Two Votes That Could Change the World

IN this age of nuclear stalemate, history's decisive moments seldom result any longer from the clash of arms and armies. They develop instead from painstaking negotiations and wordy debates, subject to all the vagaries and nuances of global and frequently local politics. So it is this week as two momentous shifts in the political shape of the world approach the point of decision. In London, ten years after Britain first applied to join the European Economic Community, the House of Commons votes on whether Britain should join the six-nation Common Market. At the United Nations, the General Assembly decides whether the Peking government alone will represent China's nearly 800 million people, or whether Taipei will continue to represent the 14 million people of Taiwan. At Turtle Bay and Westminster alike, the debates were disappointingly humdrum, for no orator proved capable of crafting words to match the moment. Yet, in both places, the mood was expectant and electric.

United Nations: China Upstaged, But Not for Long

The United Nations was approaching a moment of monumental importance and high drama. Mao Tse-tung's China was about to be admitted. The U.S., which had blocked Peking's entry for more than two decades, was now conceding the Communists' claim to a seat, but was also engaged in an epic struggle to save a place in the General Assembly for the embattled, Taiwan-based Nationalist regime of Mao's old enemy, Chiang Kaishek. But with the special antimagic that the U.N. seems to possess in abundance, the buildup to the climax dissolved into hours of stiff speechifying, interspersed with moments of bizarre and totally unrelated melodrama.

The debate followed the script closely enough. In his role as chief executor of Peking's will in New York, Albania's swart Foreign Minister Nesti Nase rasped that Chiang's government "does not represent anything." He demanded swift adoption of the so-called Albanian resolution, which prescribes the seating of the Peking regime and immediate expulsion of the Nationalists. Taipei's embattled Foreign Minister Chow Shu-kai replied heatedly that if Peking has its way, "the era of collective aggression is upon us." The Nationalists' future hangs on the fate of the U.S. proposal for dual representation of both Peking and Taipei in the U.N. The case for the U.S. plan, as Japan's cool, scholarly Kiichi Aichi put it in the General Assembly, was that dual representation would be "a transitional step," opening the way for a peaceful settlement of the dispute between the two Chinas.

Uphill Fight. Though both sides were claiming victory, at week's end the outcome of the vote was still too close to call. From the start it had been an uphill fight for the U.S., which had to dispel suspicions that Washington was in fact willing to see its dual-representation plan go down to defeat, the better to ensure a good reception for Richard Nixon in Peking. To be sure, the herd of U.S. diplomats in New York City last week looked like men who wanted to win. One U.N. guard was astonished to find lobbying under way in the Delegates Lounge at 9 a.m. one day last week. "There in one corner sat an American working over some African," he marveled. "Right across from him sat a Japanese pressuring some Latin American. These guys never show up before 10:30." One weary U.S. delegate cracked: "I guess when this is all over we'll just fall in one huge gray-flannel heap."

By contrast, the Russians were dragging their feet. Though nominal supporters of the Albanian resolution, the Russians took no part in the lobbying around the rubber tree plants in the plush Delegates Lounge. Soon the Hungarians were passing around a joke: "For the U.S., one China is not enough; for the Russians, one is too many."

For the Soviets--and most other U.N. delegations, for that matter--the cause celebre of the week was not China, but a cowardly sniper attack on a roomful of Russian children, apparently perpetrated by an adherent of the tinhorn terrorist Jewish Defense League. One evening at midweek, four rifle bullets crashed through an eleventh-floor bedroom window in the massive East Side Manhattan building that houses the large Soviet mission to the U.N. The shots were not heard by the 700 guests attending a lively reception on the lower floors, but they narrowly missed four embassy children who were playing quietly in the bedroom.

The police soon found the weapon, a new .243-cal. Remington semi-automatic rifle, in an air shaft at Hunter College, a block from the mission, and traced it to an 18-year-old Brooklyn youth known to be "an activist" in the fanatically anti-Soviet J.D.L.

Who Is Responsible? The incident prompted both an ugly wrangle in the U.N. and an explosive protest from Moscow, which warned ominously that it might some day decide that diplomatic activity in the U.S. has "become impossible." Unimpressed by Washington's unusually vigorous expressions of official regret, Soviet Ambassador Yakov Malik interrupted the somnolent China debate the day after the incident and for the better part of two days kept an emotional Middle East debate going. Demanding the floor, Malik raged about what he saw as U.S. reluctance to take action against the J.D.L. It was time, he sputtered, for the U.S. "to restore order in its own house." Then Saudi Arabia's Jamil Baroody piped up. Baroody, a 25-year U.N. veteran whose opinion is shared by a growing number of his colleagues, charged that life for U.N. delegates was "becoming untenable in this city of New York. We cannot go on like this." Then he launched into an attack, highly unusual for a diplomat, on local U.S. officials: "Who is responsible? The politicians, the mayor, who goes to the synagogue and acts like a rabbi to obtain Jewish votes." Lindsay, he raged, was a Republican one day, a Democrat the next, "the third day he is nothing--a sycophant." Syrian Delegate George Tomeh rose to denounce "terrorism," charging that the Syrian mission had already received six bomb threats that week alone.

In high dudgeon by now, Russia's Malik grabbed the microphones again, this time to deliver a bullying attack on "Zionist extremists." Glaring over the rostrum at Israeli Delegate Yosef Tekoah, Malik sarcastically asked why the Jews should be a "chosen people" who were "closer to God" than the rest of humanity. "This is religious racism!" Malik shouted. "Religious fascism!" Tekoah, trembling with rage, stepped to the rostrum. Jews, he said, indeed seemed to have been chosen--"chosen to suffer." In a telling swipe at his Bolshevik adversary, he noted that Zionists had been battling imperialism "long before the Russian and Ukrainian people were on the maps of the world."

Who Was That? Saudi Arabia's Baroody butted in again, trying to raise a point of order. While he gestured, a fair-haired man in a business suit calmly walked to the rostrum, adjusted the mikes and began unfolding a prepared statement. Who was he? No one knew. Before he could speak, security officers hustled him off. The would-be delegate turned out to be Daniel R. McColgan, a Brooklyn public relations man. All he wanted to do, he told police, was say a few things about China.

For the moment, however, others wanted to keep the religious wars going. One group of youthful J.D.L. members handcuffed themselves to the railings outside the complex of U.N. buildings. When guards cut the Jewish protesters free, they tried to tear the Soviet flag down from its U.N. flagpole. At about the same time, a boy and a girl, both aged 15, slipped into the lobby of the Soviet mission on Manhattan's East 67th Street, broke a glass door and sprayed the area with an aerosol can of red paint. The midtown Manhattan office of Aeroflot, the Soviet airline, got similar treatment.

As Baroody says, it cannot go on.

Britain: To Market, To Market

Not since World War II had the House of Commons crackled with such political tension. As the House began a six-day debate leading up to this week's crucial vote on whether to join the European Common Market, members packed the green leather benches on each side of the chamber and overflowed into the aisles. The members on the two front benches faced each other like soldiers lined up for battle, with the pro-Market Tories of Prime Minister Edward Heath confronting the mostly antiMarket Laborites of former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. On each side, groups of party rebels sat grim-faced and silent.

As Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home began the debate by urging that Britain rejoin Europe (after 413 years, since the English quit Calais), Laborites shouted "No! No! No!" and stabbed their fingers in his direction. To pro-Marketeers, the main point was that, as the London Economist put it, "Europe cannot be fashioned against British interests once Britain is in." The antiMarket speakers said that the cost of joining was too high--in sovereignty yielded to bureaucrats in Brussels, in a threat to the British way of life, and in jobs lost to cheaper continental labor.

On the eve of this week's vote, Heath outfoxed Wilson with a brilliant parliamentary ploy. Both party leaders had insisted all along that their members heel to the party whips in the vote; each nonetheless faced the prospect of rebellion among followers committed to the other point of view. The Tories have an overall majority of 25 in the 627-member House, but Heath's party managers counted 30 certain rebel votes in their ranks, leaving the Prime Minister dependent on Labor votes.

Unexpectedly, Heath declared a "free vote," allowing each Tory M.P. to vote according to his conscience, released from strict party discipline. Heath's advisers shrewdly pointed out that while a free vote might add a handful of Tories to the antiMarket ranks, it would make it easier for Laborites to ignore their own party discipline--and in far greater numbers, possibly as many as 70. Though Wilson continued to insist that his followers vote strictly according to the party line, it was certain that enough Labor members would break ranks to ensure a pro-Market majority.

Immense Asset. Besides finessing Wilson, Heath's move considerably improved his image among British voters. According to the latest polls, fully 51% of Britons are still opposed to joining the Common Market, and only 32% are in favor. But the British are resigned to joining Europe, and 82% believe that membership is inevitable. By making the vote a free assertion of Parliament's collective will. Heath assured that the result would be accepted by the British people in a way that a decision achieved only by party discipline could never be. That could be a big asset when Parliament begins the formidable task of debating the enabling legislation required to align Britain's laws with the Common Market's. Wilson has promised to fight such legislation "clause by clause and line by line."

Europe: The Enemy Is Inside All of Us

It was a very different world 16 years ago when a handful of European idealists--Jean Monnet, Paul-Henri Spaak, Walter Hallstein, Jean Rey, Robert Schuman--first forged the idea of a European Economic Community. Their Europe had to contend with Communist expansion in the East and with the fantastic growth of the U.S. colossus in the West. Today, of course, the Soviets talk--perhaps in earnest--of seeking detente with the West; the U.S., though still a powerful influence in Western Europe, has begun a kind of worldwide recessional. TIME Paris Bureau Chief William Rademaekers, who has been a student of this changing Europe since the creation of the Common Market in 1957, set out on a tour of the six Common Market countries on the eve of Britain's historic vote to enter the EEC. His report:

The polls still say that roughly 70% of West Europeans are for European integration, but nowadays such support is about as remarkable--and meaningful--as an overwhelming vote for motherhood. Throughout the Six, many Europeans seem apprehensive about their political and social future. The cold war is over, they agree, but what happens next? Americans are talking of disengaging, but what will that mean for European unity? Once again, nationalism is a cause of widespread concern. West Germans speak of a "continuation" of De Gaulle's nationalism in France, while Frenchmen fret about Bonn's Deutsche Mark diplomacy. Italy, with warring regional factions, has more than enough worries at home. Overlaying all is a pervasive lack of confidence among Europeans in European institutions.

In his private office in Brussels, Economist Jean Rey, now 69, marvels at the slowness of the Six to deal with the lingering monetary crisis. "As I see it," Rey says as he settles back in his easy chair, "the trouble is the lack of an enemy. In the '60s, crises were easier to deal with because we knew where the enemy sat. We looked at Paris. Today France is no longer the enemy. He is somewhere inside all of us."

Quartermaster Corps. Originally, it was thought that when Europe achieved economic unity, political unity would inevitably follow. But economic unity has yielded only wooden ranks of "Eurocrats"--now some 5,000 strong--who stay glued to their desks in Brussels and Luxembourg, avoiding anything more controversial than common pricing for asparagus tips and uniform mayonnaise labels. The powerless European Parliament, which meets unnoticed some ten times a year in Strasbourg or Luxembourg, draws special scorn. Italian Author Luigi Barzini laughs that Rome's representatives "speak about nothing but the great pate they had every time they came back from those meetings." In Italy, where il Boom has long since run its course, Europe no longer beckons. "We're in for some bad days," says Barzini, "and nobody is interested in the European Parliament or Brussels down here. Brussels, in fact, has become the quartermaster corps."

What has happened? "Idealism is no longer a driving force," says Brussels-based Economist Sicco Mansholt, the only one of the original founders still with the EEC. "The era of Schuman & Co. is over."

Many younger Europeans who never heard Walter Hallstein's heady talk of "building a United States of Europe" are savage about the Market. They regard it as little more than a club for big privileged corporations, a "syndicat des riches," as one of them put it. To Parisienne Janine Thiers, 38, who is an administrator in the ORTF, the French radio-TV colossus, the EEC "is an act of egoisme for the economic elites of Europe, born at a time when they were scared to death of Communism. This is why it will never amount to more than it presently is, nor inspire the youth who will run the world tomorrow."

No one denies that Europe has made at least some progress toward social unity. Labor, for instance, moves freely throughout the Six. But the Dutch attorney cannot practice in Lyons, and the French engineer stands little chance of finding work in Turin. More distressing, says Munich Lawyer Martin Sattler, 28, is that "the youth of Europe are still looking for a political unity under which they can grow older. They haven't found it yet."

Those faceless Eurocrats in Brussels take much of the blame. Another villain is European labor. Suspicious, hidebound, determinedly parochial and frozen in attitudes that were current in the '20s, the unions have become the successors to the conservative agrarian parties of 19th century Europe.

Can the old European momentum be restored? Historically, the Continent has shown scant faith in Britain's leaders and no interest whatsoever in its institutions, but there is broad agreement--or hope--that London might bring a refreshing new cast of mind to the EEC. "We Europeans are insecure about how to live with democratic institutions," says Italian Journalist Arrigo Levi, whose own country has had three governments in the past 18 months. "The British can help us there. They also see things on a grander scale than we do."

British Impulse. Others sense that new developments, as yet dimly perceived, will make or break Europe's future. One of the optimists is Otto von Habsburg, onetime heir to the late Austro-Hungarian Empire and now a full-time promoter of European unity. "When I was a boy," he says, "the Rhine River represented a dividing line even greater than the Iron Curtain today. That has already gone." The former Archduke believes that Britain will be "a tremendous new impulse." Beyond that, he says, what is really needed are some "jolts to move this continent along," such as the removal of the American military shield. "It seems absurd to have 220 million Americans defending 280 million Europeans." But Levi argues that U.S. withdrawal would invite a dramatic increase in the Soviet role in Europe.

Then there is ascetic French Economist Jean Monnet, chief architect of the EEC and still, at 82, a vigorous champion of a united Europe. From his book-lined apartment overlooking Avenue Foch, Monnet's view is sunny. British entry will complete the economic union of Europe. "And then," he says, "we will move on to social integration." When Monnet says that "I am more confident than ever," as he does nowadays, it is difficult to understand why, given the towering obstacles in the way of real unity. Nonetheless, it may be worth remembering that it was that sort of confidence, shared by a few men, that originally got the EEC under way.

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