by Gene Skellig
President-Elect Parker had an agenda. Her vision was to change the path of the United States and to restore the prominence of the Constitution as the cornerstone document of American identity. She saw herself as a champion of the founding fathers vision for America, and her campaign had been centered on this theme.
Under the former President, the United States had attempted what she considered to be a socialist transformation into a command economy with an obscenely expanded government role. Government interference in the free market was a particular problem, as it was not limited to the wage and price controls that the former administration had resorted to, but also the increasingly frequent interventions and down right manipulations of the marketplace to such an extreme that the capitalist system itself had begun to collapse. The currency crisis, and hyper-inflation that went with a collapsing dollar, was the direct result of this insane explosion of government interference in the life of the nation, she knew. And her task, on day one after all the pomp and ceremony of the Inauguration, was to restore confidence in the United States of America, in the US dollar and in Democracy.
She had to admit that it was not all the fault of the last administration, as the actions of the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve system were at the core of the problem. The profligacy and short-sightedness of Congress should have been constrained by responsible monetary policy rather than being fueled by an unstoppable printing press that was churning out trillions of paper dollars to throw at the economic crisis. The abuse of the world’s reserve currency was the root problem.
The history of the US dollar as a world reserve currency would soon end in failure, Susan Parker knew from the data presented to her by the highly secret briefing she was given by The Secretary of the Treasury. The Federal Reserve had tried everything they could to hide the massive monetary inflation, including making further changes to the definition of inflation. The dishonesty of it reminded her of another president’s famous testimony: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
After quietly removing energy and food costs, and by allowing substitutions of one good for another, the basket of items used to define core inflation had become a basket of goods that had no relation to the items which people actually consumed on a daily basis. Similar chicanery in employment statistics allowed the government to claim that unemployment was only 12%, when it was actually over 30%, if one used the more honest definitions that had once given government statistics real validity. Now the numbers were no longer taken seriously.
All of this sophistry would become a thing of the past once her administration officially took the reins. In order to restore the integrity and servitude of the government for the people, the first order of the day was to restore the Constitution of the United States by returning to sound currency. Among the next highest priorities would be to delouse the US government by making it illegal to earn a living from lobbying for government influence. This, she knew, would be a tall order as the entire machinery of the US Senate, US Congress, and the Executive Branch had become a juggernaut powered entirely by influence peddling. This return to the revolutionary principles that the United States was founded upon would amount to a second American Revolution.
In the days before Inauguration day, however, President Parker was having her eyes opened. She and her Transition Team were briefed-in on every major file that the outgoing administration had been contending with. They were also given advice on key decisions that had yet to be made, in the interest of continuity and stability during the transition.
President Parker and her team soon learned that they would be facing a currency collapse and imminent social collapse within the United States, increased international tensions due to the knock-on effects of the MENE War, and the requirement for direct US involvement in a pre-emptive war with Pakistan.
Susan Parker, along with Joseph Alderman and Jones Webber, her choices for Secretaries of Defense and State, had been given a ninety-minute briefing on the unfolding crisis in Pakistan by their outgoing counterparts. They were told that an Islamo-fascist regime was taking over Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, comprised of over 180 viable Highly Enriched Uranium, HEU-based warheads. The warheads were stored in component form, with the fissile materials stored separately from the explosives packages, and also from the delivery platforms. But the new regime was consolidating control over the arsenal and would be in a position to begin to assemble the weapons systems within weeks. A war between Pakistan and India was imminent.
The briefing then went into the details. India and Pakistan had a long history of conflict which stemmed from the poorly executed division of British India into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The root of the problem was, as with many other crises in the region, with religious divisions left simmering from previous wars. India had shown great restraint after a series of high profile terrorist attacks from groups based in Pakistan.
After it had become clear that the Pakistani Intelligence Directorate had been incompetent if not complicit in the 2008 terrorist attack at Mumbai, India became increasingly distrustful of Pakistan. These events exacerbated the cycle of espionage and subterfuge on both sides, increasing the tension between the two long-time adversaries.
The situation became urgent ten days ago, with a successful coup orchestrated by radicalized Islamic factions within the Pakistani Army. After infiltrating key positions within Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence as far back as 1998, radicalized Islamists loyal to Mualana Abdul Aziz had built up their organization in a patient and methodical manner. They bided their time waiting for the NATO adventure in Afghanistan to come to its inevitable demise. Their goal of staging a coup and converting Pakistan into a true Islamic state under Sharia Law was now being achieved.
On 8 January, the anniversary of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Abdula Aziz’s men swung into action. They took control of the organs of government, radio and television stations, and the vast majority of Pakistani military bases. The nascent True Islamic State immediately began transforming Pakistan’s 180 million people into Shia Muslims, with harsh new laws and Fatwa published on a daily basis in the days following the coup. The speed at which the situation was evolving in Pakistan was alarming, and could not have happened at a worse time for the United States.
Islamic fundamentalists now had over 180 nuclear weapons, averaging 30 kilotons apiece. With the successful fielding of the Shaheen-1 and Ghazvani missiles, the radicalized Pakistani military had a new generation of more accurate missiles that could reach 650 and 300 km respectively. The twenty or so Shaheen-II missiles, moreover, had an extended range of 2,500km, albeit with a smaller 10 Kiloton warhead.
In a highly classified document entitled “Pakistan – Strike Options”, a range of scenarios and corresponding military options was laid out. For a breakdown of the Pakistani state with the emergence of a radicalized Shia regime, there were no easy choices. The plans had been updated in recent years in recognition that NATO forces would lose the war in Afghanistan and be forced to make a strategic withdrawal from the region.
It was a worst case scenario, but one that the United States was required to address. As the MENE War had shown, leaving nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamo-fascists was simply far too dangerous a situation to leave unaddressed.
It would be the Parker administration that would have to complete Operation Peregrine Eagle, or “OPE”. Susan Parker was half way through bursting out in laughter at the obvious nod to Stanley Kubrik’s “Dr. Strangelove”, but choked it back when she realized the full implications of OPE.
“This is madness!” she said, looking at her two closest advisors for support. “We’ll be starting a major war, with a nuclear armed enemy motivated by the Islamo-fascism that has just defeated us in Afghanistan!”
“I know, it’s ludicrous, but unless you come up with a better option, and fast, this is our only option,” the outgoing Secretary of State explained. “The Joint Chiefs have not come up with anything els
e.”
“It’ll be a well-coordinated strike using bunker-buster and other custom-selected munitions,” an Air Force general began explaining. “We will hit all 24 sites simultaneously. This will disrupt their ability to coordinate an attack and deny them the initiative. Follow-on cruise missiles will further dislocate their forces, which will then be destroyed by our Indian allies. The Indians will put 120,000 troops over the border and into all key objectives within 72 hours, and a further 250,000 general-duty troops will seize control of the entire nation within a further 7 days,” he explained.
“We do not need a lecture on basic military doctrine, General Adams,” the incoming Secretary of Defense, Joseph Alderman, objected to the general’s tone. He was going to determine the strategic objectives of any war conducted by the Parker Administration, and not be pushed around by the military.
Without missing a beat, the outgoing Secretary of State jumped in to support the General. “Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, and Libya, this won’t be our war to get bogged down in. It’ll be an Indian operation. Our military liaisons have worked out the details and the Singh administration has not only signed on to the plan, but has repeatedly implored us to help with the opening moves.”
“This really has to happen?”
“Yes, Madame President Elect,” General Adams said, with a more respectful tone. “Our role will be to take out the primary and retaliatory weapons and to hit their Decisive Points to constrain their military capabilities. The Indian military, with the billion plus population to back it up, has the weapons, the proximity, and the political will to defeat these Islamo-fascists once and for all. But they need our support, as they don’t have the deep-penetrating munitions that are essential to this plan,” he concluded. Seeing resignation and acceptance on President-Elect Parker’s face, he went into the details.
“As you can see with the OPE summary, the negotiation and coordination between our military and India has been completed. Phase One, the preparation and pre-positioning of our air strike force, as well as naval units into the Indian Ocean, will be complete by the end of your first week in office. The schedule calls for you to give the Executive Order: “Mandrake”, to begin the stealth bomber and cruise missile attacks. Simultaneously, the Indian invasion begins. They will provide their own air and missile support. They do request that we take out the Pakistani naval forces, which consist of less than a dozen major surface ships and only four functioning SSK diesel subs.”
“What will be the likely Pakistani response to the Indian mobilization over the next two weeks?” Alderman asked.
“While the Pak army is aware of some of the Indian movements, we project that they will be confused and disordered by the initial attacks. The leading units of the Indian thrust will gradually move to their starting off points, disguised in part by a deceptive media story about military assistance to floods in the Jodhpur region. So hopefully India will have the advantage of surprise on their part. The Pakistanis will certainly be reeling from our air strikes,” General Adams said.
“But what about it escalating into a larger-scale war?” asked President-Elect Parker.
“Couldn’t Iran come into it? – and what about China? Don’t they lease a naval base in Pakistan?” interjected Parker’s choice for Sec-Def, Jones Webber. “Aren’t China and Pakistan allies?”
“They were allies,” replied the Secretary of State. “That was until the coup. China is having its own problems with Muslim extremism, so we don’t expect any problems from the Chinese on this one. We have not contacted the Chinese, the Russians, nor any other Security Council members on this issue, other than to schedule a conference on the implications of the emerging new regime in Pakistan for early March in Vienna – a conference we won’t be attending, to say the least,” referring to a deception plan meant to convince the enemy that an attack would not occur until some time after the conference.
“By that time, the war will be over and we’ll be dealing with the fallout from our participation in India’s invasion of Pakistan. That will be your problem, Madame President, but our advice is to make no apologies for the United States standing behind its age-old promise to never allow nuclear weapons to fall into the hands of terrorists.”
After the meeting, once President-Elect Parker had discussed the new information with her trusted advisors, she accepted that there really were no other options.
Three weeks later, as President Parker prepared to address to the nation from the Oval Office, the Indo-Pak War had been all but wrapped up. It had not gone as well as hoped. Even though the Islamist regime in Pakistan had been fooled by the deception plan, and had been under the misguided notion that once again America would take many months seeking United Nations resolutions and assembling a large coalition of international support, the attack had not succeeded in destroying all the nuclear weapons.
The majority of the coup leaders were killed in the first wave of cruise missile attacks, aimed at decapitating the enemy. Those who survived, however, were surprisingly effective at communicating with their forces, who launched a major strike against India and the American naval fleet.
While 40% of the Pakistani nuclear force was taken out in the initial attacks, thirty of the sixty-four Pakistani nuclear missiles which had been prepared for launch-on-warning had made it out of their silos without being destroyed. Of these, one destroyed an entire Carrier Battle Group in the Gulf of Oman, and twenty-two reached their targets in India. The rest were taken out by American and Indian antimissile defenses.
The Indian retaliation had been harsh, with the cities of Karachi, Hyderabad, Multan, Quetta, Islamabad and Peshawar being completely obliterated by a barrage of twenty-six Indian missiles. There was no follow-on strike from Pakistan.
While many of the Pakistani military bases had been utterly destroyed, a large number of air and land bases were left intact for Indian forces to seize. The bases had been set aside to support India’s occupation of the devastated nation that had lost 24 million people in a matter of hours, and was now faced with 30 to 50 million people in desperate straits.
The suffering and death in Pakistan and India, with a combined death toll of over 50 million and rising in the aftermath of the Indo-Pak War, had matched the death-toll of the Second World War - yet the world didn’t care.
Indian military units were not on a humanitarian mission, and there was no talk of an international humanitarian operation to help Pakistan. An emergency resolution by the UN Security Council, calling for India to cease hostilities and to withdraw from Pakistan once it had achieved its military objective of disarming Pakistan had passed unanimously. Russia and China had not used their veto powers. It was clear that the superpowers were united in their opposition to the Islamo-fascist ideology that had led to two regional nuclear wars in as many years.
This gave India a free hand to root out the Islamist leaders and provide aid only to the more moderately inclined political and tribal groups. The plan was to remake Pakistan into a secular democracy mimicking the Indian model, after a ten to twelve year occupation. India planned to spend those years restoring democracy, weeding out Islamo-Fascism and stripping Pakistan of all manner of nuclear capability.
The reconstruction and humanitarian resources of India were focused on dealing with the devastation that was caused by the Pakistani missiles. With an entire continent to disperse its military resources, and having chosen the hour of the conflict, India had preserved its military forces and had evacuated key military and political personnel to safe locations before the war. Even so, India had lost over 25 million souls and would lose a further 20 to the effects of the war. However at less than four percent of its population, these losses were considered modest by military standards.
The knock-on effects of the Indo-Pak war began to ripple across the globe. In China, there was a growing sense of fear and unease as the loss of one of the pawns on the chess board, with Pakistan being taken out of play, left China more exposed to a newly empowered India. Now t
hat Pakistan was no longer a constant threat to India, the gargantuan might of the Indian subcontinent could more readily focus on their competition with China for regional ascendancy. This caused the Chinese premier some consternation; but it suited General Bing.
In the United States and the Russian Federation, the concern was that the two regional nuclear wars had pricked a big hole in nuclear deterrence. Nuclear weapons were now being used to settle long-simmering scores. There was a growing sense that a new era of warfare had begun. The world may not have recognized the significance of the revolution in military affairs represented by the MENE and Indo-Pak wars, but the Russians and Americans had. Contingency Plans to raise the readiness of nuclear forces, reactivate stockpiled weapons, and to pour money into nuclear and civil defense supplies were being activated.
Russian President Ivan Valeriovich Dvorkin feared that the direct American involvement in the Indo-Pak war had ushered in a new era of American interventionism.
Dvorkin, the one-time Air Force General who had seized the reigns of power left by the disintegration of the Putin – Medvedev regime, had begun to restore order over the chaos and social unrest that had boiled over in Russia. By ruthlessly using the fist of the Russian military against its own people, he had crushed any opposition to his vision for a renewal of the Russian Empire. But with America throwing its weight around, Dvorkin felt as though Russia now had a target on its back, and began preparations for defending Mother Russia.
With the nuclear warfare genie out of the bottle, Dvorkin accelerated plans to upgrade Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces. He signed a variety of orders which would begin the process of reconditioning, refueling, re-assembling and otherwise raising the readiness and lethality of Russia’s missiles.
One urgent set of orders he signed was to bring another 2,000 older missiles back to strategic readiness, out of the stockpiles that the world believed to have been ‘destroyed’ under START II. The next series of orders, codenamed “OPUSTOSHENIYE”, or DEVASTATION, would see that a stockpile of over four hundred 25-megaton warheads would be reassembled. These most powerful of warheads had been decommissioned under the 1991 START I treaty, but the fissionable materials and explosives packages were still available. Their destruction had been delayed for decades by incompetence, cost and technical difficulties. Once re-constituted, the warheads were to be installed on reconditioned R36 missiles converted from the unreliable rail launchers of the ‘80s onto older, though reliable, road-mobile launchers based in the Perm region.
