December Ultimatum (5 page)

‘Mr President,’ he said, ‘we reckon to have upwards of a thousand military instructors in and around Riyadh with their dependents. I’m told the oil companies have another thousand men and dependents stationed there too. Plus all the Vinnell and Security people. So, over three thousand American citizens in Riyadh alone. Now, sir, we do not know at this time how or where all those people are distributed. Some are inside our Consulate compound, many are not. Many may have gone to the Vinnell compound, some to the Corps of Engineers. Given a sudden order to rendezvous at the Consulate or the airport, we have no idea—absolutely none—how many of these people would make it. We cannot even guarantee they would know where to go. We can only guess at the state they’re in, and I dread the problems these people may even now be facing. But, Mr President, we can be certain of one thing. If we land combat troops before our evacuation planes take off with all our people aboard, many,
many
innocent Americans, men, women and children, are going to die as a direct consequence. We cannot afford one civilian casualty. And, Mr President, with respect, it would be rash of you to think otherwise.’

The young President looked at the ageing general for a minute or more, than he slowly nodded and, very quietly said, ‘Of course, George . . . you’re right. You always are. It would be rash to gamble on the lives of non-combatants at the risk of losing that oil.’

But there was no conviction in the President’s voice. It was dull, and it was something all those present in the Situation Room were to remember some days later.

Then he said, ‘So we agree we evacuate as quickly as possible. Now let’s talk on what we do after that.’

‘The Rapid Deployment Force, Mr President. It has to be.’ It was General Browne,
US
Army. ‘We have men at Fort Bragg who have been trained for exactly this, top men raring to go. And we have the 101st Air Mobile Division at Fort Campbell.’

‘How soon?’

‘It’s fourteen hours’ flying time from Virginia to the Persian Gulf, Mr President,’ said General Jarvis,
US
Air Force. ‘We could begin to put ten thousand men immediately closer to the area—say Tel Aviv on standby. From there they’ll be two hours from the dropping zone.’

‘Not Tel Aviv, General.’

‘Sir,’ said General Jarvis, ‘it’s ideal. The Israelis will help all the way along the line.’

‘You bet they will. An American invasion force from Israel Para dropping on to the Arabs would be a dream come true for them. And a nightmare for us. We want no allies in this. They can’t afford us.’

‘But the evacuation planes are landing in Cairo, sir.’ ‘That’s humanitarian. Anyway, it’s still in the family, and helping refugee flights to refuel is not exactly the same,

General Jarvis, as refuelling war planes packed with
US
combat troops.’

‘If we had the time, sir, we could mobilize out of Diego Garcia,’ said General Wilson. ‘We’d have full British co-operation.’

‘Diego Garcia?’ said the President. ‘Wasn’t that the idea for using the British base there, so we could have men on call close by to send in on just such an occasion as now? You told me yourself, General Wilson, that we have ten thousand men there with back-up supply ships on four hour standby.’

‘Can’t be done, Mr President.’

General Wilson stopped speaking and the others waited silently as he seemed to make rapid mental calculations. ‘But we’d still be five hours’ flying from the Gulf. The Soviets can be in there on the ground in three if they fly out from the Afghan border. Possibly sooner if they decide to move their fleet into the Gulf.’

‘Christ!’ said the President, ‘and we talk of a Rapid Deployment Force. And there’s nowhere else?’

‘There’s Turkey. We use the base at Adana. We’ve got a squadron of F-4’s there already.’ The voice came from behind them.

The President, the Generals, the Admiral and Richard Johns of
CIA
turned towards the low square soundproof door that connected the Situation Room to the Operations and Monitoring Rooms. Dr Tom Sorenson stood there smiling. ‘Sorry, Mr President. Fog. Flight was delayed.’

‘We got the message,’ answered the President. ‘Sit down, Tom; glad to have you here.’ His anxiety during the past hour had been due, in part, to Sorenson’s absence. No one knew the domestic scene better than the President, no one was better at managing the internecine fighting of Congress and Senate. He had been America’s youngest Senator and had been scrambling, pushing, jumping and dodging in an upwards direction ever since. But his weakness, and therefore the weakness of his Administration, was his ignorance of international relations—a chronic defect of almost every American President since Roosevelt. So, like previous incumbents, he equipped himself with a strong team of Foreign Affairs specialists, recruited from corporations and universities throughout the country—committed Democrats who found inspiration in their Camelot and fresh impetus to their own private political ambitions.

Dr Tom Sorenson was Head of the Foreign Affairs Special Advisory Committee to the President and the President did nothing, said nothing on matters outside of the
USA
before consulting him. The appointment of Sorenson continued a tradition of second generation Americans conducting American Foreign Affairs; what one critical political columnist had called ‘the foreign monopoly of
US
foreign affairs’.

Sorenson, of Swedish stock, was to the President what German Kissinger had been to Nixon and what Polish Brzezinski had been to Carter. Like most of the White House staff, Sorenson was young; at forty-two, nine years younger than the President. A graduate of Cornell and the London School of Economics, Sorenson had been Dean of the Faculty of International Relations at Harvard before coming to Washington. His nickname among those he taught at university was Gung-Ho Tommy, for like his President, he was an extrovert in most things. Many previous Foreign Affairs Advisers to the White House had been insular to the point of being parish parochial, but Sorenson was in the new mould, intent on revitalizing America in the eighties at home and abroad. It had been the theme of the election campaign: ‘We’re on the march again.’

The President spoke. ‘If all else fails, Tom, we’re thinking of the Rapid Deployment Force.’

‘Presidential Directive Eighteen, sir, a Presidential waiver, and your prerogative to invoke without recourse to Congress.’

‘You agree we should use it?’

‘Yes, Mr President, I agree. I don’t see we can do less than that, if the Saudis refuse to negotiate. On the outside, Rahbar’s coup is a simple spontaneous manifestation of the popular will. But it’ll directly—perhaps violently—alter the world’s balance of power. We have discussed this for many years, Mr President, you and I, almost as if we have been preparing for today, when the Arabs played their final bluff.

Their final hand we knew would be the simple demand to join the Super-powers. The Shah tried it and failed.

‘Now the biggest of them all is going for it and, given the very special circumstances, the Saudis may well succeed. Seven million Arabs, Mr President, smelling of camel dung, sitting in mud huts, owners of a desert the size of Mexico and because of the haphazard benevolence of nature, freeholders to enough oil to keep the States of Washington and New York alight forever. But the same people can turn those lights out. You ask me, Mr President, if I agree to a combat force should the talking fail. I say, we have no choice.’

There were five seconds or so of silence. Then the generals and the admiral applauded and the President tapped the table in accord. Only Richard Johns kept his hands in his lap.

‘But one thing,’ said Sorenson, holding up a hand. ‘I wonder whether the Rapid Deployment Force should be sent first . . . on the initial landings?’

‘Why not?’ asked General Rogers.

‘Mr President, Generals, Admiral, look at the logistics. Is it feasible? The 82nd in North Carolina are over six thousand flying miles from Riyadh. Can it be done quickly and secretively . . . even the dispatch of only a few units? Wouldn’t someone leak it out . . . wouldn’t someone tell mama? The problem is that we cannot arrive with any degree of surprise. We lack the airlift capabilities. We have only one Airborne Division in the entire United States Army, and that would certainly be insufficient. We just don’t have the assets to drop that division by parachute assault. But we do have a brigade south of Naples and we could easily push them from there across to Turkey to Adana in a matter of hours, nighttime, nobody would know. We have a lot of military freight transport air traffic between Europe and Turkey which we know the Russians monitor, but we could fill those transporters with troops. No one could tell his mama from there—we would seal it.’

‘And use the 82nd as back-up?’

‘Yes, Mr President,’ said General Wilson. ‘Have them on their way just as soon as our initial force drops on the fields. I suggest we move the first units to Italy tonight. I reckon we can push, say, three thousand there without causing trouble, leakwise.’

The President looked around the table. ‘Does that make sense?’ The Generals and the Admiral nodded.

‘We’ll need technicians on that first drop, Mr President. Men who can get those wells pumping again.’

‘And you have them?’

‘Yessir, we have plenty.’

‘Mr President.’

‘Johns?’

‘It’s imperative we get King Fahd back as quickly as possible.’

‘Look, Johns,’ said the President in the flat voice he always used for his
CIA
Director. ‘Let’s talk first about getting our men in.’

‘With respect, sir. Before we do that we’ve also got to find a way of getting them out again.’

‘You still suffering Vietnam-phobia?’ asked General Browne. But Johns would not be put off.

‘I’m not a General . . .’

‘That’s right!’

‘And I’m willing to believe,’ Johns went on, ‘that a task force can easily take and hold these oilfields. They’re more than three hundred miles from Riyadh which is where much of the Saudis’ artillery and many of their troops are, so our men could land without problems. But we’re talking here of hours, sir. Rahbar could have his tanks and artillery up against our men in ten, maybe eight, hours.’

‘Rahbar would not use artillery to destroy the derricks and pipelines,’ said General Browne.

‘We don’t know he wouldn’t,’ replied Johns. ‘Derricks and pipes can be repaired once an invasion force has been defeated.’

‘Whose side you on?’

‘Mr President,’ said Johns. ‘In military terms we will be able to hold our own depending on the size of the force we send in . . .’

‘It’s a relief to hear you say it,’ interrupted General Browne, followed by General Jarvis, ‘You’re out of your depth.’

‘Hey! Isn’t this your area, Sorenson?’ asked General Warner.

The Foreign Affairs Specialist nodded. ‘If Johns would give me leg room,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to outline what I have in mind?’ It was put as a question to the
CIA
Director who nodded back and put his hands down in his lap again.

‘Johns of course is right,’ said Sorenson. ‘We all know there is no military solution to this emergency, only a military expedient. The Rapid Deployment Force is that expedient. But, in the long term, we must have the Saudis’ agreement to let us stay there. Our problem is, how do we survive the welter of international protests until that agreement is made?’

‘You believe an agreement is possible, Tom?’

‘Not exactly, Mr President.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Let me put it to you.’ He stood up and moved a yard away from the table. He folded his arms across his chest and addressed them like the Dean he used to be. ‘I suggest, gentlemen, that the Government of the United States of America, by urgent and immediate appeal to the United Nations, recommends the entire Persian Gulf be declared an International Zone, controlled and policed by
UN
member states, in a similar way to the peacekeeping forces in Cyprus, Lebanon, the Golan Heights and the Sinai. We shall remind the world that the Gulf area produces over seventy per cent of the world’s oil exports; Saudi Arabia alone has a quarter of the world’s proven oil reserves. But it’s an area that has become so politically volatile that free nations large and small, entirely dependent on Arab oil supplies, are fearful of that oil’s being used for further political and economic blackmail. We shall stress by implication that the International Zone would not violate the sovereignty of any Gulf state and that the
UN
would guarantee those States their control of their own territorial waters, that is, up to twelve miles from their shores. The only exception will be the Strait of Hormuz, the gateway to the Persian Gulf which is the only sea access to the oilfields. This narrow corridor of sea, only thirty miles across with deep water which is only twelve miles wide, will be under permanent UN scrutiny, patrolled day and night to ensure free access and movements to all ships, except ships of war. The Gulf then, under American sponsorship, will be a zone of peace, and the production of oil in Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Iran and Saudi Arabia and its transportation out on the world’s tanker routes will be thereafter free from harassment. Oil-dependent countries can then plan their future accordingly. That, Mr President, is what I am recommending our immediate tactic should be.’

But the President was frowning. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘at any other time I would say it was a great idea and worthy of a good deal of effort on our part. But we do not have that time.’

‘Correct,’ said Sorenson.

‘No way I can see the Gulf States agreeing to it,’ said General Warner.

‘That’s right,’ replied Sorenson.

‘The Soviets would veto it all the way along the line,’ said General Browne.

‘Absolutely,’ confirmed Sorenson.

‘Do you realize the enormous difficulties facing sea patrols in an area the size of the Persian Gulf?’ asked Admiral Holliwell.

‘Yes,’ answered Sorenson. ‘Quite impractical.’

‘Tom,’ said the President. ‘You’re talking in riddles. You’re seriously suggesting we put this forward to the United Nations and yet you say it hasn’t a chance?’