Riding the Red Horse (38 page)

We heard an explosion in the room below us. A
rahaki
threw a grenade in there. Gerhardt was dead and I couldn’t contact the rest of his squad.

“Grenades!” I ordered. “Every lethal you’ve got!”

“They got civilians down there!” Smith yelled at me.

“If they break in, they’re gonna tear us apart! They’re not civvies! They’re
oshama
!
Hassaloki
!”

Slinging my rifle, I pulled a frag grenade from my pouch, then another.

“What the hell are you waiting for?!” I screamed.

My men started grabbing whatever grenades they could get. Even Smith finally pitched in.

“To the parapet!” I ordered.

I crawled to the edge of the roof. Bullets whizzed past my head. The others lined up next to me. I pulled the pin from one grenade, then the other.

Smith said, “Sir, are you sure–”

“PINS OUT!”

The men pulled the pins.

“COOK 'EM OFF!”

I released the safety spoons, starting the four-second fuse. In training, they strongly discouraged cooking off grenades, but we didn't want them thrown back at us.

“Three thousand! Two thousand! One thousand! FRAG OUT!”

We droppped our grenades into the mob. Then we did it again. And then we opened up with our guns.

Anders brought her hands to her mouth. “My God.”

“God wasn’t there.” Horvan swished his canteen around. It was almost empty. He shrugged and finished off the liquid in one long gulp, then shook his head. “Not that day. Well, that’s my story. What else do you want to know?”

Anders brought the video back on, rewinding it. “I don’t see any gunmen in that mob.”

He growled, low in his throat. “The shooters were behind them. And you can see the axes and picks in the mob. They’ll punch clean through our armor. How the hell do you think they managed to kill eight Terran soldiers with no guns?”

“That's a good point.”

“Andrew goddamn Nash never says anything about that. He never mentioned how we lost eight men. How we saved sixty-three Vashies injured in the initial attack. How we treated the wounded
hassaloki
at our own facilities. The little bitch.”

“I presume that is why you were cleared by the court martial.”

He grunted. “I wasn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“The court martial acquitted us of first degree murder. But they also said that we were negligent because we had failed to equip ourselves for the mission with sufficient sub-lethal weaponry, forcing us to use lethal force. Never mind that we don't
have
any more sub-lethal weaponry; we used everything we had except rubber bullets and it wasn't enough.”

“Oh. I didn't know.”

“The brass needs sacrificial lambs to appease both the Senate and the Presidium. I'm one of them.” His jaw tightened. “And it’s still not enough. Not for Nash and TransInt. They’re playing right into the GvH’s hands.”

“By creating a controversy?”

“Exactly. Now the VSF refuses to help us at all. The brass wants everybody to carry sub-lethal ammo and only break out the real stuff with approval from the company commander. That's going to get more men killed and that will make us escalate anyhow.” He sighed. “I heard people back home are calling for us to be replaced. Is that true?”

“I’m afraid so,” she said. “The Senate passed the motion. Your replacements will be here next month.”

“And until they learn the ground, which will take months, the
hassaloki
will have the home field advantage. They’re chipping away at us, bit by bit. This isn’t a new strategy, you know? Humans have been fucking each other like this for the past, what, five hundred years? But this is the first time the Vashies used human tactics against us in a major conflict. And the media is lapping it all up. What better way to get eyeballs and advertising than a controversy, eh?”

She smiled and shook her head. “Hey, I’m here to tell your story. Not theirs.”

“Mm-hmm. You know, you’re the first reporter we’ve seen who came down here to try to figure out what really happened. To ask us what happened.”

“I think the truth still matters.”

“Yeah, I'd like to think so too. Who do you work for?”

“I'm freelance. After I write this report I’m going to shop it through the Terran News Syndicate.”

He chuckled bitterly. “Freelance, huh? I should have known. Look, Miss Anders, most of what I said is on the public record. The truth is already out there. But the media isn’t reporting it. So I have just one question for you.”

“What’s that?”

“Who do you think is going to buy this story from you? Who do you think will run it?”

James D. Perry has a BA in History from Arizona State University, an MA in Security Policy Studies and a PhD in History from George Washington University. His graduate work focused on military history and Cold War national security strategy, culminating in a dissertation on the foreign policy of President Kennedy. After completing his PhD, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. He then worked for a defense contractor in McLean, Virginia, where he conducted research and analysis on issues of strategy, military innovation, and asymmetric warfare. He developed and ran numerous wargames that explored the problems of anti-access versus power projection.

He is currently a Senior Analyst for a major aerospace corporation, where he supports the company's unmanned aircraft and long-range strike programs. He is the author of numerous articles on military history and national security issues, and frequently speaks at history conferences.

In the following piece, Dr. Perry focuses on the efforts of the Soviet Union to create security and advance its interests along its borders by fomenting quarrels between its neighbors and near neighbors, or between neighbors and more distant but powerful adversaries. There are several points of contention in the piece, and I fully expect them to be contested. However, whatever minor arguments there may be on the details, three things stand out. One is that these techniques should be studied because they're available to us as well as to our enemies. Indeed, we should expect them to be used on us. The second is that in war, nothing fails like success. The last is that although the Soviet Union is no more, the Russians are still making tigers fight, and they are still aiming those efforts in our direction.

“Sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight.”
—Chinese proverb

A common gambit in multi-player competitions is to improve one’s position without cost or risk by standing aside while two other players fight. This strategy is especially appealing to weaker players who fear that stronger opponents will attack them. Many nations have profited from the quarrels of others. For example, Great Power wars in Europe greatly facilitated the birth and survival of the United States; in the words of diplomatic historian Samuel Flagg Bemis, from 1776 to 1815, “Europe’s distress was America’s advantage.” European exhaustion in two world wars from 1914 to 1945 enabled America to become a global superpower. America was an economic colossus before 1914, but lacked the will and capability for sustained worldwide military and political engagement until World War II destroyed the existing world order. As David Reynolds notes, “America’s transformation from power to superpower was very much the consequence of World War II.”
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Some states do not just passively benefit from the quarrels of others, but actively seek to foment and protract such wars. For example, from 1925 through 1975, the Soviet Union repeatedly sought to promote war between its major enemies and third parties. This strategy did not work as planned in Europe. From 1939 to 1941, Britain, France and Germany fought while the USSR remained neutral, but the unexpected collapse of France in 1940 allowed Germany to turn against Russia. Yet the strategy succeeded spectacularly in Asia. The Soviets helped to create the conditions that caused Japan to attack China, and then supported China to ensure Japanese exhaustion. They also facilitated the Japanese attack on Britain and America in 1941. Stalin fomented the Korean War in 1950, and successfully brought America and China into conflict in order to isolate China and make her dependent on the USSR. The Soviets sponsored North Vietnamese aggression from 1959 to 1975 in order to weaken the United States, pressure the Chinese, and buy time to redress Soviet strategic weapons inferiority.

Moscow and the Sino-Japanese War

In January 1925, Stalin noted that the Bolshevik Revolution probably would not have survived if the capitalist countries had not been locked in mortal combat in 1917—“the struggle, conflicts and wars between our enemies, I repeat, constitute an extremely important ally for us.”
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After the war, the capitalist countries stabilized their relations. Stalin noted regretfully that war between the capitalist powers was unlikely in the immediate future. Nevertheless, he thought a new world war was ultimately inevitable. Such a war would create a revolutionary crisis in the capitalist camp, and was bound to affect the USSR. He argued that the USSR had to prepare for all contingencies, and strengthen the Red Army. The Soviet Union would attack after the capitalists had exhausted themselves:

If war breaks out we shall not be able to sit with folded arms. We shall have to take action, but we shall be the last to do so. And we shall do so in order to throw the decisive weight in the scales, the weight that can turn the scales.
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—J.V. Stalin, “Speech Delivered at a Plenum of the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.),” 19 January 1925

In his speeches, Stalin also noted that “backward countries” sought to escape European domination. He stressed the need to support “national liberation” movements in order to weaken Britain and France.
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This had particular importance in Asia. Between 1920 and 1930 Communist parties were founded in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaya, Mongolia, Persia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. These parties naturally looked to Moscow for guidance and support. Moreover, the Soviets established their first client states in Asia in this period. In 1921, the Red Army invaded Mongolia and Tuva; the latter was annexed to the USSR in 1944.

China was the most important target for Soviet subversion in the 1920s and 1930s.
^[5]
At first the Soviets directed the Chinese Communists to infiltrate and thus gain control of the Chinese nationalist party (the Kuomintang, or KMT) and its army. The KMT leader, Chiang Kai Shek, recognized this threat and expelled the Communists. After a futile revolt, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decided in August 1927 to create an independent political military force—the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—in the Chinese hinterland. China policy was a central issue in the dispute between Stalin and Trotsky. Stalin prevailed, and thus his policy of support for guerrilla warfare and the establishment of revolutionary bases prevailed. He expected that in due course the CCP would challenge the KMT for control of China. Meanwhile, protracted civil war would hinder the emergence of a unified China on the USSR’s southern frontier.

In the 1920s, local warlords controlled much of China. Chiang forced them to submit to his rule. His “Northern Expedition” nominally unified China in December 1928 with the capture of Peking—though he had yet to subdue the Communists, and the warlords remained fractious afterward. KMT troops had not entered Manchuria, lest they provoke a reaction from Japan. In 1929, the warlord who controlled Manchuria, Chang Hsueh-liang, unwisely seized control of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER), the Soviet-owned line that ran across Manchuria. The Soviets invaded Manchuria with 100,000 troops and quickly forced China to accept Soviet control of the CER. At Soviet direction, the PLA stepped up guerrilla activities to tie down KMT troops during the crisis.

When the Soviets intervened in Manchuria, they were careful not to encroach on Japanese interests. Nevertheless, the Northern Expedition combined with the brief but convincing display of Soviet military prowess during the CER crisis seriously alarmed Japan. If Japan remained passive, either the KMT or the USSR would displace Chang Hsueh-liang’s weak forces and occupy Manchuria. To prevent this, Japan occupied Manchuria in September 1931. Along with the brief occupation of Shanghai in early 1932, this also drew KMT troops away from their efforts to crush CCP enclaves in southeastern China.

The Japanese occupation of Manchuria posed a dire threat to the Soviet Far East. Japan now had a 2,000-mile border with the USSR. All Soviet supplies and reinforcements had to move along the Trans-Siberian Railroad only a few miles from the border. Another Soviet concern was that European powers would combine with Japan to launch a two-front war on the USSR. In 1931 and 1932, the Soviets feared a Polish-Japanese attack on the USSR. When Hitler came to power in 1933, the Soviets dreaded a German-Japanese attack long before Germany was militarily capable of aggression. In the Far East itself, the Soviet response to the Japanese threat was to fortify their border and increase its forces there from about 100,000 men in 1931 to 570,000 in 1939.

Strategically, the Soviets tried to divide their enemies. The Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact of 1941 were the clearest expressions of this approach. Each pact drove a wedge between Germany and Japan and hindered the formation of an effective anti-Soviet coalition. The Soviets also sought allies via the 1932 Polish-Soviet Pact, the 1935 Franco-Soviet Pact, and the 1937 Sino-Soviet Pact. Finally, the Soviets diverted aggression away from their own borders, and encouraged other countries to fight Germany and Japan for as long as possible. The Nazi-Soviet Pact diverted German aggression onto Britain and France. The Soviets supplied Germany with raw materials to keep that conflict going for as long as possible. The Japanese-Soviet Pact diverted Japanese aggression onto Britain and America. While the Pact was in force, the USSR scrupulously refrained from taking any action to pin down Japanese forces in Manchuria and thus ease Anglo-American difficulties.
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