Interlude: The Empire Contemplates Striking Back
That night and half a world away, a group known as the Politburo met in a long and narrow room in the heart of the Kremlin in Moscow to advise Secretary-General Andropov on how best to reply to President Shooter’s latest speech. The average age of the dozen men in mostly rumpled gray suits was 68, although most of them looked at least a decade older than they really were. Only three of their number was born after the Russian Revolution.
“This session will come to order,” announced Nikolai Tikhonov, Andropov’s dull-looking second in command and the oldest member at age 80.
“Where’s the Secretary General?” asked Heydar Aliyev, a sharp-eyed man with a healthy tan.
“The Secretary is indisposed this evening,” Tikhonov explained as he unconsciously adjusted his tie. “However, he insisted that the meeting this evening continue regardless, to gauge your opinions on how we should respond to the American President’s overtures.”
The other members of the group nervously exchanged glances. The Politburo was always used to rubber-stamping the Secretary General’s opinions. To ask for their own opinions—well, what happened if they picked the wrong one?
Tikhonov turned to a bespectacled man with perpetually pursed lips. “Minister Gromyko, what is your opinion on the accuracy of the speech? If it’s a bluff, that will make our response much easier.”
Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko started polishing his glasses as he tried to buy some time. “Well in my opinion,” he said, stretching out his words, “American Presidents are still stuck dealing with the fallout of the Nixon presidency.”
“Now there was a president we could work with,” said Grigory Romanov, interrupting Gromyko. Romanov looked a bit like Rudolph Valentino might have if he had lived into his sixties, with a permanently arched brow and slicked-back hair. “Not to mention easy to manipulate.”
“As I was saying,” Gromyko continued, ignoring Romanov entirely, “Far Shooter wouldn’t dare to utter a lie that outrageous to his own people. Best-case scenario, he has been deluded into thinking this scheme is feasible.”
Tikhonov nodded in acknowledgement. “And the Americans themselves seem to be split on whether to believe this scheme is true. Their Newsweek magazine has already given it the spiteful nickname of ‘Star Wars’, after a popular fantasy of the prior decade. Marshal Ustinov, what would be the consequences if this program was real?”
“Dire, extremely dire,” answered Minister of Defense (and WWII war hero) Dimitri Ustinov, the only member of the group to wear a military uniform instead of a suit. “Most of my rocketry group was of the opinion that S.D.I. was impossible, especially the X-ray laser, but I knew that answer would be no use to the Secretary General, so I approached RYaN to get their opinion.”
A few members of the Politburo rolled their eyes at this point. The RYaN committee (“RYN” being the Russian acronym for “Nuclear Missile Attack”) had been put together by Andropov as a direct response to Far Shooter’s declaration that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire”; its goal was to prove that America was planning a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, and to warn Andropov of the exact moment when that was about to happen, to give him the best chance to react.
Marshal Ustinov donned a pair of square-rimmed glasses as he consulted a page of typewritten figures. “I was given the following scenario, which seems to check out:
“First, the Americans build a space defense system capable of stopping our entire arsenal, and we build a matching system capable of stopping their entire arsenal. Assuming that the American government absorbs the development costs (as Far Shooter promised in his speech), construction would still cost us in the neighborhood of 250 billion rubles. This means that both governments’ defense budgets would be depleted.”
“Where did you get this estimate?” asked Tikhonov.
“We asked the American Chiefs of Staff, followed by the leader of the opposition party in Congress, and then averaged the two figures,” Ustinov replied.
“Second,” he continued, “the American economy would recover faster than our own. Sorry, Nikolai,” he said to Tikhonov, who happened to be the chief economic planner for the Soviet Union, “but it’s true.”
“No,” Tikhonov said with a sigh, “I agree. Carry on.”
“Third, America builds 200 more ICBMs, at a price of 150 million rubles. They can do this in less than a year. Thanks to our spies, we would know they were doing this from the moment the funds were allocated. However, to counter 200 ICBMs purely with space defense measures would cost 500 million rubles and would take us three years to finish. This inevitably leads to Step Four: Before we’ve had the chance to catch up, America launches a first strike at the Soviet Union, and we retaliate, sending our entire arsenals at each other. Their space defense would take out all of our missiles, while our space defense would take out all but let’s say 125 ICBMs and the 1250 nuclear warheads that they contain. Which would be enough to take out all of our major cities.
“Conclusion: Contrary to President Shooter’s assertions, the Strategic Defense Initiative will not end the Cold War. It will definitely win the war, for whoever can spend their money faster. And that’s why I recommend we strike now, while we still have a numerical advantage over the Americans.”
This statement caused an uproar among the membership in the room.
“Order, order!” Tikhonov cried out. “Comrade Gorbachev, I believe you have a rebuttal to Marshall Ustinov’s suggestion?”
Mikhail Gorbachev, at age 54, was the youngest man in the room. He was more clearly balding than most of the others, or perhaps he was the only one who didn’t spend thousands of rubles on undetectable hairpieces. His most obvious physical feature was the burgundy birthmark on the top of his head, shaped like a hand-drill, or perhaps like a key.
“I would like to remind my fellow members that there is a considerable difference between us losing World War III after being hit with 1250 warheads and everybody losing World War III as a result of 10,000 warheads being exchanged. The former marks the end of Russia and Communism, the latter marks The End, full stop.”
“Well perhaps a world ruled by the Americans doesn’t deserve to survive at all,” Ustinov said as a petulant rejoinder.
As the others were considering this there was a loud pounding at the door.
Tikhonov shook his head in exasperation before getting up and answering the door. “This had better be good, Viktor,” he said to the 62-year old aide standing outside (also in a rumpled gray suit).
“It’s the Secretary General,” Viktor told the others. “He’s been taken to Central Clinical.”
“The hospital!” exclaimed Gromyko. “What happened?”
“He asked for some time alone to examine a report on the economy. He heard him cry out, and we found him on the floor, in…well, it was a mess, let me leave it like that.”
“Not very surprising,” said Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, another hero of World War II and the one member that most carried himself like a movie star. “I helped put that report together, and the results are rather shocking.”
Tikhonov dismissed Viktor then returned to his seat with a sigh. “We were supposed to cover that report in tomorrow’s meeting, but it’s clear now that we’ll have to get it out of the way if we have any hope of giving the Secretary General a solid recommendation when he recovers from his current condition.”
“The long and the short of it is that the Soviet economy is poised for a complete and catastrophic collapse sometime before the end of this century,” said Shcherbytsky. “The problem dates back at least twenty years, but the moment of opportunity for reversing the trend ended during the latest Five Year Plan.”
“Which of course was my handiwork,” Tikhonov said grimly. “Very well. If you need a scapegoat for this disaster, I place myself fully at your disposal—you may have my resignation, and if that isn’t enough, go ahead and purge me. I only ask that you spare my family.” As he said this, he lowered his head down onto the symbolic chopping block.
Gorbachev reached out to raise him back up. “We don’t purge people anymore, Nikolai.”
“Unfortunately,” muttered Romanov.
“And a good deal of the blame goes with how much we’ve been sending to our allies to put down American-inspired insurrections,” Gromyko added. “Besides, somebody needs to lead the country until Andropov recovers.”
Tikhonov looked around him carefully, to see if anybody visibly wanted him to carry through on his offer to resign. “I’ll lead this committee for as long as you have confidence in me, and not one day longer. So, S.D.I.?”
Marshal Ustinov sighed. “I suppose I could put RYaN’s four-step scenario in a form simple enough for American voters to understand. Reword it so the Soviet Union is the dastardly first striker instead of America. And then feed it to the American Democratic Party through channels they think are loyal. That should generate enough confusion to keep it from being funded for at least a year.”
“I agree with Comrade Gromyko that the economy’s problems cannot be entirely blamed on Comrade Tikhonov,” said Shcherbytsky. “This matter with President Shooter definitely takes priority, for now.”
“Are we in agreement on both motions?” Tikhonov asked the group. “Any objections? The motions are hereby carried, and this meeting is now adjourned.”