The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [393]
"And again we send our young people off to war?"
"There need be no war, Bob. There is no war today. Neither America nor Russia will start one. That question is in the hands of others. It isn't hard, it isn't demanding, for a nation-state to stand its military down. It's a rare professional soldier who relishes conflict. Certainly no one who's seen a battlefield will voluntarily rush to see another. But I'll tell you this: If the PRC launches a war of aggression, and if because of them American lives are placed at risk, then those who make the decision to set loose those dogs are putting their own lives at risk."
"The Ryan Doctrine?" Holtzman asked.
"Call it anything you want. If it's acceptable to kill some infantry private for doing what his government tells him, then it's also acceptable to kill the people who tell the government what to do, the ones who send that poor, dumb private out in harm's way."
Oh, shit, Arnie van Damm thought, hovering in the doorway of the Oval Office. Jack, did you have to say that?
"Thank you for your time, Mr. President," Holtzman said. "When will you address the nation?"
"Tomorrow. God willing, it'll be to say that the PRC has backed off. I'll be calling Premier Xu soon to make a personal appeal to him."
"Good luck."
"We are ready," Marshal Luo told the others. "The operation commences early tomorrow morning."
"What have the Americans done?"
"They've sent some aircraft forward, but aircraft do not concern me," the Defense Minister replied. "They can sting, as a mosquito does, but they cannot do real harm to a man. We will make twenty kilometers the first day, and then fifty per day thereafter—maybe more, depending on how the Russians fight. The Russian Air Force is not even a paper tiger. We can destroy it, or at least push it back out of our way. The Russians are starting to move mechanized troops east on their railroad, but we will pound on their marshaling facility at Chita with our air assets. We can dam them up and stop them to protect our left flank until we move troops in to wall that off completely."
"You are confident, Marshal?" Zhang asked—rhetorically, of course.
"We'll have their new gold mine in eight days, and then it's ten more to the oil," the marshal predicted, as though describing how long it would take to build a house.
"Then you are ready?"
"Fully," Luo insisted.
"Expect a call from President Ryan later today," Foreign Minister Shen warned the premier.
"What will he say?" Xu asked.
"He will give you a personal plea to stop the war from beginning."
"If he does, what ought I to say?"
"Have your secretary say you are out meeting the people," Zhang advised. "Don't talk to the fool."
Minister Shen wasn't fully behind his country's policy, but nodded anyway. It seemed the best way to avoid a personal confrontation, which Xu would not handle well. His ministry was still trying to get a feel for how to handle the American President. He was so unlike other governmental chiefs that they still had difficulty understanding how to speak with him.
"What of our answer to their note?" Fang asked..
"We have not given them a formal answer," Shen told him.
"It concerns me that they should not be able to call us liars," Fang said. "That would be unfortunate, I think."
"You worry too much, Fang," Zhang commented, with a cruel smile.
"No, in that he is correct," Shen said, rising to his colleague's defense. "Nations must be able to trust the words of one another, else no intercourse at all is possible. Comrades, we must remember that there will be an 'after the war,' in which we must be able to reestablish normal relations with the nations of the world. If they regard us as outlaw, that will be difficult."
"That makes sense," Xu observed, speaking his own opinion for once. "No, I will not accept the call from Washington, and no, Fang, I will not allow America to call us liars."
"One other development," Luo said. "The Russians have begun high-altitude