“We can have three brigades of the 82nd Airborne in Taiwan inside of two days,” said Enderlich. The Pacific Fleet had moved closer to the island and the third air wing was in transit to Guam.
“I wasn’t asked to authorize that,” said the president.
“I did,” said Jay MacMahon. “Mr. President, if we’re considering any kind of action, we need sufficient force in place.”
“The staff has three plans, Mr. President,” said Enderlich, “and I’d like to go through them with you.”
“Plans for what?”
“Plans for defending Taiwan. First, we have a preemptive option.”
“Wait.” Benton looked at Enderlich imperatively. “The government of the United States has never committed itself to the military defense of Taiwan. That’s clear. And I made that clear again. President Tan knows it.”
“We’ve always had plans,” said MacMahon.
“This administration is not going to war over Taiwan. Period.”
“What, then, do you propose to do, Mr. President?” asked Admiral Enderlich. “Every clause of the Manila Understanding has been breached.”
The president opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, shook his head. “I’m not going to war over Taiwan. What happens if I do? Say we stop them. What do they do next?”
“There is no next,” said Larry Olsen. “Superpowers never fight each other directly. They fight by proxy.”
Alan Ball shook his head. “China’s been looking for a chance to flex its military power for years.”
“And Taiwan’s the proxy. That’s why by moving to defend it, we bring this to an end. That’s it. Nothing else they can do. They have to back down.”
“And we’ll be there for years,” said Ball. “Mr. President, Nleki has said he’s prepared to send an emissary to talks between Taipei and Beijing.”
“That gives it away right there. Once you start talking, you concede there’s something to talk about. Mr. President, Taiwan’s a crucial ally of this country. If China swallows Taiwan, it’ll leave our credibility in tatters.”
“At some stage, China has always been going to get Taiwan back,” said Ball. “Everyone knows that. Implicitly, the Manila Understanding was based on that recognition. A genuinely sovereign state doesn’t need something like the Manila Understanding to protect it.”
“Sir,” said Enderlich, “we need to do something. We’re already in a standoff. Our boys are flying alongside Chinese planes ten times a day, every day of the week. All it takes is one pilot to fly a little too close to another and we’ve got an incident.”
“The tinder’s dry,” said MacMahon. “Right now it only needs a spark.”
There was silence.
“Jay,” said Benton eventually. “Tell the government of Taiwan that we won’t be sending troops.”
“Sir,” said MacMahon, “with respect, I think that’s something you should tell President Tan yourself.”
“I will. I’ll call him this morning.”
“It’s a mistake,” said Olsen. “China won’t go to war. They’re pushing. If you don’t send the troops,
then
they go to war. Then they invade.”
“That’s your judgment,” said Ball.
“Of course it’s a judgment.”
“If they get Taiwan, do they come back to the table on the Carbon Plan?” said Ben Hoffman.
“Ben,” replied Olsen, “by that argument, you give them Taiwan to get them in on the plan. I take a different view. If they get Taiwan, they feel so confident they become even more intransigent.”
“But I might be right.”
“Are you feeling lucky? If we’re going to sacrifice Taiwan to find out, why didn’t we do that back in Oslo and save ourselves all this trouble?”
“Good question,” muttered Ball.
“I’ll tell you why. Because if we give on something, they’ll come back to us on something else. They will keep taking. True, the harder we are, the harder they’ll push, so right now it feels uncomfortable. But if we keep going, at some point they’ll stop. They will blink. If we’re still standing, if we’re still pushing back hard at that point, we win.”
“That’s absolutely wrong,” said Ball. “This is way too public now. It’s in their media, it’s all over their domestic scene. They have to win on something or they’re discredited at home. And one thing the party will not accept is to lose face at home. We have to give them something.”
“So you give them this?” demanded Olsen. “Because they’ve set themselves up domestically, we have to make sure they get it? That’s the greatest argument for appeasement I’ve ever heard!”
“It’s the reality.”
“It’s fucking outrageous! I’m sorry, that is not an argument! That’s not a reason to give them Taiwan.”
Benton broke in. “For the hundredth time, this is not about Taiwan!”
“With respect, sir, it is!” Olsen gazed at him. “Mr. President, I know the linkage pains you, but it’s there. They’ve created that linkage. The way to carbon is via Taiwan. And I’m telling you straight, Mr. President, right now you’re the only person in the world who refuses to accept it.”
There was a hush in the room. Benton knew that every eye was on him. He took a deep breath. Maybe Olsen was right. Maybe he couldn’t keep resisting it anymore.
“Then explain it to me,” he said quietly. “If we do nothing, what do they do? Do they take Taiwan, or do they keep talking?”
“They take it,” said Olsen.
“They take it,” said Enderlich, and Jay MacMahon nodded his head.
The president looked at Alan Ball.
“It’s possible,” he said reluctantly. “They’re talking themselves into a corner.”
“They engineer an incident,” said Stu Cohen. “Easy to do. Then they move.”
Enderlich nodded. “That’s probably how they’ll do it.”
“All right,” said the president. “Say they do. What then? Do they turn around and agree to the Carbon Plan?”
“Why should they?” said Olsen. “We’ve just let them take Taiwan. What credibility do we have?”
“The United States government has never stated outright that it wouldn’t let them take Taiwan.”
“With respect, sir, I believe that’s a subtlety that might be lost on your average Chinese citizen in the tsunami of triumphalist nationalism that will swamp China if they take Taiwan.”
“Then that lets them back down on carbon, doesn’t it?” said the president. “There’s our linkage. And at this stage, having watched China invade Taiwan, the rest of the international community is on our side.”
“Are they?” said Jay MacMahon. “Mr. President, I don’t see too many countries coming out in support of Taiwan right now. Frankly, I don’t see too many of them who even give a damn.”
“But they won’t condone force.”
“Even if they don’t, what are they going to do?” Olsen shook his head, almost in amusement. “The EuroCore? Taiwan’s gone, Mr. President. Fait accompli. What are they going to do now? Boycott Chinese business? Can anyone here really see them doing that? If we let them do this, the Chinese get away with it. They will get away with it with impunity, and the last thing they’ll do then is sit down with us to sign up to the Carbon Plan.”
“Alan?” said the president.
Ball frowned. He thought for a moment before he spoke. “It depends, deep down, whether they really think they need to sign up to the plan. If they think they can keep holding out and force us to take bigger cuts, then I think they will. No matter what happens.”
“See?” demanded Olsen. “Even Alan agrees!”
“But that’s what it’s always been about, hasn’t it?” retorted Ball. “Do they really think they need to act on emissions? If they do, then this is a way for them to get something that helps them come to the table. It’s a way of giving something to their base so they create the space in which they can do something painful, something, remember, that threatens the very legitimacy of the regime. But if they can get this, then maybe they can do it.”
“And if they
don’t
believe they really need to cut emissions?” asked the president.
“Then they get something for nothing,” said Larry Olsen.
“Alan?”
Ball shrugged. “I guess they do.”
Joe Benton stared at the dark varnished wood of the table. “I wish I knew what they were thinking,” he murmured.
“Mr. President?” It was Oliver Wu, who had been silent throughout the session. “Sir, I’m not sure if it’s quite as straightforward as this.”
Benton looked up at him. Straightforward? That was an odd way of putting it.
“I think we’re giving the Chinese leadership too much credit for having a single coherent approach. Taiwan is simple for them. If they can get it, they’ll take it. There’s not a single Chinese leader who isn’t committed to getting the island back. But there are big differences among them on how much risk they’d take to get it back. On the one hand, you have some generals who’d invade this afternoon if it was up to them. On the other hand, you have people like Hu and Xuan who wouldn’t put at risk even a fraction of China’s economic stability for the sake of it.”
“Surely someone’s driving this now?”
“Yes, to the extent that this is a serious attempt to recover Taiwan— and remember, we haven’t seen any real action take place. This might all be saber rattling for domestic consumption, or some kind of opportunistic attempt to see how far they can go. But the leadership isn’t going to be sitting around a table like this, all the leadership, and agreeing that first we do this, then this, then this, then we get Taiwan, then we do this, and this, and this on the Carbon Plan. If they’re able to get agreement on what to do about Taiwan, that in itself is a huge achievement, and it’s probably taking all their attention. Beyond that. . . don’t assume there’s a game plan. Anything can happen.”
“And they’d risk that, to get Taiwan?”
“Definitely. China prides itself on its antiquity. They waited ninety-nine years to get back Hong Kong, but they got it in the end. It’s only eighty-five years since they lost Taiwan. To them, that’s like yesterday. It’s the blink of an eye.”
Benton looked at Olsen. “Dr. Wu seems to be saying there’s no linkage, Larry.”
“No, sir,” said Wu quickly. “That’s not exactly what I’m saying. The linkage is that the disruption over the Carbon Plan has put them in a position where maybe they think they’ve got the opportunity to get Taiwan, or maybe they feel they have to get it to shore themselves up, and that’s what they’re focused on. My point is, it’s probably opportunistic. I doubt they have a plan that says what happens next. More likely, what happens next depends on who comes out on top once whatever happens over Taiwan has happened.”
“If Oliver’s right,” said Olsen, “and if we assume whoever’s pushing the hard line on Taiwan would also push a hard line on the Carbon Plan, then our best bet is to make things tough over Taiwan so that person loses credibility.”
“Mr. Secretary,” said Wu, “with respect, taking a hard line on one thing doesn’t necessarily imply that the same person would take a hard line on something else. And on the other hand, if things start to look tough over Taiwan, that person may move to shore up his position and crack down internally even harder while he still can, which means, if he succeeds, there’s even less domestic pressure to push him toward the Carbon Plan. Or we could see a scenario where the tensions build until the party splits into its factions and you get something approaching a civil war, which means you’ve got no one to negotiate with until that’s resolved, and that could be years. In China, that’s a real possibility.”
Benton frowned. He tried to find a simple way through the maze that confronted him. This wasn’t about Taiwan, it was about carbon. Taiwan had become opportunistically entangled with it. But it was about the future of the planet. He wasn’t going to sacrifice that over a part of China that, one way or another, was always going to be recovered by the Chinese. Yet defending Taiwan might be the best thing he could do to safeguard the future of the planet. Maybe it really was his most important bargaining chip. Resist now, trade later. But how Congress, how the American public would react to armed intervention in Taiwan, that was another thing he didn’t know. The media was already divided along predictable lines, some demanding vigorous action, some warning against yet another American involvement in someone else’s backyard. He remembered the hall in Princeton, the sense of division that he had felt descending on the union. In the last weeks, he had asked an awful lot from the American people. He had asked them to follow him into a period of pain now in order to prevent greater pain later. He didn’t know what would happen if he had to add even more.