Even more, what happens if we get locked into major combat in Iraq and another country becomes a sudden threat? We will be caught flat-footed, for sure. Take a look at any of the regional contingencies: China-Taiwan; North Korea-South Korea; Iran-any neighbor; Russia-Georgia or any of its breakaway republics and there are other possibilities. The world is short on resources and long on demand. Water and oil will drive the next decade’s social and economic policies. What happens if a nation decides it must act for survival despite its impact on economies around its region or around the globe?
Meredith dropped the paper in her lap and put her fingers to her temples. My God, what is he saying?
She read on. Matt delineated several Pacific Rim regional threats, but drifted back to Islamic radicalism. He highlighted the Abu Sayyaf insurgent factions that were struggling for help, ripe for outside support. While philosophically aligned with Bin Laden, the Abu Sayyaf’s need for resources outstripped Al Qaeda’s ability to provide, Matt argued.
She felt close to Matt reading his paper. Obvious to her, these were just thoughts typed into a computer through stream of consciousness. She closed the folder and sat still, looking through the window into the night. She turned off the light, still thinking, and let the darkness settle over her like a blanket.
As she drifted off to sleep, in her mind a hawk circled, looking for prey. As her thinking processes shut down, there it was. Its talons clutched the rabbit, and her subconscious thought: It cannot be possible.
Chapter 51
The following morning, Meredith ate the good breakfast that Karen made for her, after which she printed out a MapQuest set of directions to the University of Virginia library. She sped down Route 29 into the heart of Charlottesville and found the library after a few wrong turns.
Once she was parked and now in range of a decent cell tower, Meredith powered up her Blackberry, read her messages, and stared at the library for a minute.
Energized, she barged in, showing the monitor her Department of Defense badge and asked if there was an office with a fax machine. Getting a good look at the blonde official, the student manager gladly let her use the librarian’s office. Meredith threw off her coat, still wearing Karen’s jeans and flannel shirt. She then walked quickly to the reference and periodical sections, spending nearly thirty minutes collecting country reports and studies on Japan and the Philippines. Then she punched up Google and she found the British “Economist Intelligence Unit” country reports to be the most insightful and comprehensive.
She spun the mouse until the Japanese trade figures appeared. When she had read Matt’s monograph, she had not thought of the Philippines as an actor, but as a target. It was resource rich but infrastructure poor. It was a rabbit with no hole to hide.
And Japan was a potential hawk. Circling, starv-ing, resource-poor Japan; its wings spread high into the stratosphere of advanced nations, yet it had little bounty within its own territory.
She studied the figures. Trade was declining with Europe and the U.S. Next, she looked at the demographics. There would be a manpower shortage in Japan in a couple of years. She looked at the energy reports. Japan’s coal production had fallen, and its alternative sources program had reached the point of diminishing returns. Gas prices were already exorbitant across the country. She read the EIU report that asserted that Prime Minister Mizuzawa was tiring of American claims of unfair play. Could she have stumbled onto something?
She searched the documents, looking for a link between Japan and the Philippines. The revolution had happened, she knew that. She also knew that about two years ago, the Abu Sayyaf had announced their alignment with Al Qaeda, hoping to reach into Bin Laden’s deep pockets. She turned away from the computer and reached under the stack of books and papers, grabbing country reports from two years back. Tucking her hair behind both ears, she dug in. She read agricultural reports, manufacturing reports, trade figures, imports, exports. Nothing seemed unusual.
Then she saw it.
Buried in a “Recent Developments” paragraph of the two-year-old EIU report, she found the sentence, “Surprisingly, Japan has invested in construction on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. That the Japanese would construct mines and mineral-gathering facilities on the island, which is riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers, demonstrates the desperate lengths to which they will go to secure resources for their economy.”
That was the link, but what did it mean? Maybe they were just getting resources. Think, Meredith, think. She stared at the wall, searching her mind for a clue. How would they transport the stuff? On ships. What kind of ships?
She picked up the phone and called her office in the Pentagon. Mark Russell, a young intern, answered the phone. Perfect.
“Mark. Listen. I want you to go to the guys at the Philippine desk and get reports for all shipping activity out of Mindanao. I need you to fax it to me in ten minutes,” Meredith demanded. She gave him the number.
“Okay. But they’re pretty busy with this current sit—”
“Listen!” she said loudly, “this current situation may be bigger than we think. Now do it. And tell them that Stone wants it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She hung up the phone. It was not a total lie. If she could prove a link between Japan and the Philippines, she would try to brief Stone that afternoon. The implications of fighting an insurgency, if that was what her country was going to do, would be vastly different if Japan was supporting the rebels for their own purposes. How had they gotten all the new weapons? How had they grown so fast in the past two years?
Five minutes later, the fax machine jumped to life and began to spit out pages with the past year’s worth of shipping data from Davao City and Polomoloc, the two major port cities on Mindanao. She stacked them on the desk, cluttered with open books turned upside down to mark pages.
It was monotonous, looking at the figures of ships and their names and the cargo that they hauled. The only Japanese ships she could identify that went into either port were some taking in consumer goods for the Filipinos, several ships carrying timber back to Japan, and ten oil tankers. Oil tankers? She checked the oil export figures for the Philippines. They don’t export oil to Japan!
She called Mark back and asked him for some tracking data on the ten Japanese oil tankers that had left Davao City in the past six months. Once again the fax machine whirred to life.
Those ships never off-loaded any cargo in Japan! They entered Davao City empty and left with their hulls deep in the water, the reports read. It looked like a routine oil pickup. While there might be oil reserves in Mindanao, the Philippine government had not invested any infrastructure in either finding or pumping the oil.
By a process of elimination, she came to the conclusion that there were ten, possibly eleven, Japanese ships somewhere in the Pacific with something other than oil as cargo. She also surmised that whatever the Japanese had constructed, they were not gathering minerals. The mineral export-and-import data remained the same after the Japanese did the construction in Mindanao.
She also noticed that the EIU reported that Japanese defense spending remained the same as a percentage of gross national product. But, she noticed that overall government spending had increased without accounting for the rise anywhere in any other line item.