalition of "the willing." Now, the UN was meddling again, in an American initiative to stop China, the neighborhood bully, from invading one of the world's most important emerging democracies.

     "Damn the Security Council!" Kelly couldn't keep the venom from her voice. "Every time we take an action to defend weak countries, we’re blocked in the UN. Terrorist countries like Iran or neighborhood bullies -- like China." Her voice rose, her face flushed, and her words splattered over her grandfather. He was obviously surprised at her rage.

     "America's problem is trying to determine how to perpetuate and expand its power effectively around the world without offending 190 member countries."

     Kelly sat up straight. "That's easy. Get rid of the UN."

      "At the end of the Cold War there was a period of euphoria. Then terrorists began to strike all over the globe. That galvanized the U.S. It was time to reform the post-World War II model, revise our alliances and demand reform in institutions like the UN."

     "What's wrong with our alliances?" Kelly asked.

     "They're offshoots of regimes that emerged from the collapse of colonial empires after World War I and World War II. Many of these regimes have no democratic foundations, like rule-of-law, and are governed by abusive monarchies, dictators, tyrants, warlords, and psychopaths. They're the legacy Europe left for the rest of the world to repair. Europe's wealth and resolve to help these regimes vanished long ago. The U.S. has to sort through the carcass to find constructive alliances."

       Kelly wanted her quality of life, as well as the rest of the crew's, to be fulfilled. If up and down the ranks their expectations were satisfied, the war-fighting machine would survive and their careers would be advanced. Was that a childish, idealistic kind of thought? "Everyone in today's world knows tedious, repetitious work destroys morale," Kelly said. "Incentives have to be infused to change the boat driver's mindset and all the rest of his community. The incentive is to cleverly reduce the manning levels and enrich the work experience."

       "It's a war, Jerry. And I do what I'm trained for. Just like you."

     "I know. I can hear our kids explaining what our jobs are to their classmates. 'Mommy shoots planes down, and Daddy's work is secret. If he tells us, he'd have to kill us."'

     "Jerry, did you call to pick a fight?"

     "No. I called to ask you to marry me."

* * *

"It's a mobile landing field with an air force that has more warfighting capability than all but the top ten countries in the world," Greg said. "You can take this platform anywhere. You don't need to sit down with any banana republic and negotiate where you take it. You don't have to quibble over docking rights, berthing costs, or the right to land."

      "China is a huge disconnect," Greg said. "The reformers welcome us. The hard-liners threaten us with nuclear destruction. Free-Traders have been duped into complacency. There's plenty of cause for concern. China's the last communist nuclear power and unpredictable."

     "Didn't election scandals lead to further revelations of Chinese influence peddling?" Pate asked. "An elaborate network of Chinese island bases was discovered that directly threatened the U.S. and was intended to cut off trade with Asia."

     "With nuclear missiles in Cuba pointed at the U.S., imagine the leverage China has to threaten the U.S. at the same time they invade Taiwan."

* * *

Won wondered how the wise Sun Tzu would have viewed China's current inbred hostility caused by a rigid strategic policy and expansive world aspirations. "You Americans risk a Chinese nuclear strike if you intervene in a conflict between China and Taiwan. Do you value Taipei more than Los Angeles?" Wan had helped draft the PLA's plan for the future. The strategic goal was to build a world-class military force with modern strategic missiles and a navy capable of projecting power far beyond China's shores. A tantalizing idea that captured Wan's imagination was a plan for China to use the Panama Canal to block access to commerce and naval ships at either end of the canal.

* * *

NORAD's early warning satellites, looking down on the Chinese missile complexes, detected exhaust plumes from hundreds of rockets. Long-range radars on the Aegis ships identified and locked on Chinese boosters and designated them as targets for intercept. The missile ship Iwo Jima launched 255 long-range interceptor missiles from its missile tubes. The ship was capable of firing 2,400 rounds -- 1,200 each of T1 and T2 interceptors. Flight times for the Chinese missiles varied from eight to twenty minutes. The boost phase required five to seven minutes before warheads and decoys could be deployed. This window was all the time available for the interceptors to destroy the missiles in the boost phase before the warhead was deployed.

"We're targeted," Pate said.

     At that moment the officer-of-the-deck ordered the ship into a tight turn.

     The huge ship heaved as the four giant propellers surged to full ahead and the helmsman spun the rudder to port. Everyone grabbed for a handhold.

      Greg's hands began to tremble. He set his coffee mug down and his right eye started twitching uncontrollably. It was a historic moment, but he felt no elation. He was numbed by what had just happened… the only Battle Group equipped with a Sea Shield had foreclosed the missile threat to the world.

     "A Battle Group with a Sea Shield is only twenty-four hours from any country," Pate said. "Bullies will now know their missiles are useless. Cross a land border to invade a neighbor and you attract a Battle Group with a Marine Expeditionary Force." A Marine Expeditionary Force was the single most powerful fighting force in the world. With 75 percent of the world's population and infrastructure lying within three hundred miles of the littoral-coastal populations meant the Marines were within three hours of striking with their full war-fighting capability.

     "What country is equipped to go up against a force with a Sea Shield?" the admiral wanted to know.

       The door was still open for non-national terrorists. Electronic and economic warfare and a Sea Shield didn't solve the problem of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). But if you're a terrorist, a Sea Shield puts a damper on trying to put WMD on missiles. A big part of nuclear proliferation would go away if you couldn't put nukes on missiles. Homeland defense against imported WMD becomes more manageable.

In the back of Ready One, in the galley above the coffee pot, mugs hung on the wall, one for each of the eighteen pilots, the maintenance officer, and the gunnery officer. Greg filled his cup with coffee. His other choice was "bug juice," a version of Kool-Aid.

      Kelly took their trays and stacked them. "See the news -- what a mess --the UN plans to send thousands of new peacekeeping forces into Lebanon to stop Islamic militants -- Jihad, Hezbollah, and Hamas -- from attacking Israeli settlements across from Lebanon with rockets."

     "The U.S. clashed with the UN Security Council over the role of UN peacekeepers," Greg explained. "The U.S. warned Syria and Iran again that their support for terrorists disrupts the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. They threatened to preemptively strike them with Marine Expeditionary Forces. To change the regime in Palestine, we had to first change the regime in Iraq. That attracted Saddam's loyalists and all the young al Qaeda Sunni fanatics from outside Iraq. We were up to our eyeballs with crocodiles. Israel was left alone facing the militants and Bush's Palestinian peace initiative failed. Lebanon becomes a second front allowing us to kill two birds with one stone. We stop the Islamic terrorists that hijacked the Palestinians and at the same time seal off the porous borders with Syria and Iran that supply fresh al Qaeda."

      "We can't win a war against terrorism. Terror is a tactic like air power." Greg groped for an analogy that would make his argument clear. "We can't enlist coalition partners with opaque abstractions. We have to convince them that Islamic radicals have distorted the Islamic belief system by hijacking Islam and taking their liberty and freedoms hostage."

     "Papa, what makes you so optimistic to believe Egyptians and other Arab societies won't embrace bin Ladenism or some other Islamic theocracy like Iran's Shiites?"

    "Bin Ladenism is a Sunni doomsday cult," Greg replied. "Like all great religions or belief systems, it's periodically hijacked by radicals like the Wahhabis."

      "How did foreign policy change?"

     "Policies adopted for deterrence during the Cold War no longer apply. Before September 11, policies were based on dealing with a rational enemy. There's nothing rational about suicide bombers."

     "You're too damned optimistic."

     "Nah. We have a model for regime replacement and rebuilding. It's called Afghanistan. We also have another model for a large Muslim population practicing their faith and striving successfully in a secular, democratic state."

     Kelly looked baffled. "Where? Not Iraq!"

    "In America! Even the Saudis understand that. Just watch any airliner take off from Dhahran or Jeddah headed for the U.S. Once the plane's off the ground, off come women's abayas and men's thobes and guttras. Out of bathrooms come fashion models in high heels and businessmen in thousand-dollar Brooks Brothers suits, wearing Gucci shoes.

     "The battle within Islam's belief system, as with the other great religions, is who has the right to use his or her interpretation of Islam to justify the right of certain people to govern. The Shiite mullahs in Iran and the Sunni imams in Saudi Arabia have hijacked Islam. The battle within the Muslim world is a battle for hearts and minds. So we have two kinds of battles going on inside Islam; one is an intellectual one for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world and the other is a transnational war by terrorist ideologues against the Western world. The strategic threat to America is bin Laden's anti-American message and al Qaeda's unifying ideology."

      Kelly clinched her fist and quietly pounded the table. "Europeans bellyache about our unilateral action. They want a coalition but they don't have anything to contribute. They shrink from defense spending and, when push comes to shove, expect us to do the heavy lifting. Then they demand the right to sit at the security table and veto our policy actions."

     Good. Kelly was finally coming to grips with what she didn't like.

* * *

The general grimaced as he swallowed some of the fiery alcohol from Shanxi and reflected on the consequences of what had happened. Pretend to be a pig (play dumb) in order to eat the tiger. It was Strategy Number Twenty-Seven of Sun Tzu's thirty-six strategies of war. He closed his eyes in resignation. The strategy had not worked this time. Indeed, there had been a serious miscalculation that had now caused an undesirable consequence.

     They had aroused the tiger.

* * *

The screens were now blank. No more spots or lines dancing across the grid like Pac-men, flashing and eliminating each other. This wasn't a child's game. This was war in the twenty-first century. When the spots disappeared, real people died.

     When the planes were safely recovered and ordnance stored at daylight, Captain Anderson would declare a "steel beach" picnic and barbecue. They would cook steak, chicken, hamburgers, and hotdogs on the flight deck. Golfers, fishers, and bands would appear. The Air Department would lower one of the aircraft elevators to the hangar deck, the ship would stop, and a swim call would be issued. Crewmembers would get the opportunity to jump the twenty-six feet from the elevator to the water. It wouldn't be unusual to have 2,000 people literally jump ship.

      Was the world a better place? Rogue countries considering achieving political goals with the use of force would study the outcome. They would conclude that the use of missiles was no longer an option. Terrorists would still exist and be encouraged by foolish nation-states. In the new world order the penalty bar had been substantially raised.

Part One     Part Two

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