Eagle Sauce: The 055 destroyer was launched into the sea just after the founding of the country?

Chapter 918

Thomas's voice was magnetic, like the kind of comforting older man you'd hear on a late-night radio talk show, but what he said at that moment was as cold as ice.

He walked slowly around the table, like a lord surveying his territory.

“Hughes is right. We cannot let the world see our weakness. The collapse of an empire is often not because its walls have been breached, but because no one believes that those walls can still protect or punish anything.”

“But…” He turned around and looked at the bespectacled middle-aged man in charge of the accounts, “You’re right, we’re broke. Going head-on to those people across the Pacific who have access to who knows how much advanced technology they have is like sending a bankrupt gambler to his death against a casino owner—that’s suicide.”

"So you mean...?" General Hughes frowned.

"Choose the lesser of two evils? No."

Thomas shook his head, a somewhat chilling smile spreading across his face. He pulled a fine Cuban cigar from his jacket pocket—probably a stockpile obtained through some special pre-war channel—and took a deep sniff.

"Since we can't defeat that giant head-on, we can't let our neighbors think we're easy to bully."

"Then why don't we turn this backyard into our dining table?"

He gently placed the cigar on the South American plate on the map.

“Look here.”

"This continent. It is so fertile, so vast. Chilean copper, Venezuelan oil, Brazil's vast farmlands and hundreds of millions of cheap... even free laborers."

“Pennsylvania is gone, and it really hurts, like having a finger chopped off. But since the bleeding won’t stop, why don’t we suck some blood from someone else to replenish it?”

The meeting room fell silent. Finally, the bald David Patterson lit his pipe, and through the swirling smoke, a strange glint flashed in his cloudy eyes.

"You mean... complete annexation?" The middle-aged man with glasses adjusted his glasses, his voice a little dry. "But that violates all international law, this will..."

“International law?” Thomas laughed, as if he had heard a joke. “Who wrote international law? Wasn’t it written when we had power? Now that the table is about to be overturned, who cares about that?”

He forcefully slammed his cigar down on the map at the spot labeled "Brazil".

"That's simple. Those places are currently in disarray. Cuba is indeed a tough nut to crack; there are thorns from the Chinese, and we can't afford to touch it for now, lest we get hurt. Okay."

"But... what about besides Cuba?"

"Argentina? Chile? There are no Chinese unmanned submarines there. All there are are mobs still protesting over yesterday's bread, and a bunch of corrupt officers who just want to convert their assets into dollars and immigrate here."

Thomas's eyes burned with intensity.

“We don’t need to fight on two fronts; that would be really stupid. What we need is a quick, surgical-like process of digestion.”

“Smash those countries’ governments, or replace them outright. Turn their mines into our state-owned assets, and their people into fuel for our factories. With all the resources on this continent as our foundation, our GDP can double in five years, and our factories will have an inexhaustible supply of raw materials.”

"At that time... with this 'flesh and blood' rearmed, we will have the capital to stand here and truly negotiate terms with the one across the Pacific, or... have a fight."

“If you don’t eat now,” Thomas said in a low voice, scanning everyone present with a look that seemed to hook out the deepest greed and fear in their hearts.

"If we don't go eat now... wait until that damned 'aid plan' of the Chinese really takes root in those places. Wait until the whole of South America becomes 'Cuba' with those red-covered books and broken armored vehicles."

"By then, there will be no place for us to stand on this continent of America."

"This is not just a matter of saving face."

He put away his cigar and spoke as if delivering a verdict.

"This is a matter of survival."

"Either let them hate us, or let them become meat on our plates. There's no room for sentimentality in the world's second-largest power."

General Hughes's Adam's apple bobbed as he looked at the map pressed against the back of his cigar—a vast expanse of green rainforest. In his eyes, it was no longer jungle and mountains, but golden capital that could be exchanged for aircraft carriers and bombers.

The middle-aged man in charge of the money stopped twirling his pen. He nervously scratched his head. As an actuary, he understood the mathematical logic behind this audacious proposal better than anyone else.

If we add the benefits brought by those "spoils of war," indeed... the red curve of the fiscal deficit will be flattened instantly, and may even turn green.

But the price... was dragging half the continent into hell.

But hell is in the south, and even if the fire there burns brighter, it's still better than burning in your own living room, isn't it?

But at that moment, the bald Paterson gently tapped his pipe.

“A very good speech, Thomas. Very inspiring.”

The old man's voice remained flat and emotionless, even carrying a hint of the hoarseness typical of the elderly.

"But it's also very risky."

"You want to eat meat, that's fine. But the problem is—who can guarantee that the fork you're extending this time won't end up stuck on another piece of the hot plate?"

Patterson pulled out a photograph, a blurry image captured by a high-altitude reconnaissance plane at great risk in the edge of the sea. The photograph didn't show a submarine or a warship.

Those were several containers being unloaded from a cargo ship. Instead of guns and cannons, they were marked with a barely noticeable dragon logo, along with the numbers of various tractors and drilling platforms.

"That Eastern rabbit is already digging a burrow."

"What they provided wasn't just guns. Those tractors, those seemingly harmless machine tools, were more dangerous than torpedoes."

"You're just about to pick up your knife and fork, but who knows, those poor slum dwellers might already have been given the same 'scalpel' by now?"

"more importantly……"

Patterson looked up, his cloudy gaze becoming incredibly sharp, as if piercing through the mists of time and space.

"Do you really think that if we go all the way south, that Eastern dragon that's been eyeing us from the north will just sit back and watch us devour his potential friend without doing anything?"

"What if... this is a ploy to relieve the siege of Wei by attacking Zhao?"

"What if... we just turned around to 'eat,' and that person stripped us of the last bit of clothing we had left in Europe?"

Thomas's expression stiffened. This assumption had indeed hit a nerve.

The conference room fell into a deathly silence once again, broken only by the sound of a burning pipe.

The two sides were like two bison facing off on the edge of a cliff, neither able to push the other off, but neither daring to take that next step forward.

Only the hum of the automatic coffee machine continued tirelessly in the corridor, like some kind of irritating countdown.