is inconceivable. It accordingly follows that permitting this Government to pay only on such a scale would inevitably require it to act unlawfully.

H.R. 11386 is as inequitable as it is prospectively illegal. The wealth of the United States is vastly disproportionate to its population. Its capacity to pay is far greater than the number of its people. If the United States were to be assessed simply on the basis of the relative enormity of its gross national product as compared with that of the aggregate of all other Members of the United Nations, it would pay more than thirty-one percent of the Organization's budget. To suggest that it should pay far less is to fly in the face of the facts about the world distribution of wealth and power. One might as reasonably suggest that millionaires and the impoverished should pay equal taxes. We count it a mark of a progressive society that we have progressive taxation-or that we make some attempt, however deficient, to have progressive taxation. It would be regressive in the extreme if the United States were to maintain, still less to require, that its relatively rich population be taxed at the same rate as the relatively and absolutely poor of this world.

H.R. 11386 is not only illegal insofar as it would apply to assessed contributions, and inequitable insofar as it would apply both to assessed and voluntary contributions, but unworkable, and on both counts.

It is unworkable for the reason that it will not be adopted by the organs of international organizations that levy and invite contributions. While there may be some room at some point for reduction in contributions by the United States, especially should the two Germanies be admitted to the United Nations and its Agencies, it cannot be imagined that there will be so much room as to admit a reduction from thirty-one to five to ten percent. Should the United States impose such a draconian limit on its contributions, whether assessed or voluntary, H.R. 11386 will prove unworkable for a further reason: the organizations in question will largely cease working. If the United States were, for example, to pay less than ten percent of the budget of the United Nations in 1972, the Organizationwhich already is in grave financial difficulty-could not survive, at any rate as an Organization approaching that we have known.

For the foregoing reasons, it is submitted that this Subcommittee should not report favorably on H.R. 11386 or any other bill of like substance.

Mr. SCHWEBEL. As a heavily taxed taxpayer, I oppose the bill on the grounds that it contemplates a course of action which is illegal. inequitable, and unworkable. It would be, if implemented, illegal in respect of assessed contributions only. That is important enough. It would be illegal because, under the charter, as you know, the General Assembly of the United Nations has the authority to assess members and they are legally bound to pay those assessments.

As you will recall, that very question was litigated before the International Court of Justice. The United States took the lead in maintaining that the United States and all other members-the Soviet Union, France, et cetera-were bound to pay the assessments upon them levied by the General Assembly.

Speaking broadly, we won that case. The International Court of Justice rendered an advisory opinion which agreed with that view. In fact, in view of the terms of the charter, the Court hardly could have done otherwise.

Now, if the United States were to adopt this bill and if it were to decline to pay assessments larger than 6 percent, we would be violating international law. We would be violating the charter or treaty to which the United States is a party. That, of itself, would be deplorable. The effects on the U.N. would be disastrous, as Secretary De Palma has pointed out. It would be otherwise if the U.N. would agree to assess us simply on this scale, but there is no practical possibility of that, as Secretary De Palma has also pointed out. In this sense, then, since the prospect of the U.N.'s so agreeing is totally improbable.

The bill contemplates a course of action which would be an illegal one. It would also be inequitable for the reasons that have been submitted to the committee. Clearly our capacity to pay is far greater than that indicated by our population. And it would be unworkable because the United Nations cannot be expected to adopt such a scale. It could not afford it even if it wished. If we impose the scale unlawfully, the United Nations itself would, in substantial measure, cease to work. It would, as Secretary De Palma has stated, be pushed over the financial brink on which it now teeters.

Now, it teeters on that brink not because of American policy, which, I think, in this regard, has been outstanding. Apart from the very serious failure to pay assessments of the ILO, we have paid our dues. We may be behind for a particular year because of the method of the operation of the Congress, but my understanding is that generally speaking we have paid our dues, if a bit late, quite uniformly, with perhaps the exception of imposing a requirement on the U.N. to use certain currencies which are not easily convertible.

Our record, on the whole, is an excellent one. We should maintain that record as long as we keep membership in the U.N. and we should, in my submission, keep membership as long as the U.N. renders substantial service toward the achievement of its purposes and the welfare of the people of the United States. I think it does that.

That is not for a moment to say that the United Nations does not have severe defects. It reflects many disappointments, but we have no better international organization at the moment. The only way to get one is to make the U.N. a better one, and certainly by destroying its financial prospects, we shall not do that.

Mr. FRASER. Mr. Schwebel, one of the reasons why these bills are being submitted, I think, is the disenchantment which followed the vote on the China question. It would be helpful to me and perhaps to other Members, if you would give your own views as a specialist in international law with respect to the merits of what took place in the U.N. on the China question and how you view the U.S. position.

Mr. SCHWEBEL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be happy to do so.

In my view, the position of the U.S. Government on this issue was correct. I think it would have been in the interests of the United Nations and of the people of China if the island of Taiwan had continued to be represented one way or another; and the only plausible way of achieving that was, in effect, though we didn't so denominate it. to have a two-China policy-one China represented by the Government in Peking, a second China represented by the Government. of Taiwan.

One day, as Mr. Kissinger apparently contemplated yesterday in his remarks, those two Governments might unite in a single government. But until those two Governments freely so decide, I think the correct policy is to permit the people on Taiwan to maintain their independence, and retaining representation in the United Nations would have been an important contribution to the achievement of that aim.

So, fundamentally, I think our policy was correct, and I regret that the majority of the General Assembly did not accept that political judgment.

But, in declining to accept the political judgment that was made in Washington, I do not think that the General Assembly's majority acted unlawfully. Perhaps it was inpolitic, but it was not illegal.

The Republic of China, strictly speaking, was not expelled from the United Nations. Rather, a decision was taken that the Government of the People's Republic of China in Peking is the government representative of the State of China, and that the Government on Taiwan is not so representative.

Now, if one looks at the simple facts of which government controls the land area and the people and the resources of what all the world accepts as China, that is not an unreasonable conclusion. It is, of course, true that, under the charter, the expulsion of a state member requires not only a vote of two-thirds but a prior recommendation of the Security Council, and neither was foreseen in this case, though, in fact, the motion disposing of Chinese representation was carried by a two-thirds majority. But it was not a matter viewed by the majority as a question of expulsion of the state member but, as Secretary De Palma has said, of representation of a state already a member.

Now, in the 20 or so years that this issue has been debated in the U.N., it has always been viewed as a question of representation. The United States has always so treated it. The Government of the Republic of China has always so treated it, and so have all other members. To reverse the field at this juncture and treat it not as a question of representation but of, on the other hand, admission of Communist China and, on the other hand, of expulsion of Taiwan is to reverse the field not only late in the game but after the game is over.

We did not argue in the General Assembly this autumn that the question was one of expulsion of a state, and we were right not to argue that. At any rate, it would have been very difficult to argue in view of the history of the case. If, in 1950, this had been argued, and argued all the years subsequently, it would have been an easier case to make out. I won't say there is no basis for the case, but it was not the approach which was fundamentally followed.

Mr. FRASER. Was not the position of the United States complicated by the fact that the Nationalist Government continued to assert the right to exercise authority over all of China?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. Absolutely. The Government of the Republic of China, my understanding is, did not treat the question as one of expulsion of a state; rather, it claimed that it was and is the sole government of the State of China and, as such, the only proper representative of the State of China. It accepted the view that the question was and remains one of Chinese representation, but its view is that it is the correct representative and the sole correct representative.

Mr. FRASER. Would not that make it difficult in deciding a representation question-to end up upsetting the boat?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. Yes; it was one of the several crosses our policy was obliged to bear, and an even bigger one, Mr. Chairman, I think, was the perception of most U.N. members that Peking would not, in fact, come in if Taiwan remained. This is what Peking had said day and night. I don't know if any of us can know if it is the fact; perhaps Peking does not know it, but, at any rate, this was the policy they had stoutly maintained.

The majority seemed to believe that the policy the United States had proposed would not work for that reason and would require the United Nations to go through still more difficult contortions next year or in a subsequent year. The majority seemed to feel that if Taiwan were accepted, in fact Peking would not take its seat next year or the year after, and that eventually, in the desire to have Peking in the General Assembly, the U.N. would exclude the delegation of Taiwan.

Mr. FRASER. If the U.S. position had prevailed, how many votes would China have cast in the General Assembly?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. Well, you put your finger on another complication, because, under the charter, each member of the General Assembly has one vote; article 18 squarely so provides. Therefore, the State of China. the single State of China, could not lawfully have had two votes; that is why I said, at the outset, that our policy, in effect, was a two-China policy, even if we didn't call it that.

We were operating on the assumption, implicit perhaps but actual, that there were two successor states to the single State of China, and each would have one vote in the General Assembly and in other organs of the organization in which they would sit.

Now, we didn't foreclose the possibility that those two states might one day merge into one state again. There are U.N. precedents for a state being succeeded by two successor states, and for two states becoming one state. The latter precedent is illustrated by the merger between Syria and Egypt to constitute the UAR, and then again the seating of Syria without going through the admission process when it broke away from the UAR.

Mr. FRASER. I don't recall this, but did the resolution that was being advanced by the United States provide for separate votes for the two governments?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. It did not expressly do so, but my understanding of its intendment would be that each of the Chinese delegations would have had a separate vote, and each would have been treated in the U.N. by the U.N. as representing distinctive entities, though each doubtless would have maintained its claim that each represented the whole of China. It would have been a confused and awkward situation, there is no doubt of it, and this is one of the difficulties our policy bore.

Mr. FRASER. Would not the fact have been at least some measure to have bypassed the regular procedure for the admission of an additional nation?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. Yes; it would have been.

Mr. FRASER. Does the General Assembly, for example, have the authority on its own to admit another nation?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. No. A state applying for admission to the U.N., as you rightly suggest by the terms of your question, must be recommended by the Security Council, a recommendation which is subject to the veto, and approved by the General Assembly. Nevertheless, one can fairly make a distinction between the admission of a state never a member and the seating of a successor state that derives from the territory of a state already a member.

Now, on this, the precedents are mixed, and they didn't uniformly help our case. For example, when India was partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947, India maintained the membership that India, as

an original member of the United Nations, had. Pakistan applied for membership, and was not delighted to do that; it would have preferred to just be seated; but the Secretary-General took the position-and it was a position of some controversy-that Pakistan should apply for membership as a new state, and it did.

Now, that precedent ran counter to our Chinese position. On the other hand, there were precedents that were more helpful, such as the Syrian one I stated a moment ago.

Mr. FRASER. Syria had not been a member prior to the merger?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. Syria had been a member in its own right, so it was not a square precedent; it was of some help, but it was not as helpful as it might have been. There was no doubt that, on the law of the matter, we had an uphill fight, and that is one of the reasons we lost, because the question had been argued over the years in terms of representation; and neither China wanted two Chinas.

It was legally and politically a difficult case, and we failed to carry it not through any want of effort but, I think, essentially not only because of these legal disabilities but because of the perception on the part of the majority that the U.S. formula would not do what they wanted to do, which was to get Peking in. Now, they may have been wrong on that, but we will never know.

Mr. FRASER. One of the results of the position taken by the United States, of course, was to assert to the domestic public the rightness of its position, the fact that there were substantial legal problems, and, as you put it, it was legally an uphill battle for the United States.

There was no way for the people of the United States really to understand that and we paid a fairly high price in terms of ongoing support for the United Nations. In your opinion, is the price worth the battle we have fought?

Mr. SCHWEBEL. Well, I share with you, sir, concern about the public reaction, and I would not say that I am altogether happy with the way in which the vote in the United Nations was played, so to speak, by those having official responsibility. For example there was some loose usage of the term "expulsion" which fed the theory that, in fact, there had been an unlawful expulsion, which did not go through the Security Council.

But I would not go so far as to say that we should never have made an effort to keep Taiwan in. I think it was basically a sensible political judgment, sensible because it is a real loss to the possibilities of Taiwan's maintaining its independence to have been excluded from the U.N.

Over the long pull, in my view, it is going to be much more difficult than otherwise. I think we will see fewer and fewer states maintaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan. We shall hear the Peking delegation in New York chanting day and night that there is only one China, that the U.N. has recognized this, and that Taiwan exists independently only by reason of the intervention of U.S. military and naval power.

I think this argument will have increasing appeal, even in the United States. But I do think that the 14 million people on Taiwan should be able to remain free of Communist rule if they so wish.

So I think the fight was worth making, and I regret we lost it.