Executive orders - Tom Clancy [283]
This is much worse than I had been led to expect, Sergey Nikolay'ch, he concluded soberly. We know the Chinese covet what we have in the east. This new state threatens our southern oil fields in the Transcaucasus-I cannot defend this border. My God, defending against Hitler was child's play compared to this.
Golovko was on the other side of the map table. He'd called Bondarenko for a reason. The senior leadership of his country's military was composed of holdovers from the earlier era-but these were finally dying off, and Gennady Iosefovich was one of the new breed, battle-tested in the misbegotten Afghan War, old enough to know what battle was-perversely, this made him and his peers the superiors of those whom they would soon replace-and young enough that they didn't have the ideological baggage of the former generation, either. Not a pessimist, but an optimist ready to learn from the West, where he'd just spent over a month with the various NATO armies, learning everything he could-especially, it would seem, from the Americans. But Bondarenko was looking down at the map in alarm.
How long? the general asked. How long to establish this new state?
Golovko shrugged. Who can say? Three years, perhaps two at the worst. At best, five.
Give me five years and the ability to rebuild our country's military power, and we can probably no. Bondarenko shook his head. I can give you no guarantee. The government will not give me the money and resources I require. It can't. We do not have the money to spend.
And then? The general looked up, straight into the RVS chairman's eyes.
And then I would prefer to be the operations officer for the other side. In the east we have mountains to defend, and that is good, but we have only two rail lines for logistical support, and that is not so good. In the center, what if they absorb all of Kazakhstan? He tapped the map. Look how close that puts them to Moscow. And what about alliances? With Ukraine, perhaps? What about Turkey? What about Syria? All of the Middle East will have to come to terms with this new state we lose, Comrade Chairman. We can threaten to use nuclear arms-but what real good does that do us? China can afford the loss of five hundred million, and still outnumber us. Their economy grows strong while ours continues to stagnate. They can afford to buy weapons from the West, or better yet to license the designs to manufacture their own. Our use of nuclear arms is dangerous, both tactically and strategically, and there is the political dimension which I will leave to you. Militarily, we will be outnumbered in all relevant categories. The enemy will have superiority in terms of arms, manpower, and geographic location. Their ability to cut off the oil supply to the rest of the world limits our hope of securing foreign help-assuming that any Western nation will have such a desire in the first place. What you have shown me is the potential destruction of our country. That he delivered this assessment calmly was the most disturbing fact of all. Bondarenko was not an alarmist. He was merely stating objective fact.
And to prevent it?
We cannot permit the loss of the southern republics, but at the same time, how do we hold them? Take control of Turkmenistan? Fight the guerrilla campaign that would surely result? Our army is in no shape to fight that sort of war-not even one of them, and it won't be just one, will it? Bondarenko's predecessor had been fired over the failure of the Red Army-the term and the thought died hard-to deal effectively with the Chechens. What should have been a relatively simple effort at pacification had advertised to the world that the Russian army was scarcely a shadow of what it had been only