America and Russia

The six U.S. Senators could hardly believe their ears. At a meeting in Peking last week, China's leaders told a delegation led by Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn that the Communist regime heartily endorses the U.S. military presence in the Far East. The Senators even heard, they said, that an expanded U.S. naval presence in the Western Pacific was "regarded favorably by the Chinese." One Chinese officer told the Americans that he hoped U.S. warships would call at China's ports.

That the U.S. should now be so openly and unabashedly courted by a regime that used to excoriate the Yankee imperialism as a paper tiger is one of the most startling reversals in modern diplomatic history. It reflects, to a great extent, the determination of Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing and China's other new leaders to enlist Washington's help in countering the Soviet Union's mounting influence in Asia. It thus establishes a major new phase in Washington's often stormy relations not only with Peking but with Moscow as well. Even as the Chinese were meeting the Senators last week, the Kremlin gained a startling new victory when the Moscow-supported Vietnamese marched into neighboring Cambodia (Kampuchea) and seized Phnom-Penh, capital of the Peking-supported regime. The Soviet Union wasted no time in welcoming Cambodia's new order. Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev last week told TIME at the Kremlin that his country "supports the People's Revolutionary Council of Kampuchea" (see interview).

The Administration has condemned the aggression and urged Moscow and Peking to avoid any confrontation over Indochina. Intensified quarreling between the two Communist giants could create an extraordinary dilemma for Washington if it were pressed to choose sides. Given Jimmy Carter's bold new China policy, the Chinese might hope that he would back them against the Soviets. As it is, in an increasing number of global pressure points, the U.S. finds itself in a direct or implied confrontation with the U.S.S.R.

Says one U.S. senior foreign policy adviser: "Our relationship with the Soviets has changed dramatically in the past year. Before, we were seeking broad-based accommodations. Now our relations are focused almost entirely on SALT." Brezhnev agrees. He told TIME: "Over the last couple of years, there have been few encouraging moments, to be frank, in Soviet-American relations."

"This is a watershed period in our ties with the U.S.S.R.," warns William Hyland, a former longtime member of the National Security Council and now senior fellow at Washington's Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The next months or year will be very critical. With China's moves west, the U.S. normalization with Peking, the possibility of Western arms sales to the Chinese, and developments in SALT, all the major actors are in motion. We have to be very careful."