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The missile issue could be similarly risky. Holland approved NATO'S strategy in 1979, but made deployment of the 48 cruise missiles intended for its soil contingent on a parliamentary vote, which is expected to take place this June. Lubbers could count on a majority in favor were it not for divisions within his own party. Influenced by a tide of European pacifism and the urgings of Holland's muscular Inter-Church Peace Council, the Christian Democrats' left wing stands poised to defect from the right and center. Says a senior NATO diplomat: "If it were held today, I fear Lubbers might not get the vote." Lubbers' NATO allies have privately urged him to avoid a parliamentary showdown. So delicate is the issue, however,
that U.S. officials claim they will not even press the Prime Minister on the deployment question while he is in Washington, for fear of fueling antimissile activists' charges that the U.S. is meddling in Dutch affairs. As it happens, some fellow politicians believe that Lubbers has already decided either to fragment the decision, converting it into a series of politically more palatable votes on separate stages of deployment, or to postpone a vote to a time closer to the planned installation of the missiles in 1986.
However he handles the tactics. Lubbers is convinced that deployment is necessary. "Western Europe's rejection of the neutron bomb during the Carter Administration was interpreted as a success for Communist propaganda," he says. "Today the European democracies can prove that they are strong enough to deploy."