Fifty-six year old Arkansan John Paul McConnell had replaced LeMay as Chief of Staff of the Air Force that spring. Until the uprising in Washington in December the role of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs had been filled by one of the service heads; since then President Kennedy had demanded the Chairman should be the full-time professional head of all the US Armed Forces.
In respect of the military organization of the US it was the last sensible decision the Commander-in-Chief had made…
One by one the other Chiefs raised their eyes from the documents lying dangerously on the table before them and met LeMay’s gaze.
Curtis LeMay had a reputation for being a drama queen, for never knowingly underselling an order but inter-service rivalries apart the Chiefs had rowed in behind him in recent months. When it came to charismatic leadership they deferred to the master, a task made easier because they appreciated how little Old Iron Pants or his staffers attempted to meddle in their individual service’s business.
“All the crap we’ve been hearing about bringing ‘our boys’ home and never getting drawn into somebody else’s wars,” LeMay continued sourly, “all that bullshit about America First, well,” he sighed angrily, “that’s the way it’s going to be in future!”
Nobody said a word.
“We’re cutting Europe adrift,” LeMay said with a melodramatic sarcasm. By the fall the Sixth Fleet will pull out of Malta and the bomber and fighter wings we’ve got based in Spain will come home. The CIA can keep their people in Ireland, Madrid and England, but embassy security details apart everything is to be repatriated to ‘the Americas’, which henceforth along with South East Asia and the Pacific Rim Countries, Japan and South Korea mainly, will be The US’s only strategic focus.”
Still, nobody else said a word.
“That’s the Fulbright Doctrine. We rebuild out military and diplomatic clout at home. We don’t get involved in overseas wars. We don’t put grunts on the ground, aircraft in the air or ships on the water in places where they’re liable to be drawn into ‘local regional conflicts’ where no US vital interest is involved. The Middle East falls into this ‘non vital’ category; the Administration has had studies carried out which conclude that we don’t need Arabian oil. Apparently, there’s plenty of the black stuff under the North American continent, in Canada — although nobody’s asked the Canucks about how they feel about Standard Oil taking over the country — and up in Alaska, so along with South American and Indonesian oil we’ll be just fine.” He shook his head in derision. “Leastways, for the next couple of election cycles!”
The other chiefs had seen those reports; and by and large discounted them because unexploited reserves under the ground did not count. It took years to develop oilfields in forested regions, longer to economically exploit reserves under mountainous regions or tropical jungles, coastal extraction was still ruinously costly and how the Hell was anybody going to extract oil from beneath the frozen wildernesses of Alaska?
McDonald, the Chief of Naval Operations shook his head.
“That must be why every ton of bunker oil costs the Navy eighty percent more than it did before the Battle of Washington,” he observed dryly.
LeMay cleared his throat.
“The Administration’s medium term thinking is to apply pressure to the Brits to abandon their nuclear weapons, and if that fails to impose commercially and financially sanctions on them until they see sense. In the meantime the President believes the surviving powers — and the geography and religious tensions in the Middle East — will an ‘adequate medium-term buffer against further Soviet aggression’.”
“That’s crazy,” John McConnell observed dispassionately. The Chief of Staff of the Air Force was wearing a perplexed, irritated frown. “Every intelligence report we’ve got from the Iraq theatre of operations indicates that unless the British ‘go nuclear’ they’re going to get kicked out of Abadan. How long do we think the Soviets will permit free navigation in the Persian Gulf after they’ve seized Umm Qasr, Basra and Abadan?”
The Chief of Naval Operations was staring at the table top.
“You knew about this, David?” George Decker inquired softly.
“Yes,” David McDonald confessed. He glanced to Curtis LeMay for leave to elaborate. “The Chairman,” he nodded to LeMay, “gave me a heads up on the way things were going several days ago in the light of pre-existing deployment schedule of Carrier Division Seven. The President has since ordered me to prepare to aggressively deploy CD Seven inside the Persian Gulf. He believes that the presence of the Kitty Hawk in the Gulf will deter the British from ‘going nuclear’, and in the event that this fails, will deter the Soviets from retaliating. He also feels that Kitty Hawk’s presence will be sufficient to uphold our legitimate strategic military and commercial interests in the region without necessitating the commitment of ground troops in Arabia.”
David Shoup stirred. The Marine’s expression was thunderous.
“What exactly is Carrier Division Seven supposed to do if the Brits use nukes, Admiral?” He demanded lowly.
McDonald hesitated, looked to LeMay.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs shook his head.
“In that event Admiral Bringle,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said wearily, “the commander of Carrier Division Seven will be authorized to take whatever steps he deems necessary to neutralize British air, sea and ground operations in the northern Gulf. For example, he has discretion to place his ships and aircraft between those of the British and the Soviets.”
“We hope and pray it won’t come to that,” McDonald added fervently.
John McConnell was horrified.
“We could end up in a shooting war with the British,” the Chief of Staff of the Air Force protested.
“Gentlemen!” Curtis LeMay barked. “The background to this discussion is that Your President, My President is in the process of locking the Soviets into a non-aggression pact. Our side of the deal is that we ‘manage’ the British in the Gulf; that is the price of peace. Does any man around this table doubt that we need peace overseas? Does any man around this table want to go through what we went through on October 27th sixty-two again? How many more American lives are we prepared to put on the table to do what all of us around this table think is the right thing?”
Left to their own devices the Chiefs would have poured men and aircraft into the Gulf; B-52s would already have been pummeling the Red Army, and F-4 Phantoms clearing the skies of Iraq of MiGs; but then left to their own devices none of the men around the table would have chosen to wage war on the Chicago Front with their hands tied behind their backs and one foot chained to a stake in the ground!
“I don’t know Bringle?” McConnell admitted, turning to the Chief of Naval Operations. “Is he up to this?”
The other Chiefs were giving the CNO thoughtful looks. None of the men in the room would have willingly placed a man like William Bringle, the commander of Carrier Division Seven, in a position where a single misjudgment, or the slightest miscalculation, could easily start World War IV.
David McDonald nodded.
“Bringle’s a good man. I plan to fly out to India to brief him personally in the next thirty-six hours. Kitty Hawk is paying a goodwill visit to Bombay.”
Chapter 24
‘You’ve done good work, Doctor,’ Curtis LeMay had said to Caroline Konstantis at Luke Air Force Base just five days ago. ‘But all good things come to an end sooner or later.’