Authors: Norman Spinrad
Tags: #fiction, science fiction, Russia, America, France, ESA, space, Perestroika
Russian Spring
Russian Spring
Norman Spinrad
For Mikhail Gorbachev,
who made it necessary,
and
N. Lee Wood,
who made it possible
Part One
American Autumn
Secretary Goddard: “Sooner or later, Bill, we’re going to have to face the unfortunate fact that Latin America simply isn’t capable of standing alone.”
Bill Blair: “Standing alone against what, Mr. Secretary?”
Secretary Goddard: “Standing alone on its own two feet. Successfully managing modern economies with stable currencies, feeding its own people, and maintaining some semblance of stable democratic government. They certainly aren’t doing it now, and history is no cause for optimism. A passive role is an abdication of responsibility.”
Bill Blair: “You mean we should intervene openly in the affairs of Latin American countries whose internal policies are not to our liking?”
Secretary Goddard: “I mean we should do whatever we have to do to establish stable democratic governments capable of joining with us to form a Western Hemispheric Common Market that will prevent this hemisphere from turning into another Africa! And if that’s your idea of gunboat diplomacy, well then I’ll be proud to have you call me a gunboat diplomat!”
—
Newspeak
, with Bill Blair
STAGGERING TOWARD DISASTER OR JUST
TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS?
The Americans seem to be staggering into yet another mini Vietnam in Latin America, and outraged but impotent European opinion seems to be stumbling once more into the wishful conclusion that it will be a disaster like all the others.
But what if the wise men have been wrong all along? Certainly this latest intervention seems like a disaster for the poor Costa Ricans, and certainly it seems likely to involve the United States in yet another endless military quagmire.
But what if the Americans have been applying different lessons all along? For them, after all, the Vietnam War was a long period of domestic economic prosperity. And the Gulf War taught them that no other nation on earth could hope to successfully oppose their high-tech might, establishing the United States as the impoverished military overlord of the planet.
“If you’ve got it, flaunt it,” goes an old and currently quite ominous
American aphorism. And if you don’t have much of anything else, is nakedly flaunting your de facto military overlordship really a mistake in the amoral world of political and economic realpolitik?
What if keeping their military involved in endless little military quagmires in Latin America is precisely what the American economic establishment has intended all along?
—
Libération
AMERICA FOR THE AMERICANS
The condemnation of our efforts to rescue Costa Rica from far-left fanatics and outright chaos by the Common European Parliament, led by self-righteous German Green Socialists, and the threat of economic sanctions implied, should finally convince even the most Europhilic skeptics that half a century of American generosity has been cynically betrayed in the service of Common European economic hegemonism.
When we saved Europe from the Nazis, we were hailed as heroes. When we rebuilt their shattered economies with Marshall Plan aid, we were praised as benefactors. When we stood with them against Soviet imperialism, we were staunch allies. When we preserved their oil supplies in the Gulf with our arms and our treasure, we saved their economic prosperity at no little cost to ourselves.
When the reunited Germany was hardwired into a tighter confederal Common Europe, there was loud cheering on both sides of the Atlantic that the so-called German Question had at long last been solved. The Soviets pulled their troops back behind their own borders in return for untold billions of deutsche marks in grants, loans, and joint venture capital, and the United States was able to bring its troops home at last.
Now we see how we have been repaid for preserving European freedom and prosperity for half a century and more.
We find ourselves frozen out of the largest economic market the world has ever known. We find ourselves facing a Common Europe, dominated economically by the German colossus, determined to sabotage our efforts to establish a Western Hemispheric Common Market.
We have an enormous overseas debt to the very beneficiaries of our generosity and goodwill, a staggering economy, and an unholy alliance meddling in our own hemisphere, led by a swaggeringly self-righteous Germany, with the Soviet Union cheering it on from the sidelines.
America stands alone. And in sad retrospect, we can see that it has always been so. When our aid was needed, the nations of Europe were our friends. Now that they have long since gotten what they wanted from us, they will not even leave us to tend our own front yard without their interference.
We have been had. We have no other alternative. We must build
and preserve an economically free and integrated America for all Americans, North and South. We must make whatever sacrifice is necessary to insure that overwhelming European economic power is counterbalanced by absolute American military impregnability.
We must stand up to Common European hegemonism, bite the necessary bullet, and deploy Battlestar America at long last, whatever the cost.
—
Washington Post
Defense stocks, particularly anything aerospace related, which have been in the doldrums for a decade, have already exploded. The early bird does indeed get the fattest and freshest worm.
But there’s still plenty of upside left in secondary and particularly tertiary issues. And even at today’s sharply risen prices, there’s still more upside left in the big aerospace conglomerates in the medium run than the pessimists think. Contrary to popular opinion on the Street, we believe it’s still not too late for smart investors to cash in on the Battlestar America bonanza. We believe that the best is yet to come. Think independent subcontractors.
—
Words from Wall Street
METHOD IN THE AMERICAN MADNESS?
Conventional wisdom has it that the decision of the American Congress to fund deployments of major elements of the so-called Battlestar America nuclear defense shield was an act of collective madness. But in truly ruthless realpolitik terms, from the American point of view, maybe not.
Against whom is Battlestar America supposed to defend? Against a Soviet Union which presents no military threat? Against a peaceful and prosperous Common Europe in the midst of an economic boom? Against hypothetical Third World madmen eager to commit national suicide by launching a puny nuclear assault against the planet’s only military superpower as some naive apologists sincerely contend?
This, of course, is a question without a rational answer. But it may not be the right question. For if one asks instead what the Americans have to gain by deploying Battlestar America, however flimsy the official excuses may be, the answers become all too clear.
By deploying Battlestar America, the United States props up a sagging defense sector without which its already staggering economy would fall into a deep structural depression.
By deploying Battlestar America, the American politicians validate the billions they have poured into its development over the decades.
By deploying Battlestar America, the United States serves notice on
the republics of Latin America that American force reigns supreme in the Western Hemisphere, that no matter what interventionist excesses the Americans may descend to, no one will ever have the will or the power to oppose them in their own self-proclaimed sphere of influence.
Long ago, Mikhail Gorbachev promised to do a terrible thing to America. “We will deprive you of an enemy,” he proclaimed, and lived up to his words.
And now we see the American response. Having been deprived of the enemy whose existence propped up their economy and rationalized their foreign policy for half a century, the American government has simply gone out and nominated a replacement.
If Germany and Common Europe had not existed to serve this purpose, they no doubt would have been forced to invent us. And indeed, in a certain sense, they have.
—
Die Welt
I
With a leaden thump, a protesting squeal of rubber on concrete, and a disconcerting groan of tired metal, the old 747 hit the runway, popping open half a dozen overhead luggage bins as the thrust-reversers roared, and the plane shuddered, and the lights flickered.
It had been a truly ghastly fourteen hours from Los Angeles in this aerial cattle car, what with a thermostat that seemed incapable of maintaining a constant temperature, and two lukewarm and pasty TV dinners, and a movie machine that didn’t work, and a seat that wouldn’t recline all the way, and bad vibrations from the left inboard engine, but somehow the plane had made it, and Jerry Reed was in Paris, or anyway officially on French soil.
For a born-and-bred Californian space cadet whose only previous experience with foreign intrigue had been limited to picking up hookers in Tijuana, it was a long way, my son, from Downey.
Eight weeks ago, Jerry had been planning to spend his three-week vacation backpacking in the Sierras. He hadn’t even
had
a passport. Now here he was, taxiing toward the terminal at Charles de Gaulle, and heaving a great sigh of relief that he had made it to Common Europe without having it lifted.
“No, no, but of course not, there is nothing at all illegal about it,”
André Deutcher had assured him. “The worst thing that can happen is that they refuse to let you board the airplane.”
“And confiscate my passport.”
André had smiled that worldly smile of his and blown out a thin pout of smoke from one of his ten
ECU
Upmanns. “If they confiscate your passport for trying to leave the country, then it was a document of no value in the first place, n’est-ce pas, Jerry?” he said.
“True enough,” Jerry admitted bitterly. “But if they slice my clearance for trying it, I’ll never work in the Program again, like poor Rob.”
“Rob is finished, Jerry, it is a sad thing, but it is true,” André Deutcher said much more coldly. “And because people like Rob Post are no longer welcome, so is your American space program. . . .”
“With our heavy lifters and our shuttles and our sat sleds, our basic logistic technology isn’t that far behind. . . .” Jerry protested wanly, sounding sad and foolish even to himself.
“While the Soviets are building three more Cosmograds and going to Mars and we are building the spaceplane prototype.”
“When the politics change here, all the Battlestar America technology will give us—”
“Jerry, Jerry, take my offer or not as you like,” André said, fixing him with those ambiguous gray-green eyes of his, “that much is the representative of
ESA
speaking. But do not delude yourself as all the people at this party must in order to face their shaving mirrors in the morning. This is what happened to Rob, n’est-ce pas, I would not wish to see the same happen to you, and this is a new friend speaking, a friend who has dreamed the same dream, and who knows all too well how he would feel had he been unfortunate enough to be born American instead of French at this hour in its history. Battlestar America is the problem, and can never be the solution. Rob knew this in his heart, yes, and thought he could fight it from within. Do not let this happen to you.”
Jerry had only known André Deutcher for three weeks now, and indeed had met him at Rob Post’s previous party. André had been introduced, by Rob himself in fact, as an
ESA
engineer spending his vacation time in the United States seeing the sights and meeting like-minded American space people for his own pleasure.
Jerry, of course, had not believed this for a minute, had assumed that the Frenchman was some kind of industrial spy, and had immediately begun to kid him about it. André had countered that the American civilian space program, being all but nonexistent, had no industrial secrets worth stealing, and that he was really working for French military intelligence. The bullshit had flown back and forth, and somehow a spark of friendship seemed to have been lit.