‘I know,’ Nate said, but he listened.
‘So… you run along to your new command in Siberia. You want a worthy enemy to worry about, just look south.’
‘This Siberian deployment is just what I always dreamed of,’ Nate said in a sarcastic tone. ‘You know what the manuals call these things? “Operations other than war,”’ he said in disgust.
‘You’d prefer war? she asked.
‘No-o-o. It’s just… I didn’t put this uniform on to command blue helmets. I’m trained for war, Lydia, not humanitarian relief missions, or peacekeeping, or counterterrorism.’
Her head hung low. Her hair covered her face. ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ she mumbled.
‘What?’
She cleared her throat and wrapped another dish — changing the subject and tone. ‘You know, there were no Russians in Siberia till the mid-1600s,’ she said — beginning her lecture. ‘They “discovered” the Bering Strait in 1648. The first clashes with the Chinese were two years later, but the Chinese held onto their territory. Russia and China signed the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. It gave the Amur River basin to China, but the Russians kept pressing east — as far as Fort Ross, California, by 1812.’
She packed another plate. Nate waited in silence — listening.
‘The-e-en,’ she resumed in an airy voice, ‘China disintegrated. The British, French, Dutch, Germans — they all feasted on the carcass. But less noticeably in the north, the Russians pushed down the Amur and Ussuri Rivers and planted the flag at Vladivostok in 1860. The British finally stopped them, but the Russians hung onto Manchuria, which they industrialized.’
‘Then the yang,’ Nate said. He didn’t know the history, but he knew his wife.
‘Then came the yang — the Japanese. The Russians were the preeminent power in the Far East. Then the Japanese won the Chinese-Japanese War in 1895 and the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Then, the yin,’ she said — her head swaying in time with her story — ‘when the Russians again seized Manchuria at the end of World War Two and infected China with Communism. Communism practically killed the philosophy of Confucius, but now Communism is itself dead. China’s really a post-Communist, socialist country. Nobody believes in Marxism-Leninism any more. And the Chinese nationalists are taking advantage of the crisis in faith. They’re filling the ideological void with charges that western countries are stifling China’s emergence as a great power. Interfering with internal Chinese affairs in Tibet and Taiwan. Practicing moral superiority in human rights that’s especially repugnant in light of Britain’s opium trade and the wars it fought to protect it.’
‘You realize, of course, that I wrote a Command and General Staff School paper on the rise of nationalism in…’
‘You know the dates and the facts and the names. But what you don’t know is the mind set. That’s because you’re Western. You’re a hopeless Eurocentric, Nate Clark.’
Nate rolled his eyes. ‘And you’re not European to the bone — culturally, I mean?’
‘No! Not completely. You see China as this overpopulated country that once, a lo-o-ong time ago, used to be a big deal. Then, the West hit their stride and developed steam engines and the riding lawnmower, and boom… China’s a third world country. But the Chinese see things completely differently! Europeans see things in nice straight lines. Linear progress. You start at A, then with hard work you advance and you get to В and then to C. But the Eastern way of thinking — the Chinese way — is the yin and the yang.’
‘I know all that,’ Nate said.
‘No, you don’t! You think the West has passed the East through technological and social progress, and that’s the end of it. But Chinese view history as cyclical, like a pendulum, swinging from one side but always coming back ’round to the other. The yin and the yang. They see that despite the recent scribblings of Western historians, China is the true center of the world — “The Middle Kingdom.” “Foreigner” and “barbarian” are the same word — someone whom they saw as equal parts human — meaning Chinese — and ape. The point is that the Chinese have been down for a few hundred years. But they believe that sooner or later they’re going to be back on top for a few hundred years. And it’s what they believe that’s important.’
‘But you aren’t denying that there’s such a thing as “progress,” are you?’
‘No, of course not! The point is that the West has such a short history, really, and it’s completely ethnocentric. What Europe sees is the rise of a truly superior people that will, presumably, forever outpace the lesser peoples of the rest of the world. But the Chinese see Europe as yet another pretender. Another temporary challenge like the Mongols to be overcome in due time. The yin, for which there will most certainly be a yang.’
‘Meaning what — specifically?’
‘Meaning,’ Lydia said, ‘that the Chinese, at the end of the second millennium of the Western calendar — but well into the fourth by the Chinese — might well be thinking it’s about time for the yang. That the power of the Russians who occupied Asia to the north and called it “Siberia” might be on the wane. And that China might just be on the rise. Ready to join the Asian Tigers on the Pacific Rim. Can you imagine, Nate, the economic might of one and a half billion Chinese if they attained the per capita GNP of the Japanese? Or even that of the Koreans or Taiwanese? The Chinese economy has been growing at double digits for a decade, and what have they been doing with that economic might?’
Nate’s gaze was unfocused, but he was totally transfixed by Lydia’s words. ‘Buying weapons… from the Russians, mainly.’
‘And so now they’re mobilizing. Millions and millions of men — their biggest asset.’
‘They’re just getting the glut of trouble-making teenagers off the streets,’ Nate protested. ‘What was it Lin Hoa said in that speech he gave in Beijing? That Chinese youth are “besotted by the drunkenness of prosperity.” The old Communist octogenarians are trying to dry out a population they think is too spoiled by Coca-Cola and blue jeans. That call-up is their way of giving this generation a little discipline.’
Lydia was nodding through all of what Nate said. This time, it was her eyes drifting off into space. Her lips parted, and with a nod she grabbed Nate’s hands. ‘You’re right, Nate. This is just like the Cultural Revolution in the Sixties. A blooding of the young. A revival of the spirit of hard combat. The unity forged by fighting against the odds. They want discipline. Discipline to begin the new century. To assert themselves. To make the Twenty-first Century the Chinese Century like the Twentieth was the American. Don’t you see? They want discipline, Nate — the discipline of war.’
The Secretary of Defense slowed the Range Rover as he approached the road construction signs. The signs hadn’t been there that morning when he and the German Defense Minister had left the isolated lodge for a half-day of fly fishing.