George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 263

“My head is throbbing.”

“What, why? What’s wrong?”

Back in the White House, the Chief of Staff was pressing his temples, looking grave. He looked as if America was on the brink of collapse.

“There’s no specific problem, really. Except that something unimaginable just happened, and all the plans we’ve made have gone down the drain. Yes, everything’s fine. Of course.”

President Bush was so certain this wouldn’t happen that the Chief of Staff and his aides had drawn up numerous plans: how to mediate after the meeting, how to smoothly ignore it, or how to reduce the massive funds flowing into Israel. Experts were constantly creating and discarding plans.

“Sometimes I have these ridiculous thoughts. Like in ‘Back to the Future,’ what would I do if I went back to the past? If my choices changed history, how should I act? But at least one thing is certain.”

The Chief of Staff spoke solemnly, tapping the report emphatically.

“If I went back to the past, I would definitely tell myself there’s no need to stay up all night for that damn report that’s never going to be used.”

Seeing his bloodshot eyes, like overripe cherries, it was clear he hadn’t slept at all. He probably hadn’t even managed an hour a day.

“Should I take some vacation time?”

“How long has it been since I came back from vacation? No. There’s no guarantee the President is always right. And what could be better than something that can be resolved without troublesome intervention?”

“Efficiency tends to decrease with continuous work.”

“As if you haven’t been working continuously all this time?”

That was true.

“Well, isn’t that why I’m sitting in this position?”

This position wasn’t something just anyone could handle. Bush himself had insisted he could do well if given the job, hadn’t he? But actually doing it was quite different from what he’d imagined. There was quite a gap between imagining and doing.

“Then we’ll have to make new plans. There must be something we salvaged, right? Surely all those papers weren’t completely useless, were they?”

The report was five centimeters thick. The number of pages was irrelevant.

“Fortunately, not entirely. We had contingency plans. From there, it was almost fantasy rather than inference based on information, but since that fantasy has become reality, it can’t be completely useless.”

“Let’s see.”

As the Chief of Staff said, it was almost pure fantasy, but it was the answer the experts had provided. The last five pages were the most practical, but no one seriously believed mediation between Israel and Palestine was possible. At least not now. They never thought Israel would recognize Palestine’s independence at this point.

If they did, they assumed it would be nominal independence with limited autonomy, eventually absorbing them in the long term. And that was the general consensus. The only thing the report writers overlooked was this:

They were proficient in overseas affairs, but not as skilled in internal affairs, and they completely forgot how reckless their president could be.

“Hmm, Israel feels this situation is an insult and declares war on the United States. Who wrote this?”

“It’s a report designed to address all possible situations. It was written under the assumption that ‘anything can happen,’ so of course, there are ridiculous scenarios like that. And the current peace agreement falls into that ridiculous category. The people who wrote this report would rather believe the current events are a deceptive strategy by Israel.”

“Not this one. Not this one either.”

The aides and experts wrote it, and the Chief of Staff re-edited it. Since Bush wasn’t the one who had suffered through it, he quickly flipped through the pages, half-listening. There were still ridiculous things, plausible things, and things Bush would actively agree with.

If Palestine wins the all-out war with Israel, if Palestine expands its size and draws in the EU…

“Terrorists attack Camp David? Who is this crazy guy? Did he come from Hollywood?”

“There was help from that side as well. To meet the deadline, we scraped together all the talent we could find.”

“So that means?”

“Yes, that’s right. Someone from the film industry.”

“Oh, damn it.”

“Well, that doesn’t mean that person isn’t qualified. Anyway, that’s the kind of report it is. Wasn’t it the President who told us to meet the deadline by any means possible?”

That was somewhat true. And it wasn’t uncommon to receive cooperation from that side. But it wasn’t common enough to be considered normal. In this case, it was an exceptional event because the talent pool had dried up, and all available resources were used.

“If the agreement is successful, but the Third Intifada [Palestinian uprising against Israel] occurs due to non-compliance, this seems useful.”

It seemed like that would actually happen. Didn’t something similar happen in the original timeline? Even in 2019, after Palestine was established, it was still the same old story.

To be exact, it was guidelines for how the United States should act if the Third Intifada occurred, and the conclusion was to recommend more support for Israel.

“Hmm, I don’t like it.”

That was true. He wanted to cut off support right now. Why should he give so much support to Israel when he was gradually reducing support to Afghanistan? It created contradictions in the grand strategy of peace.

Fortunately, peace had come, albeit temporarily. He sighed inwardly, wondering if it would last at least a week, even if he doubted it would last a month.

“Found it.”

The peace agreement that Bush was looking for was near the end. The reason why the peace agreement, which should have been the main subject due to the Camp David Peace Accords, was at the end was because it was a report that started with the assumption of ‘failure.’

And they said that talent had dried up, but it wasn’t that they had chased away talent, but that such talent was already too busy being used elsewhere.

Kim Kap-hwan [a character from the fighting game series Fatal Fury and The King of Fighters] thought the legend of the Emille Bell [a famous Korean bell known for its supposed mournful sound] was absurd when he was young, but now he wondered if the idea that even a newborn baby had to work was a distortion of such a large-scale project.

“‘We must abandon all plans and gradually balance Israel and Palestine.’ Indeed, it’s the right thing to do. But this alone is not enough. And if we do it this way, Israel will be furious, saying it’s a betrayal.”

“Don’t worry. The task force that wrote that report hasn’t been disbanded yet for that purpose. They’ll almost be thrilled to realize they have to write another new report. I feel the same way, so don’t worry about that either.”

“Okay, okay. I know it was a waste of effort. But it can’t be helped because it’s urgent. Tell them to write a new one right away.”

“I’ll be sure to tell them their wasted effort was appreciated.”

“Of course. Be sure to tell them.”

Of course, that wouldn’t really happen, but because they couldn’t go home and work stress was piling up, they would relieve stress in this way.

One of them looked at them with a pathetic expression, yawned, and then sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.

‘It’s troublesome because things are turning out so differently from what I thought.’

Even as he said this, many thoughts were spinning in his head. He had to balance it. But balancing it was never easy.

It would be easier if it were a situation where he had to win overwhelmingly, not balance, like in a proxy war during the Cold War. But this was completely different. The scales are balanced by adding more weights to the other side when the scales tilt to one side.

But as the guardian of Israel, he couldn’t add weights to Palestine.

‘Should I actively involve the EU instead?’

Recently, there has been a growing movement to not rely on NATO. As evidence of this, the German Bundeswehr [German Federal Armed Forces] has confirmed 1.5 times more tanks than in 2001. It was clear evidence that they were focusing on military buildup.

The fact that Russia, the main enemy, is increasing its military power in the midst of military reduction means that it is challenging the hegemony established by the United States.

‘But it’s still okay.’

It wasn’t arrogance or anything like that. It was really okay. It was too late for modern hegemony to be replaced by conventional power. To discuss world hegemony, not just regional hegemony, it had to be discussed with economic power, not military power.

The country that dominates the world is a country with strong economic power. Of course, it wasn’t that the EU was faltering in economic power. It didn’t have the capacity to grow as much as the United States right now. Unless Europe really became unified. After all, it was just a union of countries.

‘Besides, Europe will eventually falter.’

At least not in the Bush era, but the huge bomb called Greece was lurking in southern Europe.

Where is that the only problem? What about Spain and Italy? But in the midst of all this, they are increasing the size of their military and printing more weapons, which is absurd.

In particular, the Italian army was really doing its best, as if trying to escape the nightmare of being the weakest army in the last World War. They increased the budget as well as the intensity of training several times, and sent the most Middle East dispatches to accumulate combat experience.

In particular, they were also accelerating the development of new weapons. One of them was the assault rifle project, which at first glance resembled the early model of the ARX-160, which would later be adopted as the standard.

There were slight differences in the details, such as the fact that it was made of plastic instead of polymer.

Still, I thought they would probably change it to polymer by the time it was officially adopted, but it was just another country’s story.

“Rather than thinking about what to do with Israel, it would be better to think about what to do with Palestine. Can we induce solidarity between Palestine and other countries?”

“In the West, it will be Ireland, and in the East, it will be Russia. In addition, there is Egypt, but wouldn’t Palestine take care of that much on its own without our intervention?”

That’s the problem. The current Middle East is so brutal that the newly emerged Palestine cannot handle it on its own.

“We need to create friendly countries to balance the scales.”

It wasn’t that there was absolutely no way. The problem was how to do it.