“What does the JCS think of all this?”
Hendricks shook his head. “Ma’am, we’ve all been whipsawed by this guy lately. Just as soon as I think we’re finally starting to figure out what the hell is going on, Fedorin pulls some more crazy ass sh… crap, and we’re back to square one. It’s… it’s quite frustrating.”
Joanna thought she detected something more in his voice, but let it go. These weren’t her people anymore. “What do we know of the exercise’s intent? Is there a clear theme?”
“Nothing has been formally announced, other than the exercise’s name, but all the indications are that this is a multi-theater, general war exercise. However, given the number of units moving westward, I’d have to say there is a very strong anti-NATO flavor to this one.”
“I noticed that the navy and the air force aren’t involved anywhere near as much as the army. Any theories?” she asked.
“Both the navy and air force appear to have a lot equipment down for repair. There certainly was nothing to suggest this exercise was part of the annual training plan; on the contrary, we’ve heard of some bellyaching from unit commanders.”
Joanna took a deep breath, this whole thing was a “soup sandwich,” to quote her husband. She looked back up at Hendricks and smiled. “I’d better let you get back to work, George. Thank you for coming by.”
“No problem, Dr. Patterson. It’s always enjoyable hashing stuff out with you; just like old times. I’ll send you the summary in a minute.” As Joanna watched him depart, a concerned frown slowly appeared on her face. She’d heard the guarded words, the tight tone of Hendricks’s voice. She made a mental note to ask Bill Hyland how things were going. Her musings were interrupted by a new e-mail with the list of Russian units and a map showing the rough deployment locations for the exercise.
She opened the list and map and started tracing the units’ movements. The general shape of the exercise locations was a shallow crescent running all the way from the Kola Peninsula down to the Georgian border. But as she looked at the assessed starting positions, they looked more than a bit odd. Two of the armies had already started moving following the Belarusian reunification, and then after the incident in Estonia, the Sixth Army near St. Petersburg began moving westward.
Then she saw that the bulk of the Russian forces were moving south, toward Ukraine and Georgia, and north toward the Baltic States. The center was held almost entirely by Belarusian army units. Neither of these made a lot of sense; surely the Russian General Staff couldn’t possibly believe that either Ukraine or Georgia would ever consider launching an attack against the motherland. Nor was it realistic to imagine that NATO would conduct a major thrust through the Baltics. The logistic lift required for such an offensive operation was well beyond NATO’s current abilities. Suddenly, a distant memory tugged on her consciousness.
In 2015 the Rand Corporation ran a series of war games that highlighted the vulnerability of the Baltic States from a Russian invasion and recommended that NATO shore up its conventional deterrence on the eastern flank against this unlikely, though plausible scenario. The debate over the published report’s conclusions waged for many months. Several detractors thought that putting additional forces on Russia’s northeastern border would only stir the pot, but improving the alliance’s existing warfighting capabilities was worth considering. Others believed that the deterrent power intrinsic in the North Atlantic treaty’s Article V was sufficient to keep a struggling Russia at bay. All sides of the debate believed that a war would be catastrophic, nor did they believe it would stay conventional.
Joanna pulled up the report’s executive summary. Even though the judgments were in reference to Vladimir Putin, they were equally applicable to Ivan Fedorin, if not more so. The key assessment that hit home the hardest was the Rand study’s conclusion that Putin viewed NATO’s “presence on Russia’s borders as something approaching a clear and present danger to his nation’s security.” The debate that followed hashed its way through Congress and the NATO hierarchy with an agreement, in principle, to send additional forces to the Baltic States. But before any troops could be deployed, the Sino-Littoral Alliance War erupted and the subsequent worldwide economic crash eliminated the funding. Years later, little had been done to bolster NATO’s eastern flank. However, Russia had fared even worse when the two traditional sources of her national income, arms and oil, dropped to record lows.
She closed the file and slumped back in her chair; none of this was helping her explain Fedorin’s aggressive conduct. If anything, Russia’s economy was in a recession and open warfare is expensive — simply put, they couldn’t afford a war. Even when she tried to look at the situation through Fedorin’s “zero sum game” approach to diplomacy, it still didn’t make any sense. Try as she might, Joanna couldn’t justify her hypothesis that Russia was seriously considering, or actively implementing, a plan to attack the three smaller NATO nations simultaneously with an invasion of Ukraine and Georgia. “NATO would respond,” she said to herself. “We would respond, and then nobody wins.”
Staring at the map, her eyes followed the line of the Russian border from Estonia all the way down to Georgia. She was momentarily distracted by the slight dip around the tiny country of Moldova. Joanna sat upright; Moldova was split pretty much down the middle between pro-Europe and pro-Russia factions. The Russia-leaning group regained power in the 2016 election and civil unrest had been slowly brewing ever since. Then it dawned on her. If the Baltic States, Moldova, Ukraine, and Georgia could all be swept up in one swift stroke, Fedorin would re-establish the western boundary of the former Soviet Union. The Russian Federation would then have the buffer he claimed was desperately needed to keep NATO at bay.
But it always came back to NATO’s commitment to the Baltic States, more accurately the United States’ commitment, as most of the other NATO nations were suffering more from the global economic downturn. For his audacious plan to even have a chance, Fedorin would have to find a way to isolate NATO from the U.S. The Russian president had often used saber rattling to buttress his response to perceived alliance hostile intent, to include the threat of nuclear weapons. Fedorin’s recurring reference to Russia’s nuclear arms as the first line of defense disturbed many diplomats and national leaders, but this was just a cranky, unhappy Russian’s babbling, right? Joanna then remembered an interview with Fedorin in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper. In the article, Fedorin had quoted his predecessor as he outlined his “defensive” strategy to counter the increasing threat to Russia from NATO, both conventional and nuclear—“If a fight’s inevitable, you must strike first.”
“You must strike first,” she mumbled. Suddenly, a cold shiver of awareness sped down her spine.
“My God!” she said gasping. “That’s what it’s for!”
She grabbed the phone and punched Lowell’s number. The secretary answered after the second ring. “Evangeline, it’s Joanna, is my husband still in the Oval Office? He is? Good. Please don’t let him leave until I get there. Thanks.”
With one hand she slammed the phone’s handset while fumbling for a notepad with the other. She hastily scribbled a few notes and then logged out of her account. Before the screen had gone black she was already jogging for the stairs. After that it was a very short walk to the Oval Office.
Mrs. McDowell took one look at Joanna’s face and motioned to the door. The secretary had seen that expression many times before and knew Joanna’s urgency was authentic. So had the Secret Service agent who opened the door without a single word. Joanna gave him a stiff nod as she strode into the office.