No one believed that the ROC's military — outnumbered by the PLA by at least ten to one, and without the best and most modern military equipment — could repulse an invasion alone. Everything depended on whether the United States would be willing to come to little Taiwan's defense.
That was the big question, of course, and one very much on the minds of Beijing's rulers. The United States had been steadily distancing itself from Taiwan ever since Washington had withdrawn diplomatic recognition from the ROC in favor of the PRC in 1979. And ever since September 2001 the U.S. military had been increasingly committed to the War on Terrorism, in places ranging from Afghanistan and Iraq to Mexico and the continental United States. Beijing might feel certain that the U.S. would not involve itself in yet another war, especially a war in such an unpopular cause as Taiwan's independence.
Which left First Company, SEAL Team Three, in an awkward and unpleasantly exposed position. With orders to take out mobile launchers on the mainland near Xiamen as a symbolic gesture of defiance, they could find their presence suddenly denied by the government that had sent them. To Morton's eye, this one had the smell of a suicide mission.
And he didn't like that one bit.
"The trouble with America's China policy is that Washington never knows what the hell it's doing when it comes to either Mainland China or Taiwan!" Chief Toynbee said, with all the royally self-assured air of one of Seawolf's bona fide China experts. "In short, our China policy sucks!"
Garrett laughed, along with most of the men, officers and enlisted both, gathered in the mess hall for an informal bull session. News of Seawolf's impending visit to Hong Kong had spread through the submarine at something greater than the speed of light, with most of the hands in the know even before Lawless had made the formal announcement at 1500 hours that afternoon.
The upcoming visit to Mainland China, then, was on everyone's mind and in every conversation. Mess tables had been cleared off and wiped down after evening chow, and off-duty members of the crew were beginning to gather in expectation of that night's scheduled movie.
By one of those eerie twists of serendipity that serve to make truth stranger than fiction, the movie that evening was The Sand Pebbles, with Steve McQueen. The epic story of an American gunboat in the 1930s-era China of warlords and revolution seemed uncannily appropriate. Originally, the extra-long movie was scheduled to be shown in two parts spread over two nights, but the CO had decreed that since the Seawolf would be in Hong Kong the following night, the entire three-hour film would be aired in one sitting.
"Look how long we backed Chiang!" Toynbee continued. "And him claiming all along that he and the KMT were the real government of all of China! And until Nixon came along, that's the way we believed it, too. Talk about your tail wagging your big-ass dog!"
"Nixon just saw a chance for the big corporations to make some money in the PRC," someone in the back said.
"Sure," Master Chief Dougherty said. "And what's wrong with that? The idea was to keep the peace, not to go to war with the most populous nation in the world over a bit of real estate the size of Maryland. Backing Chiang all those years was nuts."
"My point exactly," Toynbee said. "It was nuts. But then we started trying to appease Beijing, and we all know that appeasement never works worth shit. We booted Taiwan out of the United Nations and started dealing with them kind of under the table, hoping Beijing wouldn't notice. We kept selling them weapons… but not too many weapons or weapons that were too advanced, because that would make Beijing mad. We wanted to preserve the possibility of doing business with China, but we didn't want to lose the economic miracle that was Taiwan. We tried to keep it both ways."
"Come off it, Chief," Larimer said. " 'Economic miracle'? The Kuomintang ran one of the dirtiest, most corrupt governments in the world."
"Yeah," someone in the crowd called out. "They were corrupt, despotic bastards, but at least they were our corrupt, despotic bastards!"
"The KMT was booted out of office in 'ninety-six, Chief," Garrett pointed out. He'd been reading up on the political situation in Taiwan over the past couple of days. "Their candidate came in a very poor third."
"And who were we supporting in those elections?" Toynbee asked. "Who were we hoping would win? The KMT! And even though the new government has done more real political reform in Taiwan in a few years than the KMT did in fifty-five years of one-government rule, we're still treating Taiwan like some sort of invisible, poor relation. No embassy. No formal relations. All trade handled through the American Institute, a private corporation in Virginia."
"So what's your point, Chief?" Garrett asked. "It was useless to try keeping Communist China isolated, and pure idiocy to just ignore them, to pretend they didn't exist. It's better to talk and trade with them than to fight, right?"
"Yes, sir, it is. But there's such a thing as looking out for your friends, y'know?"
"The KMT was friends with American money," a second-class yeoman named Michaels said. "In fact, they were friends with everybody's money, including every drug lord in the West Pacific! Chiang was the biggest crook and maybe the biggest dictator going out here. Like Diem. Or Noriega."
"Chiang was a puppet," someone else said.
Toynbee shook his head. "Shit, people! I'm not talking about the Kuomintang. Yeah, Chiang was a dictator, and I suppose he was a political tool for us, like Diem was in South Vietnam. Someone we could prop up as a local rallying cry against the Communists. And maybe we should've helped him more, and maybe not. What I'm talking about is the people of Taiwan. The ordinary folks who just want to be free to live their own lives and not have the government — I don't care if it's the KMT in Taipei or the Communists in Beijing— breathing down their necks."
"We've been protecting Taiwan right along," Dougherty pointed out. "The Communists were all set to invade Taiwan fifty-some years ago. And we sent a couple of carrier task forces to the Strait of Formosa and made 'em back down. The way I heard it, there were aircraft on those carriers armed with nukes. We were on the verge of a nuclear shooting war with Red China, and maybe the Soviet Union, too, and all to keep Taiwan from being taken over."
"That was then," Toynbee said, stubborn. "That was before Nixon went to China and we decided to cozy up with Beijing. That was before we decided that Communist China was a legitimate nation, and Taiwan wasn't."
"Come off it, Chief," Lieutenant Tollini said, laughing. "Do you seriously think we should have kept recognizing Taiwan as the only real China?"
"No. I'm just sayin' that our China policy has never made sense. We backed Chiang long after common sense said we should have written him off… but we dumped him when it became convenient. We still guarantee Taiwan's right to exist… but as a kind of non-nation. An aberration on the map. An aberration that's still home to twenty-two million people.
"And now, just when we're up against it and about to go to the wall for Taiwan again, some bureaucrat in D.C. gets the collywobbles and pulls the plug on us. Sends us to fucking Hong Kong on a show-the-flag public relations cruise! Man, it just don't make sense!"