The Trust Of The People

by Christopher Read

  * * *

  While most TV stations immediately returned to their prime-time schedule, the news channels gathered first impressions as to how the President had done, it seen by some as being crucial to the survival of his Administration. Initial feedback was generally positive, but once the speech had been pulled apart with every word and imagined pause duly analysed, opinion became far more divided.

  Cavanagh had not tried to defend himself against Thorn’s accusations, in fact there was no mention at all of America’s internal problems. With respect to the South China Sea, the President had implied that the U.S. was going to sit on its hands and again do absolutely nothing – no retaliation, no attempt to avenge the thirty-two lives lost. There was even a plea to other countries to play nicely. Some argued that it would have been irresponsible of Cavanagh to order some form of retribution against China without definite proof; for others it merely confirmed the truth of what Thorn had said.

  And there had been nothing either concerning China’s unprovoked attacks against Russia. President Golubeva had matched Cavanagh’s live TV address, speaking for some twenty minutes and condemning China for the murder of seventy-nine of its citizens. The act was seen as a deliberate attempt to provoke Russia into an escalating border conflict, Golubeva reinforcing the notion that China intended to reclaim much of its imperialist past; not just Tibet and a few islands in the South China Sea, but Mongolia, Taiwan, and a good chunk of Siberia. Russia’s Eastern Military District had been put on high alert and Golubeva confirmed earlier news reports that Russian artillery had retaliated by hitting military targets inside China.

  Once again Beijing was having to refute accusations involving significant loss of life, the regularity of its denials creating its own problems; few countries now seemed willing to give it the benefit of any doubt, its well-documented belligerence counting against it. Satellite images produced by China claiming to prove that Russia had attacked its own citizens were immediately disputed by Moscow, the United States refusing to confirm or deny the allegations, stating that it was still in the process of evaluating the evidence.

  With China being squeezed between Russia in the north and the United States Navy in the South, other countries now sought to profit from China’s difficulties, some wanting to repay a previous slight: India, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam – there were plenty ready and willing to join any U.S.-led coalition, sensing it might be their one chance to thwart China’s threatened expansion. Louisa Marcelo was helping maintain public pressure on the Philippine Government, it having to adopt an aggressive stance merely to survive, and throughout South-East Asia, the desire for compromise seemed to have all but evaporated.

  Beijing realised it couldn’t just wait for a powerful group of its enemies to gang up against it – somehow, if China wanted to keep its future plans on track, it needed to wrest back the initiative.