A New Stripe at the U.N.

It's U.N. time again. The forthcoming debate over the seating of Red China promises to make the 1971 Assembly session, which begins next week, the most dramatic in a decade. President Nixon's proposal of dual representation for China is a major departure from previous U.S. goals in the international body. Equally novel, in its way, is the exuberant style of the man charged with making that policy succeed: Texas politician-turned-ambassador, George Bush, 47.

Decked out in bright candy-striped shirts, Bush has stormed the protocol-conscious circle of U.N. diplomats since his arrival last March like--well, like a Texas politician rounding up supporters. He is lobbying for complicated parliamentary measures that would invite Peking in without throwing Taiwan out. Says Bush: "The idea here is to get the votes. If we have the votes, it's going to happen. If we don't, it won't. It's this simple, so I say don't bother me with the technicalities."

Boating and Barbecues. Bush's wide-open methods are in sharp contrast to the unobtrusive ways of his predecessor. Career Diplomat Charles Yost. Bush swings through the delegates' dining room slapping backs and greeting ambassadors by their first names as if he were still prowling the back corridors of Congress. He has replaced the standard U.N. luncheon--two hours, three wines, seven courses--with short working sessions in the U.S. mission on Manhattan's First Avenue, where guests sometimes must balance plates on their knees. Bush has invited several of his fellow ambassadors to his summer home in Maine for weekends of tennis, boating, barbecues and tall tales (he is, among other things, an earthy, frontier-style raconteur). This week he will press his points over the national pastime: Bush has invited the permanent representatives and their wives to a New York Mets baseball game.

His cheery approach masks one of the most serious and difficult diplomatic offensives in recent American history: bringing mainland China into the U.N. without allowing the expulsion of Taiwan. It will not be easy to achieve, as Bush quite readily admits. For one thing, he has had to convince delegates that President Nixon was really serious about fighting to retain Taiwan's seat; many of them cynically assumed that the U.S. would go through the motions of fighting for Taiwan, but would be just as glad to be defeated. Bush, who has personally visited nearly 50 delegations to plug for the American plan, has made the U.S. point clear enough. Whether the representatives will vote the American way is quite another, and highly uncertain matter.

Strong Sympathy. Sentiment for seating Red China is solid. But even America's major postwar allies (notably Britain and France) have backed away from supporting the U.S. resolution, and Japan, so far, has been reluctant to serve as its cosponsor, even though Japan will probably vote for it. Following discussions last week on the subject with Japanese Foreign Minister Takeo Fukuda, Secretary of State William Rogers warned that a lack of Japanese co-sponsorship would "have a detrimental effect on the prospects for success" of the U.S. effort.

Bush, in his advocacy of the new policy, is relying heavily on the delegates' reluctance to expel a charter member cf the U.N. "There is strong sympathy against expelling Taiwan," he says. "Even though the sponsors of the opposition say it's not a matter of expulsion, but a restoration of lawful rights, somewhere deep in his soul, everyone knows that it is expulsion. It's a bad precedent. The little countries particularly don't like it. They say to themselves, 'There but for the grace of God go I.'"

Larger Things. A Yale graduate, a millionaire (oil drilling) and the son of a former Republican Senator from Connecticut, Bush gave up a safe congressional seat at Nixon's urging, to run unsuccessfully against Democrat Lloyd Bentsen Jr. in last year's Texas senatorial elections. Bush's credentials in foreign affairs were sketchy at best, so some U.N. diplomats were initially skeptical of the neophyte envoy who clearly got his job for being a good loser and a, staunch Nixon loyalist. A few delegates still find Bush a trifle crude and bumptious; since March, though, he has impressed the professionals with his charm and ability to learn fast. (Despite his impatience with "technicalities," he understands their importance and relies heavily on the talents of the mission staff.)

Bush has one asset that U.N. delegates could not ignore even if they wanted to. Unlike Yost, he is personally close to the President and to Secretary of State Rogers; he frequently visits the White House and attends all the Cabinet meetings he can. Some observers, in fact, suspect that he is merely using the ambassadorship as a steppingstone to larger things--like running for Vice President should Nixon decide to dump Spiro Agnew in 1972. Personable and photogenic, Bush will undoubtedly impress American audiences watching the televised debates on the China question.

It is somewhat ironic that Bush's first task as Ambassador to the U.N. should be lobbying for Red China's admission. During the 1964 campaign in Texas, he declared: "If Red China should be admitted to the U.N., then the U.N. is hopeless and we should withdraw." Looking back on that statement, Bush points out that at the time China was in the throes of the Red Guard purges and showed no signs of wanting to establish relationships with other countries: "It was impossible that China could have been a constructive member of the U.N. then." On his turnabout: "I'm still concerned about China, but I feel completely comfortable about the President's policy. It makes a hell of a lot of sense in the year 1971."

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