If India declared the Surya, it would then equalize China’s DF-32 solid-fuel 12,800 kilometre range missile, whose technical guidance system had been supplied by Russia.
India and China would have only a handful of missiles compared to Russia, which would remain the undisputed leader of the bloc. When all three powers lined up against the United States, Washington would think again about humiliating the developing world and committing another Balkan-style campaign.
But now, suddenly, unity within Gorbunov’s tripartite bloc was threatened. Pakistan, China’s ally, had carried out the first nuclear attack since Hiroshima. India would respond within a matter of hours. If China became involved, it could take generations for the strategic alliance to recover.
The Russian President postponed meetings with his Defence and Foreign Policy teams, then personally telephoned the Chinese Ambassador, Kang Suyin, who was at the residence but awake. Gorbunov asked her to come straight round. They met alone in Gorbunov’s sprawling office, just off the cabinet room. Kang was a graduate from Moscow University and they spoke in Russian.
‘I urge you not to get involved,’ began Gorbunov. ‘If you do, there will only be one winner, the United States.’
Kang nodded cautiously: ‘Possibly you are right. But it is more complex.’
‘We don’t have time for complications,’ urged Gorbunov. ‘You shared with us the outrage of the Kosovo operation in 1999. You watched as American missiles reduced your Embassy in Belgrade to rubble. We watched as NATO seized territory from one of our closest strategic allies in Europe. All of us, including India, were appalled and have tailored our defence needs to meet future threats from the United States. Against such a global policy, it is not worth defending Pakistan.’
‘It isn’t Pakistan,’ said the Ambassador. ‘It is mostly Tibet, and partly Central Asia.’
‘Tibet is a wart. She is too small to cause any real damage. We are all concerned about Central Asia…’
‘Can you persuade India to stop interfering?’
‘I don’t have time. We need decisions within the hour. But what I can promise you is another six Typhoon-class nuclear-powered submarines, ready armed with nuclear missiles, if you stand back.’
‘And if we don’t?’
‘I will have no option but to consider ending military cooperation.’
‘That is a small carrot and a big threat.’
‘Suyin,’ said Gorbunov, ‘I have known you for many, many years as we have witnessed the emergence of our two countries. I have envied China in its economic determination. You covet our military arsenal. As I have encouraged Russians to take a lead from you in economic policy, please impress upon your President to take a lead from us on military policy. We have the experience of the Cold War and we know the bitter taste of defeat. If you take the carrot, China will be a formidable naval power in the region. If you fight India over Tibet right now, you will be hauled back fifty years.’
‘You’re wrong, Vlad,’ said Kang, leaning forward in her chair. ‘At the end of the Cold War, you stood isolated. The industrialized democracies were against you, as was China. We have gone about our development with greater patience. We experimented with Dragon Strike and found that the United States did not have sufficient backbone for an all-out war. There is a view in Beijing, which I agree with, that this might now be the time to test the challenges on our western borders.’
‘You’ll play into the American’s hands and get the Russian people worried as well.’
Kang laughed: ‘You have nothing to worry about!’
‘All right,’ said Gorbunov. ‘But you’ll reinforce the view that China, like we were, is ideologically bent on regional, if not world, domination. Once that is believed, co-existence with the United States will be impossible. The pressures to contain the last major one-party state will be immense until you transform yourself into a democratic society. No American president can be seen to be weak with you.’
‘But they have been and always will be,’ said Kang. ‘Your Marxist ideology was very different to ours. You avowed its determination to maintain Communist parties in power, by force if necessary. You intervened in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, threatened to do so in Poland and even in China. We have no such ambitions, no international network of Communist parties to undermine Western positions. They may think we run a repressive one-party state, but we threaten no Western democracy and we are hauling tens of millions of people out of poverty.’
‘So you’re going to…’ Gorbunov paused.
‘It’s called Operation Dragon Fire. Yes, Vlad, we’re going to do it. What will you do?’
‘Confine it to Tibet and the border, and it will be business as usual.’
As soon as he had walked Kang to the steps of the building and shown her into her car, Gorbunov telephoned the American Ambassador, Milton Ashdown. Ashdown arrived at the President’s private office within fifteen minutes.
‘Please tell President Hastings that Russia would like India and Pakistan to solve this problem without outside interference.’
Ashdown had made significant contributions to Hastings’s election campaign and the two men were personal friends. But he was primarily a businessman who was finding the intricacies of diplomacy difficult. Ashdown also had little time for academic theorists who argued for any alternative system of government which opposed democracy and the free market.
‘I will pass on your message. No doubt the President will want to speak with you directly. But, with all respect, if the free world is threatened by nuclear war, the United States will do everything within its power to stop it — not minding whose sovereign territory we violate.’
‘That’s what I feared,’ said Gorbunov.
Newsroom, BBC Television Centre, London
The midnight radio bulletin had just finished. On the second floor, BBC News 24 interrupted its sports news to flash the Pakistani nuclear attack. In another part of the BBC’s giant newsroom, World Service Television News had broken into its programming fifteen seconds earlier. Only a handful of staff was on duty in the main news-gathering area, a horseshoe of desks, computers and banks of television screens. The World Duty Editor had made one telephone call to the home of the World Assignments Editor, who was on stand-by.
He then called the Asia hub bureau in Singapore, from where correspondents, producers, camera crew and technicians were despatched to the BBC bureaux in Islamabad and Delhi. They left from Hong Kong, Singapore and Beijing. Reinforcements joined them from Jerusalem, Cairo and London.
Satellite transmission dishes, satellite telephones, portable edit packs, flak jackets and nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) warfare protection suits were loaded on commercial flights with the reporting teams. Within a few hours, the BBC would have the most formidable news reporting system in place to cover what could become the world’s first nuclear war.
Briefing
Burma, or Myanmar, is a cultural and geographical buffer between East and South Asia. From 1885 until the 1930s, Burma was governed as part of British India. It was occupied by Japan from 1942 to 1945, and won independence in 1948. After just fourteen years of democracy, the army seized power and Burma went into a state of self-imposed isolation. Troops brutally repressed democracy demonstrations in 1988. The regime ignored a landslide election victory for the opposition party in 1990 and jailed its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Increasingly shunned by the international community, Burma was courted by China. Chinese engineers built roads and military bases. The army was equipped with Chinese weapons. By the turn of the century, the Hanggyi Island naval base and the Cocos Islands were being built to take Chinese naval ships, threatening India’s predominance in the Indian Ocean region.