James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

‘We’ve never given up on the basing problem.’

‘What modes have you studied?’

The general splayed his fingers and began ticking them off. ‘So far we’ve considered basing the missiles in blimps, underwater canisters, circular trenches, coal mines, and barges on the Mississippi River.’

‘You should have based them up your ass!’ a young woman called from the gallery. It took Justice Jefferson a full minute of gavel pounding to quell the laughter.

‘You had an unusual nickname around SAC,’ said Bonenfant.

‘I was the MARCH Hare,’ replied Brat. ‘Modulated Attacks in Response to Counterforce Hostilities.’

‘Some people have accused the MARCH Plan of being a warwinning scenario disguised as a deterrent.’

‘The very best way to prevent a nuclear war is to show that you believe you can win one.’

‘The court may have trouble—’

‘Forces that cannot win cannot deter. Is that clear?’

‘It’s certainly clear to me. No further questions.’ Bonenfant walked away from the stand with the self-satisfied air of a cat bringing a mouse to the back stoop.

Justice Jefferson invited the chief prosecutor to cross-examine.

‘He was swell, don’t you think?’ said Randstable, concentrating on the chessboard, where he was about to launch a king-side attack against himself.

‘A real pro,’ said Wengernook.

‘He certainly gave them the sort of data they’re looking for,’ said Overwhite.

Forces that cannot win cannot deter. George thought about this particular truth as hard as he could.

‘General Tarmac,’ said Aquinas, sidling up to the stand, ‘I’m bewildered by your Achilles Leg notion. Weren’t America’s landbased missiles kept in concrete silos?’

‘The new Soviet SS-60s had a hard-target kill capacity,’ Brat explained patiently.

‘Hard target?’

‘An ICBM silo is a hard target.’

‘As opposed to a soft target?’

‘Right. We worked long hours on silo hardness, but there are limits – two thousand pounds per square inch or so.’

‘In other words, this whole arms race can be traced to a lot of men trying to get it hard enough?’

‘You can joke about it, Prosecutor, but a vulnerable land-based force is no laughing matter.’

Aquinas assumed a posture of dismay. ‘But didn’t the Triad, being so redundant, allow for vulnerabilities to emerge from time to time?’

‘We had a serious parity problem when it came to land-based missiles,’ answered Brat. ‘We needed the Omegas.’

‘Are you saying that the Triad was ill-conceived, and America should have been mimicking Communist strategy instead?’

‘No, I’m saying that the Russians had more land-based missiles than we did. Why is that so hard to understand?’

‘And you really believed they were about to take out your own fixed ICBMs in a nuclear Pearl Harbor?’

‘This was on the low end of the probability curve, but we were still worried.’

‘And, before the Omega program, the Soviets could have expected to get away with such an attack?’

‘Right.’

‘After which you would have to surrender?’

Brat gulped down his annoyance. ‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ asked Aquinas.

‘We would have been disarmed.’

‘Couldn’t the American President have used the two surviving legs to disarm the Soviets in turn?’

‘Be logical. If the SS-60s have already hit us, then their silos are empty.’

‘So you have to surrender?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘I just explained that. We’ve been disarmed.’

‘So have the Soviets. You just explained that, too.’

‘They’ve probably kept a reserve force,’ Brat noted.

‘Then you could retaliate,’ Aquinas replied.

‘No. The enemy would protect the reserve.’

‘How?’

‘By launching it.’

‘So you have to surrender?’

‘Yes!’

‘Why?’

‘How many times do I have to say it?’ Brat snapped an icicle off the stand and crushed it. ‘We’ve been disarmed! Can’t you grasp the most elementary piece of strategic doctrine?’

‘Suppose that, instead of surrendering, the President ordered the strategic submarine fleet to destroy Soviet society?’

‘No President would answer a surgical strike with an all-out attack. That’s jumping far too many rungs on the escalation ladder.’

‘How many American civilians would have been killed in this surgical strike?’

‘Worst-case scenario is twenty-five million.’

‘Might not a President mistake such slaughter for an all-out attack?’

‘Not if he was willing to calm down for a minute and look at how those casualties occurred.’

The interview continued in this manner for over an hour, interrupted by a recess for a box lunch of hardboiled penguin eggs and blubber sandwiches, until Aquinas suddenly asked, ‘Wasn’t Omega in fact a first-strike weapon, General Tarmac?’

‘No,’ Brat replied.

‘What was it?’

‘It was a functional and credible second-strike retaliatory deterrent.’

‘A sure-fire deterrent?’

‘A functional and credible second-strike—’

‘No further questions,’ grunted the chief prosecutor, lurching away from the stand in a spasm of exasperation.

Brat rose, folding his arms across his chest. The interview seemed to have bestowed about twenty pounds on him. He sauntered back to the booth and asked, ‘So – how’d I do?’

‘Academy Award time,’ said Wengernook.

‘Hope I come off half as well,’ said Randstable, putting himself in check.

‘I hadn’t realized that forces that cannot win cannot deter,’ said George.

Overwhite was next on the stand. The oil lamps sprinkled flecks of bronze onto his snowy beard as he narrated his life’s story – the Foreign Service, the Diplomatic Corps, the State Department, and, finally, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. To George, Overwhite still seemed like a windbag, but he was obviously a resourceful and intelligent one, a windbag woven of the finest material.

‘Two treaties that you helped negotiate have been read into the record by the prosecution,’ said Bonenfant. ‘Evidently my learned opponent feels that your efforts did not go far enough.’

‘I can see Mr Aquinas’s point of view,’ replied Overwhite, examining himself for jaw tumors. ‘However, let me remind the tribunal that general and complete disarmament was always the stated goal of my agency. Unfortunately, the massive Soviet buildup made this impossible in our time.’

‘But your achievements were still impressive.’

‘Any man would be proud to have on his tombstone, “He negotiated STABLE I and STABLE II.”’

Design No. 4015, thought George. Vermont blue-gray.

After reviewing the details of both STABLE agreements, Bonenfant concluded that, ‘We might well have introduced them as exhibits for the defense.’

Overwhite agreed.

Bonenfant said, ‘Critics have charged that the STABLE treaties allowed the US military too much latitude with multiple warheads and cruise missiles.’

‘I can understand that sentiment,’ said Overwhite. ‘However, you should always remember that new systems become bargaining chips when you sit down at the negotiating table. They force the Soviets to get serious about reductions.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Justice Wojciechowski. ‘You seem to be saying that by declining to regulate particular weapons, you were serving the cause of arms control.’

‘My point is that technical innovation has diplomatic as well as military benefits.’

Bonenfant asked, ‘In retrospect, Mr Overwhite, could your agency have done anything more to prevent the recent war?’

‘If we knew for a fact that it was coming – yes, we would probably have pressed for certain confidence-building measures. For example, the hotline between Washington and Moscow badly needed upgrading.’