Philip Freeman was a tall, distinguished-looking man, with close-cropped dark hair that had gone gracefully, tastefully gray on the sides, and small, quick eyes. He rose through the ranks from a know-nothing Army ROTC second lieutenant from Niagara University in New York, two tours in Vietnam as an artillery and mortar platoon commander, a tour at NATO Headquarters in Belgium, innumerable professional military courses and staff positions, commander of U.S. European Command, Army chief of staff, and assistant to the President’s National Security Advisor, before becoming the highest-ranking military officer in the United States.
Freeman had been privileged to be a witness of the tremendous sea changes that had occurred in the world over the past five years. Unfortunately, now it seemed as if he was seeing a reversal of those changes — just as quickly as change happened, regional and ethnic conflict was threatening to tear it all apart just as quickly.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff and representatives of the President’s National Security Council staff had just viewed the incredible videotape shot by U.S. Air Force cameramen in the backseats of Turkish and Ukrainian fighter planes. They saw the entire intercept, heard the radio calls — the cameramen used “Y” cords to plug their video cameras into the fighter’s interphone — and saw the big Russian transport get blown to pieces by Moldovan surface-to-air missiles.
“No one survived?” Air Force general Martin Blaylock, the curmudgeonly chief of staff of the Air Force, asked. “I saw several ‘chutes …”
“Our information comes from press releases and official memoranda from the Moldovan government,” Albert Sparlin, assistant deputy director for Eastern European Affairs of the Central Intelligence Agency, replied. Sparlin was providing a lot of background data on the incident, stuff the Defense Intelligence Agency normally does not gather on its own. “I wouldn’t exactly call it reliable information. If the Moldovans or Romanians captured any Russians, the first thing they’d do is declare them dead — it’s easier to extract information from a prisoner who thinks he’s dead than one who knows he’s alive. Judging by the tape, several may have survived. But the Moldovan Army pulled off a big one.”
“Great. The Russians are ready to blow Moldova off the map over this Dniester stuff — if they find out they’re violating their prisoners, they’ll kick their asses for sure,” Freeman said, feeling a headache coming on.
Everyone assembled in the Command Center knew that when the Russians living in the Dniester region declared themselves independent from Moldavia and formed the Dniester Republic, it had gone up Moldavia’s ass sideways. And, of course, Mother Russia couldn’t wait to step in and “help” Dneister remain a separate Republic from the despised Moldavians. They knew that it all went way back to when Moldava was once a province of Romania. Moldova was ceded to Russia in 1940 as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany. They have, and always will, loathe the Russians and the Russians have felt, thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, very proprietary of Moldavia (even though the country declared independence from the then-USSR in 1991). The Russians felt especially proprietary now with regards to Dniester. It was a situation that had been brewing to the boiling point.
“All right,” Freeman continued, “I’ve got your staff recommendations, so let’s put all this together so I can recommend a military course of action.”
“If the President even asks you for one,” scoffed Admiral Robert Marise, Chief of Naval Operations.
There was a general nod of agreement around the table at that remark. The President, a young southern Democrat, had to be the most blatantly antimilitary president to come along since Rutherford B. Hayes. In the President’s eyes — and, it was noted, in the eyes of his powerful wife, a former attorney who was known around Washington as the Steel Magnolia — the military was nothing but an overblown, unnecessary cash drain that needed to be plugged.
“Russia has publicly threatened Moldova for shooting down the transport,” Freeman went on, “and accused Romania of supplying the weapons, and even accused the Ukraine and Turkey of assisting in the downing by broadcasting and highlighting the transport’s position with the fighters. They think Turkey is assisting the Ukraine, like Romania is assisting Moldova, in driving out all ethnic Russians from their lands and their high positions in these former republics’ governments.”
“You think Russia has named all of its potential targets for retaliation in that statement, Philip?” Marine Corps commandant Roger Picco asked.
“I’m sure of it, Roger,” Freeman grumbled. “The border incursions, the sniper attacks, the firefights, the angry words have all been intensifying over the years. Now, ever since Turkey has come out in favor of Ukraine’s admittance into NATO, not to mention its condemnation of Russia for its aggressiveness in the Black Sea region, Russia has been rattling the saber even harder. They say they’re being backed into a corner: I say they see their buffer states and regional influence disappearing, and they want to stop the hemorrhaging. The hard-liners have taken charge, gentlemen. We can’t afford to just sit back and wait for this thing to blow up in our face.”
“But selling any sort of military action to the President will be nearly impossible.” Admiral Marise sighed in exasperation, as if his earlier remark hadn’t been understood. “He doesn’t want to know about the chances of success or failure — he assumes we’ll come out of it unscathed — but he’ll want to know how much it will cost.”
“And then, when Congress comes up with a number,” added Army general Patrick Goff, chief of staff of the Army, “the President believes them instead of our figures.”
“I didn’t ask for a commentary, gentlemen,” Freeman interrupted. “And we should know better than to air our dirty laundry in front of someone who’s not wearing a primary-colored suit.” He looked right at the CIA representative.
Sparlin of the CIA laughed along with the Joint Chiefs, then added, “Hey, I’m with you guys — when the President’s not hammering away at the Pentagon budget, he’s taking a flamethrower to our intelligence budget. But I see big problems in Eastern Europe if we don’t do something. Russia lost its access to the Black Sea and the Baltic when the Soviet Union broke up. They got it back when they formed the Commonwealth of Independent States, but now that the CIS has broken up, they’ve lost it again. Russia’s not going to stand for that, especially not that wild-card Velichko. This Moldova thing might be their best opportunity to take action.”
“Then we have to convince the President to act — diplomatically as well as militarily,” General Blaylock of the Air Force decided. “We lost a lot of face when Germany led NATO in the Yugoslavia crisis. We tossed in a few planeloads of MREs and managed to get a few C-130s shot down over Bosnia — then Germany leads NATO into the region, and everyone comes to the bargaining table. We still got egg on our face from that one. Now do we want Turkey to take the lead in doing something about the Russian crisis or just play with ourselves?”