“Spoken like a true Air Force officer, one whose career and retirement are secure,” the President said, with an inquisitive smile.
“And the Air Force makes out pretty well in the new plan, I’ve noticed,” Goff added. “The Air Force and Navy should be thrilled about their new status.”
“I’m speaking as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not just as an Air Force officer, sir,” Vend said to Goff. “I think the plan is a good beginning. It signals a positive change in military strategy for the twenty-first century. It’s a change that I feel is badly needed. I’m completely behind the President.”
“But what will your men say when the changes happen? What will your sister services say?”
“The true soldiers will do what they’re told,” Venti said honestly. “The rest will squawk. They’ll call you a traitor. They’ll call for your resignation, perhaps try to impeach you. That’s when you need to show them the strength of your convictions. Will the public outcry be louder than what your heart is telling your head? If you can listen to your heart while the storm of public and world opinion is beating down on you, everything will turn out okay. That’s your dilemma, sir, not mine.” Venti sighed, looked away for a moment, then added, “And as for my career and retirement: they may be secure, but I’ll still be forever known as the man who presided over the biggest shakeup in U.S. military history since the draft.”
“At least you’re okay with this,” Thorn said. Venti looked sternly at his commander-in-chief, even after the President gave him a wink. To the Secretary of State, Edward Kercheval, the President went on, “Okay, Ed, I know you’ve been waiting for a crack at me. Fire away.”
“You know how I feel about this plan, sir,” Kercheval said ominously. Unlike Goff and most others in Thorn’s administration, Edward Kercheval, former ambassador to Russia in the Martindale administration and a career State Department employee, was not a close friend of the President’s. But the President insisted on open dialogue and direct communication between the Cabinet officers and the Oval Office, and Kercheval had made it clear early on that he would take every opportunity to do so. “I’m afraid this plan will undermine our entire foreign policy structure. Hundreds, if not thousands, of programs, agreements, letters of understanding and memoranda on hundreds of issues and topics, from diplomatic agreements to aviation to intelligence listening posts to food shipments, rely in part on security guarantees put in place decades ago. Your plan threatens to destroy all of those protocols.”
“And we’re bound to abide by these agreements,” the President asked, “even if I feel they’re harmful to the nation?”
“Those agreements are contracts, Mr. President,” Kercheval said. “Unilaterally breaching a contract carries consequences — legal action, loss of prestige, loss of credit, loss of mutual cooperation, loss of trust. Maybe even more dire consequences.”
“So I’m stuck with agreements and commitments I never negotiated, I don’t understand, and no one in Washington can explain.”
“With all due respect, Mr. President, your job, and ours, is to make yourself familiar with all those treaties and agreements,” Kercheval insisted. “That’s why we have a government and a bureaucracy — to help keep track of all there is to know about government. Simply implementing your program isn’t the proper way to do it. The best way is to renegotiate the treaties and agreements you find objectionable. You don’t just knock over the first domino in the row, because then they’ll all fall over, one by one, and you may not be able to stop it once it starts. You take your time and remove one domino at a time, or you stack them differently, or you reinforce them so when another hits it, from any direction, it will still stand.”
“You forgot the other way, Ed: you get up off your chair, away from the table, and stay home,” the President said.
“Then none of the other kids on the block will want to come over to your house and play,” Kercheval suggested, reluctantly playing along with the awkward simile.
“I think they will,” the President said. “Because when some other bully comes along and knocks down those dominos, and they’re not strong enough to stop it from happening, they’ll come back to us.”
“So you want to play foreign policy blackmail with the rest of the world, sir?” Kercheval asked. “My way or the highway? That doesn’t sound like responsible government to me, sir. With all due respect.” It was obvious Kercheval accorded very little respect at all when he said, “With all due respect.”
“Responsible government starts with someone taking the responsibility, and that’s what I’m going to do,” the President said. “I made a promise to the American people to protect and defend the Constitution. I know exactly what that means.”
“Mr. President, I don’t question your motives or your sincerity, or else I never would have agreed to serve on your Cabinet,” Kercheval said. “I’m just trying to advise you on what’s in store for you and this government if you go ahead with this plan. A lot of nations, institutions, and individuals around the world owe their way of life — perhaps even their very life—to the perception of the peace, strength, and security of the United States of America. What you are proposing might erase a lot of that. That could cause a ripple effect that will wash over the entire world.”
“I’m well aware of that, Ed—”
“I don’t think you are, Mr. President,” Kercheval interjected.
The others in the Oval Office turned and looked at Kercheval with shock, then at the President. Even Kercheval expected an explosion. Although Thomas N. Thorn’s public persona was one of quiet, peaceful, dignified ease with the world, they all knew that the President had once been a trained professional killer — some powerful emotions bubbled just below the surface.
“Edward, the United States has been obsessed with dealing with these little rogue nation brushfires, ever since the Persian Gulf War,” the President said. “Somalia, Haiti, Iraq twice, Bosnia, Kosovo, North Korea — we seem to have peacekeeping forces in every corner of the planet. Then, when a major confrontation such as China flares up, we don’t have the resources to pull together to counter them. We have to rely on unconventional forces to do something that our regular forces should do, and I’m not comfortable with that.
“The way I see it, the problem is twofold: our forces are too big and unwieldy to respond quickly enough, and we’re spending too much time, resources, and attention on these little regional brushfires. Not one peacekeeping operation we’ve undertaken, with the possible exception of Haiti, has been successful. We’ve wasted billions of dollars and a lot of international prestige on operations that have not advanced American peace and security one bit. I’m tired of it, I think our military is tired of it, and the American people are tired of it.”
“These ‘brushfires,’ as you call them, could cause a much wider conflict, sir,” Kercheval maintained. “There was never any doubt about Iraq — they threatened the West’s primary oil supply. Other regions, such as the Balkans, are not as clear, but just as important. Ethnic violence in the Balkans has directly caused one world war and indirectly caused another. By intervening in these small conflicts, we’ve prevented them from escalating into much more serious, continentwide wars.”
“I wasn’t convinced during the campaign, and I’m not convinced now,” the President said. “We were assured by the previous administration that intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo was in our national interest. Now I’ve received all the data that the previous commanders-in-chief received, and I don’t see it. Either I’m not as smart as they were and I’m missing something, or there is nothing there that threatens our peace and security. Which is it, Edward?”