Trigger Point (33 page)

Knowles felt as if he was locked in a struggle with an opponent who wouldn’t pause, wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t back off, but would escalate and simply hit and hit and hit until … he didn’t know. He felt as if he was suffocating. He couldn’t see an end.

This wasn’t working. Nothing was working.

He called a meeting of the National Security Council for the next day. That would be Christmas Eve and most of the council members had already left Washington over the weekend to head wherever they were going for the holiday. Knowles didn’t give a damn. They could get on a plane and come back.

Over the two years since he had become president, Tom Knowles thought he had put together a pretty good team. Now he was wondering if any of them had the slightest idea of what they were doing.

47

KNOWLES WENT QUICKLY to the Situation Room. He had just got off an early morning call with the director-general of the WTO, who had pressed him to revoke the measures he had announced, to which the Chinese measures were a response. The director-general assured him that the Chinese would revoke their actions if the US acted first. But he didn’t have answers to the questions Knowles asked him directly. As president, what was he supposed to do as the underpinnings of the American economy were torn out from under it? How else was he supposed to stabilize a market that was sliding into quicksand? The director-general assured him that he was certain the Chinese government had intended no such thing. Tom Knowles assured him the Chinese government had had plenty of opportunity to say so, both in private and public.

The other members of the National Security Council were waiting.

‘I’m sorry to be getting you in here on Christmas Eve,’ he said as he sat down. ‘Wasn’t exactly what I would have planned.’

There were a few rueful smiles in response.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to business. Everyone here knows what the Chinese government announced, right?’

Marty Perez had circulated a summary.

‘Gary thought they’d secretly want us to do what we did, didn’t you, Gary? I think you said it was going to be win win.’

‘It was,’ said Rose. ‘This isn’t rational.’

Bob Livingstone, who hadn’t had a conversation with the president in a week, rolled his eyes. ‘Of course it’s rational,’ he murmured. ‘It’s always rational.’

‘What’s that, Bob?’

‘It’s always rational, Mr President. Anything anyone does,
they
see as rational. You just have to understand how they see it.’

‘And how do they see it?’ said Gary Rose.

‘I would say they think we’re attacking them. Over Uganda, over South Africa, over this, over–’

‘Attacking them?’ demanded Oakley. ‘Hell, Bob! We’re the ones under attack here. We’re the ones facing a foreign power that’s infiltrated our markets and our economic institutions and has spent the last two months showing just how much damage they can do. What have we done to them? Huh? What? Gone into some godforsaken jungle to help innocent people who are being killed by the most evil bunch of killers on the planet. Jeez, Bob. Honestly! Whose side are you on?’

‘Whose do you think?’

‘Hold up!’ said the president. ‘We’re on the same side. I won’t have that kind of talk. No one’s saying anyone’s not on the same side.’ He looked around the table. There was an enormous amount of tension in the room and they had barely started. ‘Okay, John? Alright?’

‘Yes, sir,’ murmured Oakley.

‘Okay. We need to figure out what we’re going to do here and I’m not going to let us start squabbling like a bunch of kids. Now, I’m stumped by the sheer aggressiveness of Zhang’s action. It’s everything at once. What else have they got to throw at us?’

‘Very little,’ said Perez.

Gary Rose nodded. ‘It’s like saying, whatever you do, however you try to get yourself up off the floor, we’re going to hit you hard. We’re going to hit you right back down.’

‘And see if you’re prepared to hit us again,’ said Oakley. ‘It’s like saying, do you dare? Are you going to do it or not?’

‘Or they’re hitting out blindly,’ said Livingstone. ‘They feel they’re attacked. What do you do when you’re attacked? You hit out. It doesn’t necessarily mean you think too hard about it before–’

‘Jesus,’ groaned Oakley. ‘More of this under attack stuff. Who’s under attack here, Bob? Don’t you get it?’

‘I’m not saying we’re not. I’m saying–’

‘I think you are. I think you’re saying we’re the ones doing the attacking. I think you’re saying we’re the ones at fault.’

‘I haven’t even talked about fault.’

‘But it won’t be long, will it?’

Livingstone shook his head in exasperation. He took a deep breath, trying to keep his emotions under control. He was at breaking point. The president had ignored him over the last week during the biggest crisis of their political lives and it couldn’t go on. He had come prepared to speak out today, as much as it took. He was going to confront Gary Rose and even John Oakley if necessary. He had no choice. If he didn’t do it today, he felt, he never would.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘We have a difference of opinion here in the way we see this. We all agree that we feel we’ve been attacked. Okay, John? I agree with that. But what I don’t agree with is what you’re saying when we look at how they feel. You’re painting them as if everything they’re doing is to attack us.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Let me finish! You’re painting them as if they’re on this premeditated kind of campaign. And I’m saying, they might be thinking the same thing about us. Everything we do that we see as defensive, they might see as offensive.’

‘They’d be wrong,’ muttered Oakley.

‘Doesn’t matter if they’re wrong! Jesus Christ, what matters is what they think! Can’t you see that?’

‘Calm down, Bob,’ said Walt Stephenson, the vice-president, beside him. He chuckled. ‘You’ll have a heart attack.’

Livingstone took another deep breath. ‘Mr President, what matters is what they think. Maybe they think they’re being attacked. Maybe they think the rest of the world thinks that as well. If that’s the case, they’ll do anything not to look weak. Maybe that’s why they announced these measures. They don’t want to do it, but they have to, because otherwise they think everyone else is going to look at them and think they’re backing down. Isn’t that a possibility?’

‘Well, if it’s a possibility,’ said Oakley, ‘we need to teach them you don’t do that kind of thing. They need to learn a lesson.’

Livingstone closed his eyes for a second. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘They need to learn a lesson. Absolutely, John. And I guess now, when we’re in a position of
such
strength, is the time for us to teach them.’

The president watched him closely. ‘Bob, do you have any evidence for this?’

‘Marion Ellman had a conversation with the Chinese ambassador at the UN. He was talking to her personally. Her feeling is that Zhang’s under internal pressure over this.’ He looked at Ryan Ferris. ‘Have you followed that up?’

Ferris shrugged. ‘We’ve got nothing from our sources.’

‘Ambassador Ellman’s view is interpretation,’ said Gary Rose. ‘There’s nothing more to it than her interpretation of what she heard in a single conversation. Are we really going to make decisions on the basis of that?’

‘Show me something better,’ said Livingstone impatiently. ‘Gary, you ask for the evidence and you sit there rolling your eyes and you don’t want to listen to it. Then you say it’s interpretation. And in the meantime, what have we been doing? That hasn’t been based on interpretation? Everything we’ve done so far has been on the basis of the interpretation that the Chinese are trying to smash us, and if you ask me, on the face of it, what we’ve done hasn’t worked. Maybe you think it has, but I don’t. So if you ask me, maybe it’s time to stop making the same mistake over and over and start thinking about an alternative interpretation.’

‘I wouldn’t have asked you,’ muttered Oakley.

‘Well, the president did, John!’ Livingstone stopped. His heart was thumping so hard he almost felt ill.

‘Okay, guys,’ said Knowles, ‘this isn’t getting us anywhere.’

There was a tense, angry silence.

‘Sir,’ said General Hale. ‘As a military man, I would have to say that the actions of the Chinese are a typical strategy to keep your opponent off balance. In terms of a military campaign, to harry him, if you will, so you knock him off balance and he can’t regain stability.’

‘This isn’t a military campaign, General,’ said Livingstone curtly. ‘Perhaps that’s escaped your notice.’

‘This is not constructive,’ said the president. ‘Bob, let’s try and make some progress.’ The president looked at the Treasury secretary. ‘What’s the damage here?’

‘Once they implement these measures?’ said Opitz. ‘We’re still working on that but ball park, it’s serious. It’s big.’

‘What about them?’

‘It’ll have an effect. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. How big it’ll be … that’s harder to say. It also depends on how we respond.’

‘Their press has been loud on the measures once they were announced,’ said Ryan Ferris. ‘They’re saying the Chinese economy is a lot more independent of ours this time round and they don’t think there’ll be an effect at all.’

‘That’s the line for domestic consumption. It’s got to have an effect.’

‘They’re saying they’re going to boost the domestic economy, fiscal stimulus, etc., etc. They’re also saying a lot of the slack will be taken up by exports to Europe and other economies.’

‘That depends on what the Europeans do.’

‘What are they going to do?’ said Rose. ‘This is a WTO dispute between us and them. The Europeans aren’t getting involved.’

‘So bottom line,’ said Knowles, ‘we take a hit. What happens to them?’

‘They’ll take a hit,’ said Opitz. ‘How big it’ll be, we need to work on that.’

‘No way Zhang would take a risk of a serious hit,’ said Rose. ‘No way he’s putting Chinese workers out of jobs.’

‘No way he’s going to put a huge stimulus in, not after what happened last time.’

‘He’ll crack down hard. He’ll crack down hard and early.’

‘Gary, that doesn’t change the fact that they’ll take a hit. They have to. That’s
if
they implement the measures they announced against us. Mr President, that’s not a given, by any means, certainly not in full. They’ve got a track record of talking louder than they act.’

‘Let’s call their bluff,’ said Oakley.

The president looked around the table. ‘Do we agree on that?’

‘What exactly does that mean?’ said Livingstone. ‘Calling their bluff. What are you trying to say?’

‘I’m saying let’s match them,’ retorted Oakley.

‘You mean we take those kind of measures as well?’

‘Absolutely. What we’ve done to protect our markets isn’t illegal. It doesn’t contravene any rules.’

‘Well, I think you might find that–’

‘National emergency. Isn’t that what Susan’s told us, we have a national emergency derogation under WTO rules? I don’t know what we’ve got here if we haven’t got a national emergency so that gives us the right to do what we’re doing.’

‘I don’t think they see it–’

‘They’re the ones in breach! There’s a process in the WTO for complaint if they have a complaint and they’ve chosen to circumvent that and take the law into their own hands. Well, fine. You want to do that, we can do it too.’

Livingstone stared at the defense secretary. He felt faint. He pulled at his necktie.

‘I’m not sure about that, John,’ said the president. ‘Let’s take it one step at a time. One thing that’s certain is we can’t step back from what we’ve done.’

‘But if what we’ve done is right,’ said Rose, ‘if we really believe we’re justified in doing it, then I think John has a point. We’ve done something we have a right to do and now we’ve been attacked. Not through due process, but by a kind of wildcat action. What’s our response?’

Walt Stephenson, who had made no contribution since the discussion began, cleared his throat. ‘I don’t claim to know too much about finance and foreign affairs, but this thing the Chinese have done does sound awful aggressive.’ He glanced at Bob Livingstone, who was sitting beside him. ‘Bob, you okay?’

Livingstone nodded. He felt clammy and nauseated.

‘You look like hell. You want some water?’

Livingstone shook his head.

‘Okay, well, this does sound awful aggressive. I’m not sure we should take it lying down.’

Tom Knowles thought about it. There was a logic to what Oakley and Rose had suggested. Accepting the Chinese actions without some kind of retaliation would make it look as if the United States accepted that China was justified in doing what it had done. And yet the idea of taking another step, so soon, so belligerently, seemed too much. Rose and Oakley were both strongly in favor of it, but his faith in them had taken a hit in the last few days. And it was clear that Bob Livingstone had a different view, although it wasn’t clear how he would act on it. Stay silent, perhaps.

He glanced at Livingstone. The secretary of state’s head was bowed, as if he was studying one of the papers in front of him.

‘I’m not sure where this goes,’ said Knowles.

‘Mr President,’ replied Oakley, ‘we’ve got to come back at them. We let this pass, we look weak.’

The president glanced at Marty Perez. ‘I assume we have plans for something like this.’

Perez nodded, looking pained at the thought. ‘We have a set of measures we can activate. In principle it’s the mirror image of what they’ve done to us.’

Knowles felt pained as well. He didn’t want to announce anything now, not on Christmas Eve. Whatever effect the new market measures had had in restoring a sense of hope – whatever was left after Zhang’s response – would evaporate utterly. If he could somehow get to the holidays, he felt, there would be time to … He didn’t know what. Think it through. Or for something to happen. Something to lessen the tension.

‘Sir, I think we should issue a statement,’ said Roberta Devlin. ‘We condemn the measures taken by China and say we’re considering our response. That might be a complaint to the WTO or it might be something considerably more immediate. We could make that sound quite threatening. And reiterate our right to do what we’ve already done, of course.’

Out of the corner of his eye, the president noticed Ed Abrahams nodding.

‘You could also say it’s the holiday season and a time for people to try to step back and find ways to heal their differences. Give it a tone of magnanimity. Put a little statesmanship in there. It might even give them a way to back out.’

‘Just puts the whole thing off,’ said Oakley.

‘I’m inclined to agree with John,’ said Rose. ‘We can put it off for a few days, but we’re going to have to take some action, and it’s going to need to be more than bringing a case to the WTO. I doubt they’re going to back out, as Roberta says. Whether it’s better to have it hanging over us or get it done right away, that’s largely a political consideration.’