alternatehistory.com

LXXVII
April 29, 1993
Washington, D.C.
The White House
7:17 pm


“You can't just drop diplomatic relations with the Russians! This isn't 1920!”

“This isn't exactly a normal situation!”

“You think not talking to them will change anything?!”

“I know we can't stand by them after what we saw!”

The dialogue was heated, made all the more surreal by the scene of ex-presidents debating across the table with Cabinet secretaries. There was no consensus whatsoever, though, as the idealists of Clinton's cabinet were going squarely up against the pragmatist ex-presidents and their former aides. Rubin, Reich, Shalala, Reno, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, Secretary of Education Richard Riley, HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, Secretary of Transportation Federico Peña, and Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary were on the idealist side, while Bentsen, Perry, Talbott, Powell, and Gore were siding with the Republicans in the room.

“Listen to me, all of you,” Nixon said. “You may think you're doing the right thing. You might think this will be a noble act, like Carter always tried to do. Remember where being noble got him! Sometimes you have to look at the big picture. If you cut Russia loose, they will mend fences with China in full, and we will lose the best chance we have to bring them into the fold of democracy, and we'll be right back in the 1950s again, except now China has nuclear weapons.”

“You're hardly one to talk about democracy, Dick,” sniped Rubin.

“Rubin, you're too short to have that big of a mouth,” Nixon fired back.

“For fuck's sake!” Everyone turned and looked towards the head of the table, where the President was very clearly fuming. “None of this is doing anything to help me decide what to do! If I stay close to Moscow, our allies are going to avoid us like we've got some sort of disease. If I cut Russia loose, they'll fall out of our orbit right after we got them into it, and that means they'll align with China, who is the only other large power. The Germans have a hell of a bill trying to deal with East Germany coming back into the fold, the Brits just got clobbered in the exchange markets last year....it's us and China, and even if someone like Germany were doing better financially, the Russians would never make a deal with them again after World War II. So, here's what I want an answer to: is there a way to walk a line between cutting them loose and staying close?”

“Bill, here's what I did in 1989,” Bush said. “I publicly condemned Beijing, we suspended travel and weapons sales, and I privately told them through Brent and Larry that it's in both our best interests to retain our relationships and for them to realize how their internal affairs hurt our ability to do so. Unfortunately, that did not work the way I'd hoped, as they really clamped down after Ceausescu fell.”

“You also vetoed that legislation that would've given asylum to the Chinese students here in America,” Lee Hamilton replied. “You could've asked us to hold off instead for a period of time, let us hold the bill until we knew how they'd act. That could've been a bargaining chip.” He saw several nods around the room.

Henry Kissinger's thick German voice cut in next. “Mr. President, I do not think that will work. The Russians are very prideful, and these are ultimately all men of the Soviet system, even if they do not use that name any longer. A public rebuke from you will only cause them to withdraw further into their shell. Ambassador Lukin is surely upset about this, being a liberal, but Rutskoy is a military man, and it is why he acted as he did, I expect. Furthermore, if he falls, we now have the entire Russian inventory of nuclear weapons exposed to instability two months after such weapons were used to murder very many Americans. That should be your only consideration in making this decision.”

Kissinger's words brought silence to the room. The President had reacted strongly to the attacks (albeit against the wrong target, most of this room knew), and was riding substantial levels of popularity due to the bipartisanship of his administration, most notably in its well-known consultation of people such as Bush, Baker, Nixon, and the like. That popularity would sink like a rock if another nuclear weapon touched any American, and the damnable thing was, Kissinger wasn't even talking realpolitik. He stated a simple fact that no person inside the Roosevelt Room could escape: any further Russian instability would mean a lot of loose nuclear weapons, and the world had already gotten far too much of a taste for that problem.

Clinton looked down, made some notes, and then issued his orders. Talbott was to send telexes to the major allies, inviting them to a summit in Geneva, neutral ground so Moscow wouldn't see this as a NATO action. Gore, Talbott, and Richard Holbrooke would go as the American team, and their goal would be to work out an acceptable response to the St. Petersburg violence that wouldn't drive Moscow away from the West. Clinton himself would both talk with the Russian ambassador and follow up with a call to Rutskoy. Hamilton, Espy, and legislative affairs director Howard Paster would begin a full-court press with Congress to try and keep them from passing legislation that would harm Russia's incredibly fragile economy.

The President was going to walk a line thinner than a supermodel, but he had no choice.

*****

May 1, 1993
6:00 am
UN-US joint command post
Mogadishu, Somalia


Major General Steven Arnold, commander of the 10th Mountain Division, watched the sun rise over the Arabian Sea. His soldiers had been in Somalia since December as part of the UNITAF deployment to aid this war-torn, starving nation. Somalia had once been considered a Cold War outpost, but Arnold looked around every day and wondered why anyone had considered this place to be worth spending a dime in. There wasn't enough money in the world to make Somalia be formidable, unless you did as UNITAF had and deployed tens of thousands of top soldiers and military gear to keep the peace, and this was a temporary deployment.

At least the view was nice, with long untouched beaches and clear blue skies. The heat was different than what 10th Mountain lived, trained, and typically deployed in, but that couldn't be helped. Arnold did his best to make sure his men got time to enjoy those beaches and that warm tropical water. This was a real hardship mission, and keeping men focused while performing any number of nonmilitary tasks could be difficult. Arnold had done several tours in Vietnam, and knew how important morale was, so his troops were given, in rotation, a day off a week to rest and enjoy the beach.

Turning away, the general's thoughts shifted to the countryside. This multinational structure made for tremendous difficulty in arranging cooperation when there were about a dozen different languages amongst the task force members, and no guarantees that everything would be translated correctly. The militias were, for the most part, staying peaceful. Arnold didn't expect that to last. It never did.

*****

Berbera, Somaliland
7:00 am

Bin Laden was pleased. Tuur's men were most helpful in setting up the compound, and everyone was settling in to their new quarters. Things would be more spartan than their previous locations, but these men had lived in mountain caves. Comfort was not an issue for them.

The most important task, once security and shelter were established, was to get the satellite set up. This close to home, bin Laden could more easily get Saudi TV, to gauge the mood of his people, to see the lies the regime told, and to plan how he would make his triumphant return, overturning a monarchy that had lbecome decadent in the flood of money the infidels of the West had showered upon them. It was up to him to restore the Caliphate, to unite the Muslims of the peninsula, and bring everyone back to the true faith. So many had died in Afghanistan, but he had won there, and, Allah willing, he would win again.