If Moscow and Peking Make Up

A decade ago, most Western analysts thought a split between the Soviet Union and China inconceivable. Today, the analysts find the notion that Moscow and Peking will make up any time in the foreseeable future equally inconceivable. Indeed, even in agreeing to hold border talks with the Soviets, the Chinese spoke of "irreconcilable differences" with Moscow. Yet what if the inconceivable should occur once again, and Moscow and Peking were able to reach a genuine reconciliation? Among the possibilities:

∙IN CHINA AND THE SOVIET UNION: Along the 4,500-mile Sino-Soviet frontier, where both sides have been feverishly building up forces since bloody Ussuri River clashes earlier this year, tensions relax quickly. Moscow withdraws many of the thousands of men who guard Central Asia and the Soviet Far East. The Chinese start to redeploy forces dug in along the frontier, moving them into political and civic action work inside China to help heal the wounds caused by Chairman Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution. The Soviets resume a degree of aid to China, mainly in industrial credits, but offer no assistance to China's burgeoning nuclear program.

∙ASIA: Though both Moscow and Peking have supported North Viet Nam with military equipment all along, the settlement results in a new unity of action. Such coordination keeps Hanoi from playing off the two Communist giants against each other. But it also enables the North Vietnamese to stop their breathless balancing act and devote undivided attention to the war. What follows is a further stiffening of their posture on the battlefield and at the negotiating table, compelling the U.S. to consider slowing down its withdrawal—difficult though that may be. Beyond Viet Nam, Moscow quietly concedes Southeast Asia as a Chinese sphere of influence. Peking steps up subversion and support of local Communist insurgent movements. Unless Asian nations coordinate their defenses, perhaps in a regional pact extending from Korea to Pakistan, they eventually confront a painful choice: 1) accommodation with Peking, or 2) greater military and economic reliance on the West.

∙THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA: Communist pressure grows in the Middle East, where the Soviets have in the past been far more active than the Chinese. Competition between the two Communist powers in Syria ends. In Africa, where Moscow and Peking have also been rivals in the courtship of established governments and extremist groups, Guinea, the Sudan and several other countries find it difficult to cope with unified Communist pressure. The Soviets, certain that their back door is safe, are willing to take slightly greater risks in the Middle East, but still want to avoid outright war.