Repulse: Europe at War 2062-2064 Read Online Free PDF Page B

metal exports to the Caliphate before I could give Taiwan up like that.  I felt a complete shit, to be honest, but there was no way the US would ever go to war with China over Taiwan, and Xueping knew that.  So he got the fifty-year limit on free elections in Taiwan, and we managed to get China to reduce her heavy metal exports to the Caliphate by a lousy 10%.’
    Grant and other diplomats endured many such morally dubious compromises.  As Western governments analysed and tried to unpick the Chinese threads woven into their societies over the preceding decades, often they found themselves at risk of causing serious problems to their countries’ infrastructure.  Grant himself appeared to despair, writing in Night Flight to Beijing : ‘For the first time in years, I reached a point where I just did not believe Washington was getting it anymore.  When Madelyn [Coll] told me to push for bigger concessions concerning exports to the Caliphate, I replied, “We don’t have the leverage.  They see the Caliphate as a stable political entity which works far better than anything before it.”  But she only tilted her head at me and those hazel eyes narrowed in her usual considered frustration.  I wanted to scream at her, at all of Washington - hadn’t they learned a damn thing since the crash twenty years ago?  How could they still believe that the West wielded any significant amount of power?  I’ve met so many people in my life, argued and negotiated and bartered the best terms for the US every single goddam time.  And getting my chiefs to understand how little leverage we actually had was the hardest thing I ever tried.’
    Grant can be accused of being slightly churlish here: certainly a number of politicians on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 2050s did comprehend the vast shift in the global balance of power which had taken place over the preceding generation, but few could find any solution which would be acceptable to their electorates or their consciences.  As the East grew in economic strength, the West saw this unwelcome development through uncomprehending eyes, understanding what the raw data announced but unable or unwilling to take the necessary steps to adjust to the new reality.
    Nevertheless, Grant deserves recognition for his tireless work to promote diplomatic solutions to trends that worried Western military and economic analysts.  However, it is unlikely Grant’s continued efforts could have significantly changed the course of events.  Grant was killed in July 2061, aged fifty-four, along with nine-hundred-and-twenty other people, when a disgruntled city employee tampered with the super AI managing the Los Angeles autonomous freeway system, causing pile-ups throughout the city involving over six thousand vehicles.
     
     
    II. THE THINNEST DEFENCES
     
    Subterfuge also played a role in the West’s pre-war efforts to pierce the impenetrable fog around the Caliphate, which resulted in yet more obfuscation.  Recently released English government files detail a series of COBRA meetings which also involved the British Defence Council.  The minutes of these meetings show the degree of frustration to which efforts to monitor the Caliphate were subject.  Since the debacle in 2058, when the Caliphate displayed the bodies of four British Special Forces’ troops caught on a clandestine reconnaissance incursion near Tripoli, Napier had blocked any further reckless plans to use flesh-and-blood troops.  Instead, NATO maintained a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean and the Arabian Seas, launching high-altitude ACAs to eavesdrop on Caliphate digital traffic.  However, unknown to the West, those devices which survived the Caliphate’s defences for more than a few hours were being fed false data.
    At a particularly acrimonious COBRA meeting on 4 November 2061, Gen. Sir Terry Tidbury questioned the Head of MI5 on the veracity of the latter’s conclusion that nothing suggested the Caliphate