giving it control over larger and more powerful military units. They pointed to the organization’s complete helplessness during the Cold War era and to the fiascoes of the early days of the New World Order as good reasons to stiffen UN power and prestige with troops, equipment, and armaments controlled by the Security Council. They pointed out that UN attempts to engage in nation-building in Somalia in 1993 had been derailed by the U.S. decision to withdraw all ground troops from the nation after a firefight where American troops had been killed and their bodies dragged through the streets in front of TV cameras for all to see. And UN Haiti policy had never quite gelled because of vacillating American leadership.
But the thought of handing over a sizable portion of American military power to the United Nations was, for Magruder, a chilling one. If the UN could send Americans into Georgia… or the Crimea… how long would it be before they sent troops into Los Angeles to quell the next round of rioting? Or into American homes to search for handguns? Or to arrest American citizens for speaking out against this dark and twisted vision of the New World Order? …
Admiral Magruder had too fond a regard for the lessons of history to ignore the possibility ? no, the probability ? that such power, once granted, would grow, corrupt, and ultimately enslave.
Unfortunately, he and Scott were very much in the minority at this table.
“I’m not sure giving the UN more power is a very good idea,” Scott said, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands on the table before him. “In any event, this is a surrender of American sovereignty. We have never agreed to such a thing in our entire history. American forces have never been placed under the operational control of foreigners. The French tried it in World War I, and Montgomery wanted to try it in World War II, but in each case we did everything in our power to maintain control over our own people. The closest we ever came was in Somalia, and I’ll point out that it was the UN component there that got our people involved in that firefight that killed our boys… and then failed to support them when they got into trouble.”
“Admiral,” Heideman said, “I respect your views, but I cannot agree with them. We cannot live in the past any longer. National sovereignty is a nice, high-sounding phrase, but it’s soon going to be as antiquated as Communism. Look, you know how hard it is to get Congress or the public to back an intervention effort. Even when that intervention is in the national interest.”
“In other words, you intend to sidestep the Constitution by putting our troops under the UN,” Scott said bluntly.
Heideman flushed. “Stop twisting my words, Admiral. Troop commitment is a foreign policy decision. Executive Branch has the authority.”
“Except that Congress has the War Powers Act sitting there waiting for you, and you don’t want to force a confrontation on whether it’s legal for the Executive Branch to exercise the kind of authority you’re talking about.” Scott shook his head. “The simple fact is that UN intervention often has nothing whatsoever to do with our national interests.”
“It does in the Black Sea,” Waring said. “Right now the whole of the former Soviet Union is balanced on the thin edge of complete anarchy. Our presence in the Black Sea will serve to stabilize the area.”
Reed nodded. “My point exactly, Herb. I’ll also point out that intervention in this case helps our interests in the short term.”
Short-term interests, Magruder echoed in his mind. Penny-wise, pound-foolish.
If the other people at the table were looking for disasters waiting to happen, they didn’t need to look beyond the current situation unfolding between Ukraine and the fragmenting Russian Federation. Magruder glanced at Roger Lloyd, the new director of the CIA. He’d already given his briefing on the geopolitical situation in that part of the world and did not look happy with the way the discussion was going.
And Magruder didn’t blame him one bit.
The vast expanse of rolling, fertile, black-earth prairies that was Ukraine had been one of the original founding states of the Soviet Union in 1922, but its people had never fully reconciled themselves to Russian domination. Ethnically, Ukrainians were not Russians; they remembered still with blood-soaked bitterness Stalin’s forced collectivization during the 1930s, a policy of genocide by starvation that may have killed as many as twenty million people. Glasnost had come slowly to Ukraine; long after Gorbachev came to power, the head of the Communist party there had been one of Brezhnev’s cronies, and the arrests, repressions, and police harassments had continued until his dismissal in 1989.
After extended flirtations with various union treaties, Ukraine had declared complete independence in 1991, shortly after the failed coup attempt against Gorbachev, then turned around and signed the Minsk Agreement with Russia and Belarus, creating the Commonwealth of Independent States. For a time, during the Norwegian War, Ukraine had again been part of the Soviet empire, but with the collapse of Moscow’s central government and the outbreak of a general civil war, Kiev had again declared independence… and this time around seemed downright eager to redress old wrongs.
Unlike many other autonomous regions throughout the old Soviet Union, Ukraine had few internal ethnic conflicts. Most of the region’s large Tatar populations had been forcibly resettled in Central Asia during the 1940s; the only real ethnic hostilities remaining were those between Ukrainians and Russians. Eastern Ukraine had a high percentage of Russians in the population, most of whom favored strong ties with Moscow; from the few reports coming out of Russia to the West, strongly nationalistic Ukrainians had precipitated a blood-bath among ethnic Russians, killing hundreds of thousands ? perhaps millions ? and sending millions more fleeing across the border into the already devastated lands of the Russian Federation.
Besides that, the old dispute between Kiev and Moscow over the ownership of the Crimean Peninsula and the Black Sea Fleet remained. With Russia involved in its civil war, Ukraine appeared poised to settle the issue once and for all… by threat if possible, by military force if necessary. According to the most recent intelligence available to the Jefferson battle group, the Ukrainian Fifth and Seventh National Armies were in position at Odessa and at Melitopol, ready to move in and seize the Crimea from its Russian caretakers. Amphibious landing craft were being gathered at Odessa and at both Ocakov and Svobodnyj Port at the mouth of the Dnieper, lending credence to CIA and U.S. Naval Intelligence predictions that an invasion of the Crimea ? both overland across the narrow isthmus to the north and by sea, along the beaches north of Sevastopol ? was imminent.
Though distracted, the Russians had been trying their best to bolster their defenses in the Crimea. Since Ukraine blocked all approaches across the isthmus, their main line of communication ran across the narrow straits of Kerch, from an arm of the Russian Federation that flanked the Black and Azov Seas from Novoazovsk to the Georgian frontier at Gagra. Most of that bolstering had taken the form of military flights ? transports and air escorts ? flying in from Krasnodar. No one was quite sure at the moment whether Red or Blue forces held the upper hand, either in the Crimea or at Krasnodar. For a time, there’d been speculation among U.S. intelligence officers that those flights out of Krasnodar were in fact an invasion, one civil-war faction moving in to take Sevastopol away from the other in a three-cornered tug-of-war between Reds, Blues, and Ukrainians. So far, though, there was no indication that this was the case. Supply flights were moving in and out of the various Crimean military and commercial airfields with an almost clock-like regularity, and so far the Ukrainian forces had not attempted to hinder them… or to deliver the expected attack on the peninsula’s defenders.
But the situation was becoming more dangerous ? explosively so ? day by day. If the northern half of the Black Sea, from Odessa to Gagra, became a war zone, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, for the UN-U.S. forces in the area to stay clear of the fighting.
And now, three days after the accidental sinking of a Russian sub in the southern Black Sea, a Russian general named Boychenko, the de facto military ruler of the Crimean Peninsula, had just offered to surrender military control of the district to the United Nations. One of Boychenko’s people had approached the U.S. ambassador to the UN with the proposal during discussions of the return of the Russian submariners now aboard the Jefferson.
“I really wonder if it’s our interests that are being served here,” Scott said. “Let’s put this in perspective. First off, Boychenko is the Military Governor of the Crimea. After Krasilnikov declared martial law during the coup against Leonov, he became what amounts to the absolute ruler of the entire Crimean region. We’re not talking about some small unit commander wanting to turn over a few pieces of heavy artillery here. This is the equivalent of having an entire country ask for UN intervention.”
Lloyd nodded agreement. “Admiral Scott’s right,” he said. “It’s completely unprecedented. If the UN accepts this arrangement, they’re in effect declaring the Crimea to be under the authority ? and the protection ? of the United Nations Security Council.”
