Trigger Point (39 page)

‘That’s a big thing to ask a politician to accept.’

‘I agree. And it’ll take a big politician to change it. Not just one big politician. A generation of big politicians.’

‘Professor Ehrenreich,’ said Ed Abrahams, ‘you obviously take the long view of things. I can’t remember the last time anyone asked me what the Native American tribes would have thought before the pilgrims arrived.’ He paused and smiled for a moment. ‘Let’s say we agree with you. What you’ve given us is a diagnosis, not a solution. It tells us what’s wrong, not what we should do. It’s fine to say we need a single, shared set of objectives, but how do we get them? You’re in the White House. This is the place for decisions, not theories. Put yourself in our shoes. What are you suggesting we do?’

Ehrenreich wondered, again, why he had been called down here in such a hurry. He doubted the president had suddenly decided that the one thing he craved for entertainment on the second-last day of the year was an urgent seminar in international relations from someone who wasn’t exactly known as his biggest supporter. Something must be going on. For all his intellectual confidence, it suddenly scared the hell out of Joel Ehrenreich to think that something he said might actually have an influence on a real, practical decision that the president needed to take.

‘I can’t tell you what to do,’ he said carefully. ‘But I can tell you what you shouldn’t be doing, at least in my opinion. We shouldn’t be trying to deal with these things by ourselves. We don’t have the power to do that – not economically, not militarily. We did once, and when we did have it, we used it. The international system that we set up after World War Two was a US-inspired international system. We designed it, we implemented it. The UN, the IMF … That was us. Effectively, for a space of three to four years in the mid-1940s, when the rest of the world had been pretty much destroyed by war, the US was a de facto global government on the few genuinely global issues of the day. We had the power and no one else did. Now, we lost that relative advantage in power once the Soviets developed the bomb–’

‘Professor Ehrenreich,’ said Abrahams, ‘can we skip the history lesson?’

‘The point,’ said Ehrenreich curtly, giving Abrahams a dismissive glance, ‘is that during the Cold War there were very few genuinely shared global issues. Climate change and the environment weren’t on the agenda. Financial integration wasn’t an issue. Mr President, let me put it this way. During the Cold War, you could have dug a trench along the land borders of the Soviet Union, blown the whole thing up and let it sink into the sea, and life for us would have gone on just like before. Better than before. But think about China. If we could sink China tomorrow, our economy would be down the tube as quick as theirs. We’re no longer separable. So, here’s the problem. Fundamentally, give or take a few tweaks over the years, the system we have is still the one we designed after World War Two, when the Soviet Union could have disappeared into a hole. It’s a system for nation states where nation states are pretty much independent. But the world’s changed. The big problems aren’t national any more.’

‘Professor,’ said the president, ‘I’m not sure you’ve answered Mr Abrahams’ question. The question was what should I do?’

Ehrenreich nodded. ‘With respect, Mr President, I did answer it. I said I didn’t know.’

‘With respect, Professor, that’s not good enough. I’m going to ask you for more. Let’s say I agree with you. I can’t change the world’s global system overnight, even if I wanted to.’

‘No, sir.’

‘So let’s say I want to take these global issues and share them. You say China’s the one to watch. Let’s say I agree with you again. Here’s my problem. I look at China, and I see an autocratic regime that systematically abuses human rights and acts on global issues in a way which pretty much ignores what the rest of the world requires. It’s only worried about its own growth. So how do I–’

‘Mr President, may I interrupt you?’

Knowles stopped. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Let me replay what you’ve said in a slightly different way. I look at China and I see a country that only thirty years ago came out of an almost unimaginably horrible period of revolutionary communism that choked its development and put a large part of the country a good way back towards the Stone Age, a country that’s eager to improve the standard of living for its people and that is utterly bemused by the insistence of other countries – and chiefly the United States – that it should replicate foreign political practices, while those same countries are trying to constrain its carbon emissions and its growth so they can boost their already exceptional standards of living.’

The president gazed at Ehrenreich.

‘I hate authoritarianism and suppression of civil rights as much as anyone, but there is another way of looking at it.’

‘I guess you can look at it that way,’ said Knowles, ‘but I don’t know how that helps me. I don’t know how I go along and say, let’s drop everything and pretend like we don’t have national interests and work this stuff out together. How do I give them more say in the IMF, more say over international financial regulation, more say over all that kind of stuff after what they’ve just done? Why should I have any confidence they’ll use that power for our mutual benefit? Everything I’ve seen tells me the opposite.’

‘Can I replay that again for you, sir? I’m China and I’m looking at you, and I’m saying, why should I work with him when he doesn’t want to give us anywhere near the influence we should have in the IMF and in international regulation in proportion to our size and importance in the global economy, when there was all this talk in 2008 and 2009 about giving us a meaningful voice at the top and it didn’t happen? Where’s the evidence that he’s got any interest at all in mutual benefit or that’s he’s doing anything more than simply looking after America?’

The president shook his head. ‘I don’t know where we go if we start talking like that.’

‘Exactly. Where
do
we go?’ Ehrenreich sat forward in his chair. ‘Mr President, I don’t mean to speak out of turn, and I sense I take a little more historical a view than Mr Abrahams is comfortable with, but … I’m going to say it anyway. You’re a pawn in this process. You’re a tiny little piece in the middle of a big historical process, as the peoples of this planet become so integrated that a bunch of interests have to be balanced against each other for the good of all peoples as a whole. Because if they’re not – everyone suffers. Not just them, but us. It’s impossible to overstate how new, how utterly new, this situation is for our civilization. That’s why it’s so hard for us. But Mr President, here’s the thing. It’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. You, and the United States, are not powerful enough to stop that. The only question is, how much pain is it going to take as this historical process plays out? Is it going to be excruciating, are we going to fight war after war as a way of balancing those interests, and perhaps destroy ourselves entirely? Or is it going to be peaceful? Disorienting, but peaceful? Are we going to be able to live with the ambiguity long enough to construct a way to do it without violence? That’s the choice. You do not have the power to take that choice away. No one does. But in your position, you do, sir, have the ability to influence the choice that we make. It could be that this financial crisis is the chance you have to start exerting that influence. It could be that it isn’t. But what it definitely isn’t – what I can guarantee you, absolutely, one hundred per cent guarantee you that it isn’t – is an opportunity to make that choice disappear. The process is in place and has been for decades. It can’t be stopped, sir. Whatever you do, please don’t mistake it for an opportunity to hold it back. There is no such thing.’

The president was silent for a moment. ‘You put that forcefully,’ he said.

‘Marion should have warned you what I’m like.’

‘You make it sound like we’re in some kind of global endgame.’ Ehrenreich shrugged. ‘Maybe we are. A long one. If that’s what this is, we’re at the very start of it, but how we start might make a big difference to how we end and how long it takes us to get there. You know, there’s a saying attributed to Bismarck about what makes a great statesman. Do you know it, Mr President?’

Knowles shook his head.

‘Bismarck said, the truly great statesman is the one who hears the distant hoofbeat of the horse of history, and through an extraordinary effort manages to leap and catch the horseman by the coat-tails and be carried along for as far as he can be. Not ride the horse, Mr President, not replace the horseman, but just to catch him by his coat-tails is a great feat. Sir, most statesmen who think they’re great – who their own times think are great – when the horse has gone by, and the horseman looks around behind him, it turns out they actually just stood in the way and got trampled into the dust.’

‘And you hear the hoofbeats?’ said the president quietly.

‘I do, sir. They’re loud.’

‘Then what would you do to catch on to the horseman?’

Ehrenreich smiled. ‘I’m not a great statesman.’

‘Pretend you are.’

Ehrenreich shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’d make a start.’

‘How?’

‘However it looks like.’

‘Do something in the G22? The UN?’

‘No. That’s not going do it.’

‘Then what?’

‘I don’t know. Call a summit with Zhang? Get him involved. Make him part of the solution, not part of the problem. Throw open the question of regulation of funds. Their funds, other funds. Make some changes that suit them.’

‘Roll over, you mean?’ said Rose.

‘No. We have to stand firm as well. It’s not one way. Whatever else it is, it can’t be that. It’s give and take.’

‘What if he refuses to get involved?’ said Abrahams.

‘I don’t know. Ask again? And again? I said it’ll take more than one big politician. This isn’t all our fault, Mr Abrahams. I’m not saying it is, and we have to remember that.’ Ehrenreich looked back at the president.

‘You know what my fear is? That it will take some kind of massive catastrophe, some kind of horrible and bloody confrontation, before we get enough big politicians to realize what has to be done. Historically that’s how it’s always been. The tragedy of our species is that we can react to a catastrophe that we’ve actually experienced and yet we seem consistently unable to react ahead of time when it’s obvious we’re heading towards a new one. Somehow we can never really believe it’s going to happen.’ Ehrenreich paused. ‘If we do start on that road towards a new way of doing things, no one will know what the end will look like. It’s a transitional process. We’ll have to live with uncertainty for a good long while. Not just our generation, but generations after us. It doesn’t happen all at once. You’re changing the governance of the world. We’ve had presidents who have tried to do that before. Woodrow Wilson tried and failed. FDR arguably succeeded because of the unique moment of power he enjoyed, which gives us the system we have to change today. George W Bush, you could argue, was the last one who tried, even on a relatively limited scale, and he failed miserably because he completely misunderstood how much our military power could really be expected to achieve. But the change needs to happen. With every year that goes by it needs to happen more. Someone’s got to start. We’ve got to get them in the tent. We’ve got to have them in the tent pissing out. But that does mean, and we have to accept, the tent’s going to look different after a while.’

‘Wet,’ said Abrahams. ‘And smelly.’

Ehrenreich smiled. ‘Maybe. So we have to live with a wet, smelly tent for a while. At least we’ve still got a tent. That’s the road we have to take. I’m not pretending I can see where it goes. I can see the start but I can’t see the end. That’s a difficult thing. But then I look at the alternative, the road we’re on, and I can see the end. And you know what?’ Joel Ehrenreich took off his glasses and gazed at the president with his myopic eyes. ‘I may not have the best eyesight in the world, but I can tell a dead end when I see one.’

‘That’s well put,’ said the president.

Ehrenreich put his glasses back on. ‘You can use it if you like. Be my guest. Keep taking us down that road, Mr President, take us down that road until we slam into the dead end, and I fear for my children. Not my grandchildren, sir. My children.’

55

JOEL EHRENREICH HAD been shown out. Only the president and Marion remained in the Oval Office.

‘He’s big on the history stuff, your professor.’

Marion nodded.

‘That kind of talk can sound a little delusional.’

Marion smiled. ‘On the other hand, it can be right. Once in every five hundred years.’

‘You think it is?’

‘Broadly. Not every word, not every implication, but a lot of it. The gist of it.’

‘And that bit about making a start and seeing where it goes?’

‘After two years on the Security Council, Mr President, I’m with Joel a hundred per cent on that.’

Knowles was silent for a moment. ‘Marion, last time we met you told me you were thinking of resigning.’

Marion nodded. Until she got to La Guardia that afternoon and discovered that Joel Ehrenreich was with her on the plane to the White House, she had thought the president had asked her down to fire her.

‘I want to tell you about something that’s happening right now but I can’t do that unless I know you’re not resigning. Not yet anyway. I need you to stick around a little longer. Are you prepared to do that?’

Marion frowned.

‘I need to know you’re going to do that, Marion.’

The president was almost imploring her. She nodded. ‘Okay.’

‘Thank you. I want to tell you something.’

Marion listened as Knowles told her about the events of the past two days and the clash that was coming as the Chinese and American strike groups converged across the Indian Ocean.

‘We would have about forty-four hours now until they get to Lamu Bay,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Call it forty hours. The navy boys can’t be sure exactly how quick they’ll get there.’

Marion was silent, trying to take it all in.

‘What do you think Professor Ehrenreich would say if he knew about it? You think this is the war he was talking about?’

‘It could be,’ said Marion. ‘One of the battles, at least. I think he’d say if it wasn’t this it would soon be something else.’

‘He has a damn pessimistic outlook, doesn’t he?’

‘Actually, he can be quite a humorous guy. He does quite a good Eddie Murphy impression.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘It’s true.’

The president shook his head, laughing. Then he was serious again. Ehrenreich had talked about an awful confrontation, a massive catastrophe that would have to happen before things changed. ‘What do you think he would say if I told him what I just told you?’

‘I think Joel would say now’s the time. Now’s the time to do something different.’

‘Now? With everything that’s happening?’

‘Extraordinary events make for extraordinary opportunities. He’d say something like that.’

The president’s eyes narrowed slightly.

‘But as you’ve seen, Joel takes a long, historic view of things. If I can be frank, sir. If I can be completely frank …’

‘He doesn’t think I’m the guy to grab on to the coat-tails. That’s what you’re about to say, isn’t it?’

Marion nodded. ‘He’s never been one of your fans. I think Joel would say you’re not big enough to do it.’

Knowles took that on the chin. ‘General Hale and the Joint Chiefs have developed four plans,’ he said. He outlined them.

‘What happens afterwards?’ asked Marion.

‘The military boys have got plans for that as well. They’re anticipating an escalation. They’re briefing me as soon as I’m finished with you.’

‘What if we lose this engagement? The plans all seem to envisage us winning.’

‘We will. On a military level, we will.’

‘Then we create an enemy that’s going to come back for more.’

‘You don’t think they’ll learn a lesson?’

‘No, sir. They’ll be back for more. And in the meantime, whatever happens militarily, we’re going to have the biggest economic war we’ve ever seen.’

‘So which of those four plans would you choose?’

Marion thought for a moment. Then she looked back at the president. ‘None.’