COLD WAR: The New Fluidity

In the good old summertime, any conscientious U.S. headline reader last week was apt to feel that allies were proving faithless and the world was falling apart. The Shah flees; France goes on strike; Britain acts testily; anti-Americanism spreads. So read the headlines. Happenings in isolated and distant places interacted in unpredictable ways.

In the still August days, events were moving. The big new international fact is that the seven-year-old cold war is no longer a shoring of fixed positions; it has become a fluid diplomatic war of maneuver. Armistice in Korea...