Landmark 2a. China Dumps US Treasury Bills
Craigen tried to keep his tone calm and patient, but the direction of the conversation made his shoulders hunch over, and he gripped the sat phone as though he were trying to wring a neck. “Look Chief, I know PIRA has gone back to the donors several times already, but I’ve got pregnant women and kids freezing out here. “
He listened to some long explanation before countering, "I know resources are spread thin, but we're the only group working in Varniţa. We might not have as many people coming across here compared to the big checkpoints, but a lot of our people are suffering from exposure. We’re going to have dead bodies on our hands if I don’t get some supplies!”
Craigen dropped his forehead into his hand and massaged his throbbing temples. Damn, I lost my temper. He'd tried hard not to. What followed was the usual stern lecture about limited resources and how Craigen had to make do with whatever limited resources were available. He was reminded that this was the nature of the job. It's what he signed up for.
“I got it, Chief.” He replied more curtly than he intended.
The expression of frustration earned him an additional lecture about the spiraling costs of the war inflating the price of everything from food and fuel to medical aid.
“Yes, I understand.” Craigen bit his lip to keep from saying anything stupid, and nodded as if the person on the other end of the sat phone could see that he was in agreement. “I know you’re doing the best you can.” There was a pause. “Yeah, we’ll get creative. Fixing problems is what we do, right?” He tried in vain to make this last comment sound upbeat and optimistic, but Craigen didn’t think he was fooling anyone.
Finally, he put the sat phone back in his pocket and then just stood for a long moment, watching a small group of refugees limping painfully towards the shelters they had set up. How are they even getting here? He wondered. They’re not coming through the Transnistrian checkpoint, that’s for sure. Through interpreters, they were learning about the many horrors the refugees were enduring. Massive bombardments of civilian populations, dodging patrols and indiscriminate killings, there were reports of sexual assaults, and now, what looked like the beginnings of starvation.
“You OK, Rattle?” Kedzierski asked softly from behind him.
“Huh?” Her question broke Craigen free from his macabre reverie.
“Ah…” He sighed, rubbing his eyes and putting on his game face, “HQ says they’re doing the best they can.” Then he pointed at the small group of people trickling in. "Let's go give them a hand. It looks like they've got wounded."
“It doesn’t make sense, Rattle." Kedzierski brought over a bowl of the thin stew.
Craigen insisted that the Response Team operate on the principle that "adequate" shelter and meals meant anything the team members would use themselves. So when they were on a mission, they operated out of tents and ate the same meals they portioned out carefully to the refugees. There was no bread, but at least they still had plenty of tea.
“What doesn’t?” he asked. Craigen closed his eyes briefly as he said grace over the meal.
When he was finished, Kedzierski continued with her train of thought, “Why is Putin doing this?” she asked. “What could he possibly gain by unleashing all this horror on innocent civilians?”
“I dunno." Craigen blew the steam from his soup at sipped at it. "Thanks, Curly." He gestured towards the bowl with his spoon.
“Russians fear the encroachment of NATO on their borders,” offered Bolanger. “America has been pushing this for decades. A confrontation was inevitable.” Bolanger was originally from Quebec, and she was younger than most of the team members, so her opinions tended to be less favorable of US interventions in other nations.
"That's what everyone says, Dee." Kedzierski's face pinched and she shook her head. "But something doesn't smell right. If Putin was interested in his country's safety, why would he risk so much? He’s collapsing his own economy!”
Kedzierski always talks about Putin, not the Russians, Craigen observed. She blames him for all the suffering. To her, this is personal.
Thibido held up his cell phone, wagging the headline from some news agency. The way he interrupted made Craigen suspect he was trying to de-escalate a potential conflict between the two women. “Well, talking about mysteries, here’s another one… Looks like China has started selling off US Treasury Bills. That don’t make no sense, neither. China relies on US trade. Wouldn’t they also be committing economic suicide?”
“What?” Craigen asked, a pall falling over his features. “Where does it say that?”
Thibido passed him the phone, and all eyes turned towards Craigen as he scrolled through the article. Then quietly he said, “This might be bad.”
"Aw, Rattle!" Thibido objected. "Don’t go actin’ like that. Like we ain’t got enough to worry about right here! What difference does it make if a bunch of guys in China start selling stocks? Who cares?”
"They're not stocks. They're bonds." Bolanger corrected him. "China buys US debt in the form of Treasury Bills."
“So what?” Thibido raised both hands.
"Everybody listen to me for a second." Craigen lifted a finger to get their attention. "This is something we war-gamed back at HQ. We all knew coming in here that while America was distracted with Ukraine, China might make a move on Taiwan. Dumping the Treasury Bills might be the first salvo of a much greater conflict."
"That's not possible, and it's foolish to even consider it, Rattle." Bolanger shook her head dismissively. "China is an export economy. And who is their biggest export market? America. If they sell off T-Bills, then the US will have to raise interest rates to get other countries to buy them."
“Again, sooo what?” Thibido wore a look of pure confusion. He drew out the word “so” and warbled it to emphasize his question.
“She’s trying to say it would raise the prices on Chinese goods and ruin their export economy.” Craigen’s face was turning slightly red with the effort of explaining the complexities of international finance. It was far beyond his skill set.
“So, Putin is destroying his economy, and China is destroying their economy,” Kedzierski summarized, “but there’s got to be some good reason they would risk so much. What could they possibly gain from all this?”
“It may be that China’s internal debt crisis is more severe than they have been reporting,” Bolanger mused. “Perhaps China is trying to address some internal problem, even if they have to precipitate a global crisis.”
“Maybe now I get it…" Thibido whistled through his teeth. "America's got debts too. Trillions and trillions of ‘em. Maybe Russia and China ain’t trying to destroy their economies. Maybe they’re both trying to destroy ours…”
Bolanger's brown furrowed in concentration. "If China could collapse the US economy, and also manages to get other nations to buy their bonds instead of ours, they might have a chance of replacing the US as the world's reserve currency."
“That’s a pretty big ‘if’ Dee,” said Craigen. "Besides, how does Russia fit into all this?"
“Don’t you get it, Rattle?” Thibido’s face lit up with excitement, “Russia and China have flat come out and said they’re strategic allies. It ain’t no secret. They’re working on this together!”
“Maybe it’s getting so bad in China that they don’t have a choice.” Bolanger continued, “You know they always lie about the state of their economy. Desperate measures for desperate times.”
“Then China could print its way out of debt the way America is doing now.” Kedzierski finished the thought.
“And America would finally have to pay its bills,” Thibido added. “Sounds like the chickens might be comin’ home to roost!”
Craigen’s eyes locked with Thibido. “Like I said, Scooter, this could be bad.”
Over the next few days, more refugees found their way to the tiny camp in Varniţa. Despite the severity of the conditions, the Response Team had done a good job with outreach, appealing to the Christian charity of the farmers who made up the Varniţa commune. The village provided some food, blankets, and, most significantly, dry clothes for those who had become soaked on their harrowing journey through the chill of winter.
In just the last few days, Craigen and his team had saved hundreds of lives. They were making a difference. He knew he’d made the right choice to stay here.
One thing Craigen knew he would always remember was how the faces of the refugees would light up when the tiny camp came into view. He could see the relief in their faces when they realized that an end to their ordeal was near at hand. His team was working magnificently. They would meet the refugees, bring them to shelter, get them dry, treat their wounds as best they could, and feed them. Then the refugees could get a little sleep while they waited on Thibido’s convoy to ferry them back to Chişinău.
The real problem was the wounded. Sometimes the injuries were ghastly, and Craigen’s medical supplies had completely run out. There was nothing he could do to fight infection, nothing he could do for pain. They could stop bleeding with boiled rags donated by the villagers, splint broken bones, and treat patients for shock. But that was about all.
Burns were the worst, especially when the victims were children. And they were seeing more and more burn victims. Just as Craigen knew he would never forget the faces of the refugees lighting up when they made it to his camp, he also knew he would never be able to forget the sound of a child shrieking with pain as they tried to clean a wound, or the horrible gasping rattle of an elderly woman releasing her last breath. They began to add burials to their list of duties.
“Get this group back to camp as fast as you can move them, Curly,” Craigen feigned nonchalance, hands in his pockets, hunched against the evening chill. "I'll go see what those guys want."
The PIRA team had found some refugees wandering in the woods near the the Transnistrian checkpoint, when two military vehicles pulled up. "You shouldn't talk to them by yourself, Rattle," the worry lines around Kedzierski eyes evident even in the gloom of the approaching night.
"I called for the interpreter," Craigen put a reassuring hand on Kedzierski's shoulder. "I'll be fine. But you'd better get going. Right now. Probably looking for them," Craigen glanced in the direction of the retreating band of refugees, moving only his eyes.
As Kedzierski left with her charges, Craigen approached the parked trucks. His arms hung loosely by his sides, palms facing out, to signal he was not a threat, and he put on the biggest smile he could muster. Even though he'd called for his translator, the young Moldovan 'fixer' hadn't shown up yet. Craigen was on his own.
"Hello boys, how can I help you today?" The words sounded idiotic in his own ears. Still, Craigen figured the Transnistrians didn't understand him, and the courteous greeting helped put him in the right frame of mind for what might be a perilous encounter.
There was a long silence as the group of heavily armed soldiers eyed the lone man standing between them and the band of retreating refugees. Their leader seemed to be the oldest soldier. Machine gun guy, Craigen recognized him. This one is smart.
Machine gun nonchalantly pulled a pack of American cigarettes from a pocket and made a show of offering one to Craigen. "Don't smoke." Craigen waved the cigarette away.
“OK.” Machine gun said and put it between his own lips. He lit it. After a long inhalation, he blew out an long stream of acrid smoke made more pronounced by the steam of his breath and asked, “Why do you do this?”
"You speak English?" Craigen felt relief. He wondered where his Moldovan translator was. Apparently, the young man had thought better of participating in this conversation.
“A little, yah.” There was a long pause as machine gun waited for Craigen to answer his original question.
Craigen understood that an answer was expected. So he smiled brightly, and in his most engaging voice, he said, "We are a Christian disaster relief organization. We're here to provide aid and relieve suffering where we can."
“I understand this.” Another long drag on the cigarette. “What I don’t understand is; why bother? What business do you Americans have here with these Nazi scum? Why don’t you go back to your own country? America has problems enough of its own.”
These last words were uttered with such contempt that it made Craigen's blood run cold. Why is he threatening me? With a genuine look of bewilderment he asked, "What do you mean, problems?"
“My friend,” machine gun said the word, but there was no friendship in his eyes, “haven’t you heard? Kyiv has fallen. The war is over.” There was a sneer on his lip as machine gun continued to deliver the shocking news. “Besides, China has now invaded Taiwan. Perhaps your services will be required elsewhere?”
Anyone watching might have thought their conversation looked amicable, but to Craigen it felt like an interrogation fraught with menace. After what seemed like hours, machine gun and his soldiers finally returned to the Transnistrian checkpoint. Wracked nerves fueled his stride as Craigen rushed back to camp. He didn’t waste a moment firing up the sat phone and calling in the report. "I heard they took Kyiv and that China's invading Taiwan. How bad is it?"
“It’s true that Russian troops have entered Kyiv. There are still some pockets of resistance, but they’re not expected to hold out long.” The Operation Officer’s voice was thin and mechanical over the sat phone as the news was confirmed. “And we are just now getting reports of Chinese missile strikes against some Taiwan air defense batteries. How did you know about that?”
Craigen explained his conversation with the Transnistrian commander and his team’s concerns. “We talked about the Chinese selling off US treasury bills, and I’m worried Chief,” he admitted. “But these people are counting on us. What’s our play?”
You are the Chief of the PIRA Operations Center. You make the call:
Choose Option 1: The incident with the Transnistrian security officer indicates that we were wrong, and the local situation is deteriorating. With the additional possibility of a wider global conflict, it’s just too great a risk to the PIRA team. We’re sorry, but even though some Ukrainian refugees will likely die, the team is ordered to pull out now and evacuate to Chişinău immediately.
Choose Option 2: It’s too early to tell yet what the developments in Kyiv will mean for your operations in Varniţa. Don't worry about China and Taiwan. Just keep clear of those Transnistrian security forces. We need you to remain where you are. You’re the only support those refugees have right now. More people will die if you leave.