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The Soviet Representative to the United Nations charged that “this is a purely internal situation in Uganda, caused by imperialist agents provocateur financed by the Western Bloc.” He insisted that UN intervention was unnecessary unless the “warmongering” neighbors of Uganda got into the scrap.

In a televised press interview, Vice Presidential Candidate Matthew Fisher was asked what he thought of the situation in East Africa.

“Both North and South Uganda,” he said, “are communist controlled, but, like Yugoslavia, they have declared themselves independent of the masters at Moscow. If this conflict was stirred up by special agents–and I have no doubt that it was–those agents were Soviet, not Western agents. As far as the UN can be concerned, the Soviet Minister is correct, since the UN has recognized only the government of North Uganda as the government of all Uganda, and it is, therefore, a purely internal affair.

“The revolution–that is, partial revolution–which caused the division of Uganda a few years ago, was likewise due to Soviet intervention. They hoped to replace the independent communist government with one which would be, in effect, a puppet of the Kremlin. They failed. Now they are trying again.

“Legally, UN troops can only be sent there at the request of the Northern Uganda government. The Secretary General can send police troops there of his own accord only if another nation tries to invade Uganda.

“But–and here is the important point–if the Uganda government asks the aid of a friendly government to send troops, and if that friendly government complies with that request, that cannot be considered an invasion!”

Question from a reporter: “Do you believe that such intervention from another country will be requested by Uganda?”

“I do. And I am equally certain that the Soviet representative to the UN, and his Superiors in Moscow, will try to make a case of invasion and aggression out of it.”

* * * * *

Within twenty-four hours after that interview, the government of North Uganda requested aid from Victorian Kenya, and a huge contingent of Kenyan troops marched across the border to help the North Uganda army. And the Soviet representative insisted that the UN send in troops to stop the “imperialist aggression” of Victorian Kenya. The rigidly pro-Western VK government protested that the Sino-Soviet accusations were invalid, and then asked, on its own accord, that a UN contingent be sent in to arbitrate and act as observers and umpires.

“Win one, lose one,” Matthew Fisher said privately to Senator Cannon. “Uganda will come out of this with a pro-Western government, but it might not be too stable. The whole African situation is unstable. Mathematically, it has to be.”

“How’s that?” Senator Cannon asked.

“Do you know the Richardson-Gordon Equations?” Fisher asked.

“No. I’m not much of a mathematician,” Cannon admitted. “What do they have to do with this?”

“They were originally proposed by Lewis Richardson, the English mathematician, and later refined by G. R. Gordon. Basically, they deal with the causes of war, and they show that a conglomeration of small states is less stable than a few large ones. In an arms race, there is a kind of positive feedback that eventually destroys the system, and the more active small units there are, the sooner the system reaches the destruction point.”

Senator Cannon chuckled. “Any practical politician could have told them that, but I’m glad to hear that a mathematical tool to work on the problem has been devised. Maybe one of these days we won’t have to be rule-of-thumb empiricists.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Matt Fisher.

* * * * *

By the end of October, nearly two weeks from Election Day, the decision had been made. There were still a few Americans who hadn’t made up their minds yet, but not enough to change the election results, even if they had voted as a bloc for one side or the other. The change from the shouting and arguing of mid-summer was apparent to anyone who knew what he was looking for. In the bars and restaurants, in the subways and buses, aboard planes and ships and trains, most Americans apparently seemed to have forgotten that there was a national election coming up, much to the surprise of Europeans and Asians who were not familiar with the dynamics of American political thought. If a foreigner brought the subject up, the average American would give his views in a calm manner, as though the thing were already settled, but there was far more discussion of the relative merits of the horses running at Pimlico or the rise in Lunar Developments Preferred than there was of the election. There were still a few people wearing campaign buttons, but most people didn’t bother pinning them on after the suit came back from the cleaners.