“All right, people, what are we talking about time wise? If they go for the Persian Gulf, land and sea forces, how soon will we know and where is our demarcation line to launch World War III? Jim, what is the opinion of your folks?”
“Generals Craig, Anderson, and Leonard have been meeting on that very subject for the last two weeks. I believe I’ll pass that off to General Leonard, since the Marines have more experience in the Central Asian Republics than anyone else, Mr. President. General?”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary. When you get off the plains and start into the hill country, you get into the Pushtuns, or Pakhtuns, whichever pronunciation you prefer. They are an entirely different animal, Mr. President. They are the fiercest, most war-like people on earth. They are extremely proud, ignorant to the point of superstition, and almost ready to enter the nineteenth century. They are clan and tribal oriented, and governed by three overriding philosophies: badal, nanawati, and milmastia. These are referred to as Pakhtunwali, or the way of the Pakhtun. I mention this because the first, badal, is that they will take revenge, in blood, for the smallest, or even slightly perceived insult. They will fight to the death over badal. They have killed each other, even close blood relatives, over the centuries because of badal. I believe that the Pakhtuns are going to be a far harder nut to crack than the Chinese ever thought about. I have no doubt that they will fight until the last five-year-old kid can no longer pull a trigger. The Chinese are going to have to crawl over every rock, every ridge, and into every cave in order to kill them. They will kill Chinese until they are all dead. The Pakhtuns still have millions of small arms all over Pakistan and Afghanistan. Every adult owns at least one rifle, plenty of ammunition, a dagger, and possibly even a sword from the nineteenth century. Afghanistan and Pakistan encompass, and cut through, many tribal areas. The concept of those entities as individual nations is secondary to them thinking of themselves as tribal entities. They consider the border as arbitrary and unnecessary. Like the Arabs, they are known to switch sides in the middle of a battle, according to who pays them the highest bribe. In the case of badal, however, there is no question. It is the overriding concept in all of Pakhtun life. Anyone who does not practice it is scorned and considered less than a man.
“For this reason, above all others, I believe the Chinese march through Pakistan and Afghanistan will take them several months. Pakhtun life is much more primitive than most of the Chinese now have, even those from the rural areas. They can withstand the harsh mountain winter far better than the Chinese from the coasts and more temperate regions. The Chinese better have lots of tough, well trained troops to sacrifice and lots of ammunition to expend, because the Pakhtuns are certainly going to extract as much blood as possible. While we Chiefs of Staff disagree among ourselves, it is only a matter of degree. General Anderson thinks it will be all over by January. I think the Pakhtuns will hold out until spring, when they will come out of their holes with a vengeance and conduct guerilla warfare like the Chinese never imagined. They will ask no quarter, and none will be given.
“Unfortunately, the tyrannical governments of the Central Asian Republics didn’t allow Pakhtunwali to continue. They clamped down on anyone who threatened, or whom they perceived threatened, state security. Their leaders have been more like miniature Stalins in the early days of the Soviet Union. This is one reason they are being overrun far more quickly than we anticipate Pakistan and Afghanistan will be. Therefore, Mr. President, we have decided to recommend the Iranian border as the line of demarcation for our action. If they cross into Iran, or within a hundred miles of the Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan borders with Iran, there is little alternative for the west.”
“Thank you, General. That begs the question, then: can we supply small arms to the Pakhtuns, as you call them? How would we get them in and distribute them?”
“There are several possible ways to do that, Mr. President. One is simply to supply them to Iran and let Iran make the distribution. Of course, Iran will keep a goodly supply, if not all, for itself. Otherwise, we go through the Central Asian Republics. We can go through Turkey and southern Russia, cross the Caspian, and supply Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. No telling how many they would rip off, even though it would be in their own best interest to pass them on and let the Afghans do the initial fighting. Of course, they might not even make it to Afghanistan or Pakistan. Alternatively, we could air drop them onto Pakistani and Afghani villages directly. That’s the only sure way to get them to the Pakhtuns and avoid being ripped off, so to speak. Frankly, I don’t think we have all that many left in storage and probably won’t be able to crank enough out of our manufacturing system to provide more than several hundred thousand all total before Pakistan and Afghanistan are overrun. The Army has, for several decades now, purchased its rifles from Fabrique Nationale of Belgium. We really don’t manufacture most of our own small arms anymore.”
Jesus Christ, thought Jason Thornton. We can’t even manufacture our own small arms anymore? We have outsourced even our own military’s personal weaponry!
Instead, he said, “Ed, Jim, get your heads together. Take whatever small arms and ammunition we have in storage and air drop them on Pakhtun villages. Nothing sophisticated. Include explosives as well; I presume those people know what dynamite is. Try and do it as surreptitiously as possible; I don’t care how you do it, make it happen. Make sure there are no Made in USA paintings on the crates. If the Chinese detect and protest it, so be it, but get it done anyway! We’ll tell them it is humanitarian supplies, food and medicines.
“Jim, get contracts with all of our small arms and ammunition manufacturers to start cranking out our own weapons again. I want round the clock shifts going on ammunition and small arms production. If the Chinese even think about carrying out an invasion of the United States, and that includes Hawaii, I want us to be able to arm every able-bodied male. Maybe the founding fathers’ definition of militia was right after all.
“Also, see what we can do about bringing home all the outsourced components of more sophisticated weapons that are manufactured overseas. Why should our sophisticated weapons depend upon components manufactured in China, or, for that matter, Southeast Asian countries that are being overrun by the Chinese? Get with the folks in Silicone Valley and bring home everything, every weapons component that we can in as short a time as possible. If you need to promote somebody to whatever level as an HMFIC in order to get it done, do it over my signature. Budget balancing be damned. I will have to meet with our congressional leaders and see about more funding for defense. If they don’t cooperate, we will crash the Health and Human Services funding.”
Marge Talbott raised her hand, with a terribly worried look on her face. “Mr. President, do you presume to consider that the Chinese might actually launch an invasion of the United States across the Pacific?”
“Marge, I don’t know. Ask the Chinese what their ultimate objectives are. Where are they going, and why? What are all these new ocean-going catamarans for? We must be prepared for whatever they do.
“Jim, you and the Admirals put your heads together and see what you can do about protecting the sea lanes and the continental United States with mines, passive and active. All those things we previously mentioned, and how soon they can be deployed, are to be pursued. In the meantime, everybody be thinking about the possibility of re-instituting the selective service. We just might have to start drafting young people for military service. Peggy, make sure that is an agenda item for the next meeting with congressional leaders, reinstituting the draft.”
“If you don’t mind, Mr. President, I would like to meet with my flag officers for about ten minutes here right after we adjourn.”
“Sure, Jim, you people are going to be extremely busy, and there is no use wasting time meeting somewhere else. If there is nothing else anyone wishes to bring up right now, let’s go to work.”
The room cleared within a few minutes, leaving the SECDEF and the Service Chiefs sitting around the table. Secretary of Defense Jim Neville made it brief. “On this rifle thing, we will bypass the Defense Logistics Agency. Their bureaucracy is too great and cumbersome. I am appointing the Army as lead agency in the procurement of rifles according to the President’s wishes. General Anderson, make the Army Acquisition Corps the action people. Our primary concentration will be on semi-automatic rifles and will be of the M-16 type. We will let the first contracts as soon as possible. Now, don’t give away the farm, make the contractors come in with reasonable prices. The rifles can be M-16A3s, M16-A4s, or M-4 carbines firing the 5.56x45 mm NATO cartridge. All will be in semi-automatic configuration only. No design that will allow modification for full automatic capability is to be accepted. Our first goal will be the procurement of five million rifles. I will make that an arbitrary figure. Utilize all possible manufacturers within the United States. Include the little guys who have been making them for the civilian market, such as Rock River, Armalite, Panther Arms, and so on. We won’t buy any this time from foreign based firms. If they want to build plants here to produce them, I’ll allow for that. All manufacturing will be in-house. I know setting up the appropriate tooling might be a time-consuming hindrance, so let’s see who can produce that tooling ASAP for other potential manufacturers. This also means having tight ass inspectors in all of the plants to ensure quality. Everything will be to military specifications or higher. Primary manufacturers can outsource or subcontract for components all they wish, as long as those subcontractors are within the continental United States. I’ll set the goal to be up and running in major production runs by the primary contractors sixty days from now with no decrease in quality.
“One exception to the M-16 type rifle I will make will be Sturm, Ruger and Company. We will buy their little Ruger Mini-14 as fast as they can produce them. That is a far better little rifle for civilians anyway. Certainly, producing the magazines and ammunition will go hand in hand. Make it five magazines per rifle, twenty rounds per magazine, for twenty-five million magazines. On the ammunition account, I know we have been buying foreign made ammunition for the last twenty years. Contact our overseas suppliers and see how fast they can provide us with increased production. The same goes for magazines, especially from Italy where we have been buying a lot of them. We will need it sooner than we need the rifles. Look to Israeli Military Industries in particular. They are among the best and least expensive. At one thousand rounds per rifle, that will require five billion rounds of ammunition. Run our own plants 24/7. At the same time, start looking for storage places in every corner, as in National Guard armories and depots all around the country. If we have to let contracts to build small, secure, temperature-controlled arms bunkers on National Guard and Army Reserve properties, do that as well. If we have to arm the civilian population, then we don’t want to have a distribution problem at the last minute.
“General Anderson, expand the Army’s armorer training program. Run it day and night if necessary. Double or triple the class size and number of classes wherever your school is. Call for volunteers. If that isn’t sufficient, then reassign people in uniform. That goes for the other branches of services as well. Change the Table of Distribution and Allowances for all the maintenance companies in the Guard and Reserves to add the extra armorers for small arms. If we go back to the draft, it will mostly likely be that we will tremendously expand the Reserves and Guard rather than the Active components. This applies in particular to the Army. General Craig for all services and General Anderson, especially for the Army, get with your personnel people and start studying that. Look at the possibilities of adding several million men to the National Guard and Army Reserve. Make plans for rapid expansion in training. No shortcuts are to be taken in their training. The emphasis will be on light infantry. Make the basic training for these folks just the same as the active Army. I don’t want to have to go back and retrain multiple divisions as we had to do in the first Gulf War in 1991 when reservists didn’t know how to load a rifle or throw a hand grenade. General Leonard, everything I said for the Army applies equally to the Marine Corps.
“I know the recruiting figures are way down. Nobody wants to go fight overseas, especially against the massed Chinese on the Asian continent. Therefore, we should consider planning for a subtle campaign, a propaganda campaign, to introduce the possibility of an invasion threat to the continental United States. I’ll check with the President and see if he wants to release the news about the Chinese naval buildup. Then, some unnamed source in the Pentagon can ‘leak’ the news to a favorite journalist who can imply that the Chinese are massing a potential invasion force, possibly for the U.S. That should get the west coast folks concerned. Of course, the journalist will have to admit to the greater possibilities that the invasion fleet is aimed at the Middle East or elsewhere rather than the continental U.S., but the threat should not be ignored simply on those grounds. ‘Uncle Joe’ Stalin learned the hard way in World War II that people will fight for the homeland when they won’t fight for the government. That is how we will have to play it. Any questions?”
“Mr. Secretary, what of other individual small arms and crew served weapons, such as machine guns, mortars and hand grenades? Certainly, we will need an increase in those weapons for training, if for no other purpose.”
“Good thought, General Leonard. We will look at that later. I can see a modest need for an increase in those weapons. Right now, though, we will concentrate on the rifles, as we are about to deplete all our reserve stocks supplying the Afghans and surviving Pakistanis. Any other questions? No, well then, get back to me in a week with progress reports. Thank you, gentlemen.”
“Mr. President, the Chinese Ambassador, His Excellency Kuan Sheng, is here for his appointment.”
“Thank you, Peggy, have Johnny bring him in, and have tea served for the Ambassador.” The President rose from his desk and walked around it to greet Mr. Kuan. “I am glad to see you, Mr. Ambassador. Please have a chair,” indicating with a flourish of his hand to a chair at the end of the coffee table while he took another chair adjacent to it.
“Thank you, Mr. President. I am afraid my country is most upset with your letter of concerns about the progress of the Chinese Armies in the field. I have a written answer for you, which we hope assuages your concerns, but also points out certain vulnerabilities of your country. Please view this with an objective concern. China does not at all wish to threaten our greatest trading partner and the first true country of democracy. That would destroy our own economy. Rather, it is to inform you of the price you will be expected to pay if you interfere with China’s destiny.” The Ambassador handed Jason Thornton a letter. Jason Thornton extended his hand and took it.
Dear President Thornton:
The People’s Republic of China is most distressed that you, the President of the greatest nation of the Twentieth Century and our greatest trading partner, would threaten our nation with nuclear holocaust when we pose absolutely no threat to you.
You have expressed concern about the possibility of our invasion of Iran and the threat we pose to the Persian Gulf area, the Middle East in general, and the flow of petroleum to your county, Europe, Japan and the rest of the world. We assure you, Mr. President, and the rest of the world as well, that we do not intend to invade Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia or any of the Persian Gulf states. We understand your concern for a continued flow of oil into the world market. We will do nothing to disrupt that flow from these sources. We will do nothing which threatens the United States or Europe unless we are similarly threatened. There have already been too many nuclear explosions over the last six months for eternity. Millions have already died this year over misunderstandings. Let us hope there are no more.
Should, however, the United States declare war, or launch an undeclared war in the form of a surprise attack on the People’s Republic of China or her armed forces anywhere in the world, the People’s Republic of China will respond with massive retaliation against your nation. You are no doubt aware that we have numerous nuclear missile carrying submarines armed with both biological and nuclear weapons off both coasts of North America. In addition, the garrison in the Republic of Panama is armed with intermediate range missiles that are tipped with multiple re-entry vehicle warheads that have an interesting array of biological weapons as well as nuclear warheads. Each is programmed to strike a different American target should war erupt between our countries. Should armed conflict come between our countries, it is doubtful that the United States will continue to exist in its present state. The leader of so wise and powerful a nation as the United States with three hundred million citizens would surely not put it in the path of destruction when your nation is not threatened.
The People’s Republic of China most sincerely hopes you will not regard this as a threat or a challenge, but merely as a matter of informing you of our capabilities. You are the leader of the western world, and it is China’s destiny to be the leader of the eastern world. Together, we can ensure that the world will be a peaceful and prosperous world in which to work and play and love.
Most respectfully,
The People’s Republic of China
Jason Thornton took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He looked at the Chinese Ambassador, who avoided his gaze.
“This memorandum certainly spells it out very clearly, Mr. Ambassador. Your country doesn’t want war any more than mine does. Yet you are prepared to go the distance of nuclear war with us if we interfere with your invasion of other countries. To make sure there are no misunderstandings, Mr. Ambassador, I will reiterate. Iran, the Persian Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and Iraq are off limits to China. If one soldier sets foot across any of those borders, make no mistake, we will go to war over it.”
“My country fully understands and appreciates your position, Mr. President. We read western military history in China as well as Asian military history. We are acutely aware of the tragedy that happened through miscommunication and misunderstandings of motives that led to the terrible Russo-Finnish War of 1939-1940. The terrible price paid by both sides that could have been avoided through clear communication if each side only understood from where the other was coming and why. I have the highest confidence that our Supreme Council will honor its word and remain a considerable distance from those borders, sufficiently so that you can monitor those said borders from your now many functional satellites. In fact, I have been authorized to invite you to send your observers and representatives to the eastern side of the borders of those named countries. Your people will be treated as our guests with the greatest attention and care to ensure that no harm comes to them whatsoever. They will be provided with vehicles, guides, or whatever they wish to conduct their observations. Or, they can bring their own vehicles and equipment, whatever you and they decide is fine with us. They will not be interfered with in any way. They will have one hundred percent freedom of movement, to come and go, and go anywhere, at any time, as they choose. They can set up satellite communications and convey their findings to you at any time. In fact, we would be delighted to have their company. We find such experts are usually quite intelligent and most amiable. They make very good company. This invitation extends not only to your government representatives, but to members of the western press as well. If I might add, journalists generally do not make quite as good company as your representatives.”
“Your offer is most generous, Mr. Ambassador. I will share this communication with the appropriate people in this government. I thank you and the People’s Republic for spelling it out so clearly; more so, I must say, than most of your written communications. There is no ambiguity here that we normally find in our written communiqués.”
“Thank you, Mr. President. I am also instructed to inform you that similar letters have been sent to the governments of Russia, Japan, and interested European nations. If there are no other subjects of discussion, then I will be on my way to let you continue with your affairs of state. Thank you for the time and the very excellent tea, which, I understand, is a product of my country.”
“It is, Mr. Ambassador, and I must admit, the world’s finest tea. Give my respects to Mrs. Kuan. Good day, Mr. Ambassador.”
Jason Thornton hit a buzzer on his desk, and Johnny Withers came in to escort the ambassador out. “Peggy, come in, please,” Thornton called over the intercom. He handed her the letter the ambassador had delivered.
“Peggy, make a copy of this for all of the service chiefs, each member of my cabinet, and the chairs of the House and Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Defense. See that they all get it before close of business today. I want to discuss it at our tri-weekly breakfast meeting tomorrow. Label it Top Secret, no Critical. Put a memorandum on it from me that they are not to share this with members of their respective committees at this time.”
Chapter 31
Presidential Friday Staff Meeting, 14 November 2022
