The South China Sea territorial dispute was again in the news with James Hookway’s April 4th article in The Wall Street Journal reporting “Asian Bloc Seeks Unity Over Sea Disputes.”

PHNOM PENH—Philippine President Benigno Aquino III Tuesday pushed other Southeast Asian nations meeting here in Cambodia to adopt a common stand on negotiating the flash point issue of territorial rights to the resource-rich South China Sea before bringing the region’s powerhouse, China, into the discussions.

The Philippines and other members of the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations are attempting to frame a regional, legally binding code of conduct to guide sovereignty claims in the waters, which are claimed in whole or in part by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei.

The question is whether to allow China to participate early on in the discussions — or only after the other parties to the dispute are in agreement.

I suspect that, either way, China is going to be the elephant in the room. And what happens in the struggle over these territorial rights could have repercussions around the globe.

In the ebook technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS, Mollie Sanders gets the opportunity for an up-close-and-personal look at this hot spot. Read Mollie’s adventures now for FREE on Kindle.

(c) 2012 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the co-founder of the online marketing company Miller Mosaic LLC and author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Her newest ebook is HOW TO SUCCEED IN HIGH SCHOOL AND PREP FOR COLLEGE — see www.HowToSucceedEbooks.com

Visit her author site at www.PhyllisZimblerMiller.com and her author Facebook Page at www.facebook.com/phylliszimblermillerauthor

Mitch and I, co-writers of the ebook technothriller “Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders,” have a long personal history of interest in military and intelligence stories.

From September 1970 to May 1972 Mitch served on active duty as a U.S. Army military intelligence officer after being R.O.T.C. at Michigan State University, where we met on the college newspaper.

After Armor Officer Basic training at Ft. Knox and military intelligence training at Ft. Holabird, we were stationed in Munich, Germany, with Mitch working on the Sociological Desk at the 18th Military Intelligence Battalion.

After many months of struggles with the Civil Service bureaucracy, I qualified to be a GS-2 at the Army-Air Force Motion Picture Service. Then when my own security clearance came through, I moved up to a GS-3 position in the counterintelligence section of the 66th Military Intelligence Group.

From our experiences in Europe protecting West Germany (and by extension the rest of Europe) from an invasion from the Soviets, Mitch and I became lifelong consumers of military and intelligence information.

(Actually, during winter semester of my second year at Wharton’s M.B.A. program, I applied to the CIA, filling out tons of forms on a manual typewriter. Ultimately, when the call came to invite me for a two-day visit to Langley, I had to turn it down — to my everlasting regret. And the next time I almost got to visit the CIA, the spy Aldrich Ames had just been revealed and the CIA was shut tight against visitors.)

Today Mitch and I get our military and intelligence scenarios from several unclassified sources of information:

• U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine Proceedings (Mitch is a member of the institute)

• AFIO (Association of Former Intelligence Officers) Weekly Intelligence Notes
(Mitch is a member of the association)

• NMIA (National Military Intelligence Association) ZGram several times a week (Mitch is a member of the association)

• Department of Defense’s Bloggers Roundtable briefings from top-level personnel (Phyllis is a member due to her blogs supporting U.S. troops)

• Phyllis’ social media connections to military personnel and organizations, especially on Twitter, where she maintains the list https://twitter.com/#!/list/ZimblerMiller/us-troops-supporters

The information cache of these articles is often amazing, and all are gist for our fictional story mill.

For a limited time, get a FREE copy of the ebook LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS at Smashwords — chose the ebook format you want.

(c) 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Learn about Phyllis’ fiction and nonfiction books – including her ebooks – at http://budurl.com/PZMbooks

Yet another article about rocky relations with China over the contested Spratly Islands:

The November 15th New York Times article by Andrew Jacobs titled “Dispute Over Bare Islands Underscores Philippines’ Rock Relations with China” quoted the state-owned Chinese newspaper Global Times:

“If these countries don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sound of cannons,” wrote the unapologetically nationalistic Global Times, referring to the 750 islands and spits of land in the South China Sea, known as the Spratly Islands, which are also contested by Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The article goes on to note that the following day “hundreds of American and Philippine Marines scurried from rubber dinghies and stormed into the adjacent jungle with machine guns blazing.”

When Mitch and I first started writing about Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders and her exploits in the South China Sea, we knew this area was contested.

But in recent weeks this contested areas has frequently been in the news. This is a problem that is not going away.

As to whether and how soon “the sound of cannons” will be heard is dependent on several factors, including how serious China believes the U.S.’s commitment is to the area.

Given that this area is a major one for international sea trade, we can probably expect the U.S. to be very serious about keeping this area clear from Chinese dominance.

If the U.S. does not want to fight another war in the Pacific, actions sooner than later may be necessary.

For a limited time, get a FREE copy of the ebook LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS at Smashwords — chose the ebook format you want.

(c) 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Learn about Phyllis’ fiction and nonfiction books – including her ebooks – at http://budurl.com/PZMbooks

The Associated Press story by Alex Frangos in the November 9th Wall Street Journal titled “U.S. Navy Commander Calls for Greater Dialogue” began:

A top U.S. Navy commander in the Pacific warned about the dangers of minor disputes in the South China Sea blossoming into bigger crises, emphasizing the need for diplomatic and military dialogue in the region.

“I’m concerned about any tactical trigger with strategic implications,” said Vice Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, the heart of America’s naval presence in Asia.

And the November 10th Wall Street Journal article “U.S. to Build Up Military in Australia” by Laura Meckler began:

President Barack Obama will announce an accord for a new and permanent U.S. military presence in Australia when he visits next week, a step aimed at countering China’s influence and reasserting U.S. interest in the region, said people familiar with his plans…

The move could help the U.S. military, now concentrated in Japan and South Korea in Northeast Asia, to spread its influence west and south across the region, including the strategically and economically important South China Sea, which China considers as its sovereign territory.

As I’ve been writing about here, the disputes China has with numerous Southeast Asian countries over the suspected oil-rich South China Sea is not going to go away. Instead, the disputes are expected to escalate.

While the U.S. undertakes actions to help prevent the escalation, it remains to be seen how effective these actions will be.

As Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders learns in the ebook technothriller LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS, the remoteness of some of the South China Sea islands does not ensure peace for the region.

For a limited time, get a FREE copy of the ebook LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS at Smashwords — chose the ebook format you want.

(c) 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Learn about Phyllis’ fiction and nonfiction books – including her ebooks – at http://budurl.com/PZMbooks

Military.com carried the November 5th story “First Women to Report to Subs Graduate” by Jennifer McDermott from The Day (New London, Connecticut).

Perhaps the most compelling part of the news story of the Naval Submarine School graduation of the first women to report to submarines was this paragraph:

The guest speaker for the event was retired Capt. Jimmy L. Ellis, whose daughter was one of the graduates. It is the first time a submariner has had his daughter follow him into the submarine service.

And from the perspective of the fictional character Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders, this would also be very compelling.

What is not so compelling are some of the comments to the story that are strongly anti-women.

Others, though, do mention the problem with the tight quarters on a sub in terms of personal hygiene space. (Mitch and I do deal with this in the technothriller “Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders.”)

There are also, of course, very positive comments.

Read the story and the comments now.

Also, in May of 2010 I had the privilege to be on an online Bloggers Roundtable to hear U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Barry Bruner, Commander Submarine Group Ten and lead for the Task Force for Women in Submarines.

Read my blog post that describes what he said about how the technical skills of women are needed on submarines.

SPECIAL: Right now the ebook of LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS is FREE at SMASHWORDS — KINDLE, NOOK, iPAD/iBOOK and SONY READER versions included.

The technothriller ebook LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS is available for $2.99 in all major ebook formats, including the iPad.

The technothriller ebook LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS started out as a screenplay written with my husband Mitchell R. Miller and originally titled “Triangle Trade.”

Writing strong female characters is very important to both of us, so we choose as the protagonist a woman. And as Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders is a fictional character, we could choose to make her very good at certain skills – in the same way that Tom Cruise’s character in the “Mission Impossible” films is very good at certain skills.

The screenplay “Triangle Trade” morphed into the screenplay “Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders,” which was a 2005 Nicholls Fellowship competition quarterfinalist. (The Nicholls competition is run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the same people who run the Oscars.)

Mollie has a secret that motivates her to be the very best. And we decided to explore this motivation further in a prequel screenplay – “A Needle in a Haystack.”

Mitch is a long-time member of the U.S. Naval Institute, whose monthly magazine provides excellent information that we often use in our writing. (He is also a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.)

The U.S. Naval Institute magazine frequently features articles about the Coast Guard, including how the Coast Guard is tasked with defending two long shorelines (Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean) with a small budget.

When Mitch and I decided to write a prequel screenplay, we focused on highlighting the Coast Guard’s plight in terms of limited resources to fight terrorism.

This meant that Mollie would have to help out the Coast Guard (she could not very well be in the Coast Guard in one screenplay and the Navy in the next).

Then I put the two screenplays together — and bridged them with a short story we wrote about Mollie working on the problem of IEDs — in order to create the technothriller ebook LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS.

Thus far the technothriller has gotten rather good reviews except for some critical ones complaining:

• There are no problems with women being treated well in the military

• Mollie is unrealistic because she is a superwoman given how good she is at certain skills

• The Coast Guard and Navy would not cooperate the way they do in our technothriller

First, fictional characters are allowed to be bigger than life.

Second, we give Mollie a plausible reason why she would be driven to excel (to be revealed only when you have read the ebook). Plus she cannot stop a speeding train, jump over high buildings, or utilize any supernatural skills.

Third, since the Coast Guard detaches units to serve with the Navy, we do not see any reason why it is a stretch for our fictional Naval officer to serve with the Coast Guard.

(Mitch was a U.S. Army intelligence officer with the 18th MI Bn in Munich, Germany, from September 1970 to May 1972. I worked as a civilian for the 66th MI Gp in Munich at the end of 1971 and the beginning of 1972. We both know how even units within the same military branch can be resistant to working together.)

Fourth, while military men may want to believe that women have equality throughout the military community, they do not. For a year starting in November 2008 I was the co-host of a BlogTalkRadio show on military topics. The rape of female military personnel by male military personnel was one of the topics we covered.

Finally, this question of women serving on a submarine is not so easily handled.

As I’m a member of the Department of Defense’s Bloggers Roundtable, I was privileged to hear “from the horse’s mouth” about the plan for having the first women on an Ohio-class boomer submarine. (See the post “Technical Skills of Women Needed on Submarines” and note the senior female officer “chaperoning” the junior female officers.)

Mitch and I are imagining a sub much smaller than an Ohio-class boomer in which only one female officer is serving for the first time. Visualize how small the living and working spaces are on a sub. Can you really swear that old-timers would welcome with open arms any female serving on “their boat”?

In conclusion, you may enjoy our technothriller ebook or you may not enjoy it. But do keep in mind that this is FICTION!

The technothriller ebook LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS is available for $2.99 in all major ebook formats, including the iPad.

The September 30th Wall Street Journal article “Asian Bloc Agrees to Counter China Heft” by Yoree Koh begins:

TOKYO—Japanese defense officials and their Southeast Asian counterparts agreed this week on the need to deepen regional cooperation amid concerns about China’s growing assertiveness in the South China Sea, as Tokyo again signaled its willingness to play a bigger role with its neighbors.

According to the article, a seminar held following the annual defense meeting “prominently featured maritime issues.”

The conflict countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand have with China over the South China Sea is not going to go away. This is particularly true because of the suspected oil and gas reserves thought to be in the region.

The article continued:

China’s growing naval confidence was the primary subject discussed by a panel of regional security experts during the session on “efforts to strengthen maritime security in the region.”

In January 2007, when my husband Mitch and I attended the U.S. Naval Institute conference in San Diego, speakers warned of the growing threat to the U.S. from potential conflicts in the Pacific.

At that time almost five years ago there was concern that the U.S. would be caught off-guard due to too much of its focus being elsewhere on the globe.

While I cannot claim any insider knowledge of the current situation, from my outsider’s perspective it would appear that increased cooperation on the part of Asian bloc countries other than China is a good step towards helping to discourage Chinese aggression.

Still, as a novelist who uses real events as the backdrop of her stories, I’ve recently been concerned by my reading of several novels set before and during World War II.

Could that war have been averted if certain countries had been paying more attention to Germany’s expansion ambitions and also if those countries had been willing to act before it were too late?

Today I would feel more confident about the chances of avoiding armed conflict in the South China Sea if the U.S. and Western Europe countries appeared in the media to be more focused on this potential hot spot.

For a fictional scenario of conflict in the South China Sea, read Mitch’s and my U.S. Navy novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS. It is available in all major ebook formats, including the iPad.

(Photo above of Mitch and Phyllis visiting the USS Midway aircraft carrier on February 1, 2007, in San Diego after attending the U.S. Naval Institute conference.)

(Reprinted from www.MrsLieutenant.blogspot.com)

U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Barry Bruner, Commander Submarine Group Ten and lead for the Task Force for Women in Submarines, spoke in May of 2010 to an online Bloggers Roundtable on which I had the privilege to participate.

Admiral Bruner very articulately stated the case for women on submarines. And as a long-time feminist I was surprised to learn it has nothing to do with equality and everything to do with our submarine service having access to a top quality pool of future submariners.

He pointed out that over the last 40 years the percentage of men and women graduating from college with technical degrees has dramatically shifted. “Today women are actually gaining more technical degrees than men are. So we really need to open up the talent pool.”

The Navy has gone through the formal process required to make a policy change and female officer candidates are now entering the program. They will first serve on subs in late 2011 or early 2012. (For now only female officers will be assigned to subs.)

“There’ll be two female trained nuclear officers on each of the eight crews, and additional there’ll be a more senior supply officer on those crews that will serve both as a mentor for those new ensigns, the females, but she’ll also serve as the mentor to the male officers in the wardroom too.”

During the roundtable Admiral Bruner shared how he had presented the policy change to the wives of the current submariners. In a follow-up question that I emailed asking about how the submarines themselves have responded to the policy change, the admiral replied:

“When the male submarine officers are explained why the Navy is opening the aperture for female officers to serve aboard submarines, they understand the need for mission readiness and support the change. With any change, it will be a challenge, but these officers are true professionals and I believe that this change is the right thing for our submarine force.

“By nature, our submarine junior officers are very competitive and although females do not currently serve aboard submarines, the enthusiasm and performance of these new female submarine officers will bring a healthy competition to the environment.”

Admiral Bruner stressed how carefully this step is being implemented. But he also stressed the need.

“What we see is that 10 or 15 or 20 years from now, if we don’t do something, we may have a tough time being able to man our submarines with the top quality people that we need. So I think it’s the submarine force leadership trying to get ahead of the problem.”

I personally applaud the forward-thinking of the submarine force leadership in being willing to move forward with opening the submarine service to capable females. And I am also pleased by the admiral’s appreciation of those of us participating on the roundtable:

“The only way we’re going to get out to the public and to people that seem to care that we are doing the right thing, that we are taking the right measures and we’re doing this in a very deliberate and careful fashion is through you – through folks that put it on their blogs and talk about it in the press and on TV.”

I hope the American public will support this submarine service initiative to ensure our country has access to top quality people – men and women.

FYI – And if you want to read about how fictional character Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders deals with being the first woman on a submarine smaller than a boomer, read the novel now:

  Smashwords

  Nook

  Kindle

  iPad & Apple Store

In the September 12th New Yorker article “Coming Apart” by George Packer, I learned a disturbing piece of information:

A former Navy SEAL has come up with a manufacturing strategy to make “armored” vehicles much more resistant to IEDs and other attacks – BUT the former Navy SEAL cannot bid on undertaking this important mission the Pentagon has said it wants done for Humvees because BIDS ARE NOT BEING ACCEPTED.

(As Mitch and I wrote in the novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS, “IEDs are not an electronics problem. They’re an engineering problem.”)

The information on this situation is only part of Packer’s overall article, which is an essay on the American public’s attitude since 9/11.

Let me explain this “armored” vehicle situation in more detail:

Packer begins his New Yorker article with the story of former Navy SEAL Chris Berman, who was hired in 2004 by the private security company Blackwater.

Berman volunteered to go on a “food-escort detail” to Falluja, “but at the last minute his place was taken by one of his friends, Scott Helvenston.”

Helvenston and three other Blackwater security guards, riding in a Mitsubishi Pajero, were ambushed and killed on their way to Falluja. While waiting to escort Helvenston’s coffin back to the U.S., Berman began drawing designs for armoring the Pajero so that Helvenston and the other three men might have survived.

Berman opened a factory in Kuwait that successfully produced an armored vehicle for security companies working in Iraq. He closed this factory in 2008 to focus on the project he’d moved onto five years after 9/11:

His new goal was to do something about the lightly armored Humvees used by U.S. military personnel. Surviving a blast while riding in these is also a major “armored” vehicle issue.

According to Packer, “For several years, the Pentagon has had plans to rebuild Humvees used in the war, and improve their armor, instead of buying new ones.”

In 2007 Berman started the company Granite Tactical Vehicles and developed a model design to improve the armor on existing Humvees. BUT there have been no government bids on this supposed Pentagon project. This is because, according to Packer:

[T]he government kept putting off requests for bids, in part because the main Humvee manufacturer, a large corporation in Indiana called AM General, appeared to have enough clout in Congress to get the process delayed, staving off competition.

Packer goes on to say that ”the rumored date for accepting bids is now this fall.”

I’m not an engineer – I cannot say that Berman’s design is the best (although Packer says: “People who knew the business said that Berman’s design was among the best.”).

What I can say is:

Let’s get out the word about this situation to people (such as our House and Senate representatives and any friends you may have in the Pentagon) to “motivate” the Pentagon to open bids right now – and quickly choose a good design – to get much better protection for the Humvees.

If you do help spread the word, please email me at pzmiller@millermosaicllc.com with the subject HELP SAVE OUR TROOPS to tell me you helped.

I’ll email you back a free ePub copy of the novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS that you can read on a computer after downloading the free ePub-reading software from www.calibre-ebook.com

Will you help?

According to the September 10th Wall Street Journal opinion piece by Judith Miller (no relation) titled “How the NYPD Foiled the Post-9/11 Terror Plots”:

A specter has haunted the New York Police Department during this week’s torrent of 10th anniversary commemorations of 9/11 — the 13 terrorist plots against the city in the past decade that have failed or been thwarted thanks partly to NYPD counterterrorism efforts.

The article describes the talk by NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly to the Manhattan Institute, including:

The police have to factor terrorism into “everything we do,” Mr. Kelly said. If that means following leads that take NYPD undercover detectives into mosques, Islamic bookstores, Muslim student associations, cafes and nightclubs, so be it.

This part of the article particularly caught my attention because, in the novel LT. COMMANDER MOLIE SANDERS, a joint Navy-Coast Guard intelligence-gathering operation to stop a terrorist attack on the post of Los Angeles requires an undercover visit to a bookstore next door to a mosque.

The Journal article goes on to reference several foiled terrorist attacks, many from what is called “homegrown” terrorists (people already living in the U.S. who plan terrorist attacks against the U.S.). Here are two such foiled plots:

It was an undercover officer in an Islamic bookstore who helped stop Shahawar Matin Siraj, a homegrown Muslim extremist and self-professed al Qaeda admirer, from bombing the Herald Square subway station during the 2004 Republican convention, Mr. Kelly said. Another undercover officer prevented homegrown terrorists Ahmed Ferhani, 26, and Mohamed Mamdouh, 20, from bombing a Manhattan synagogue and trying to “take out the entire building.”

A main reason that Mitch and I wrote the port of Los Angeles story is to highlight the vital need for the Coast Guard to be given more funding to expand its resources for protecting our nation’s coastlines.

While attention is often focused on attacks of major cities, the ports offer penetration opportunities that must be protected against. And the Coast Guard needs more resources for this protecting.

The events in the novel are fictional, but they do represent some of the real threats to our nation’s security.

May the U.S. intelligence community continue to improve their coordinated efforts to safeguard our country.

Get an eBook of the timely novel LT. COMMANDER MOLLIE SANDERS now for only $2.99 in formats for the Kindle, the Nook, Sony’s Reader, the Kobo, your computer, etc. at http://budurl.com/MollieSandersebooks

(And if you do read the book and like it, please write a review on the ebook’s Amazon page.)