The Alexandrian Strategic View

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The hard line on the Soviet Union was reflected in a White House decision to postpone, until May, next week's scheduled meeting in Geneva of a U.S.-Soviet committee that discusses compliance with arms control agreements. Only once in seven years has such a session been postponed, and then for only two days. The Administration has not even nominated a director for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Edward Rowny, 63, who retired in 1979 as an Army lieutenant general to campaign publicly against the SALT II agreement, felt so certain of the appointment that he was boning up for confirmation hearings. But he learned last week that the job will probably go instead to Yale Law Professor Eugene Rostow, 67, a hawkish Democrat.

The Administration, meanwhile, is pursuing a careful course with China. Reagan and Haig held an unpublicized meeting with Ambassador Chai Zemin of China last week. Chai assured the U.S. that China would not resort to force to resolve the Taiwan problem, the first time Peking has made such a pledge.

Left ringing in the ears of Senators and Congressmen was the firmness of Haig's anti-Soviet rhetoric. But he did offer a caveat at the very beginning of his visit to the Hill. Any policy, he said, that "suggested total preoccupation with the so-called Russians-are-coming syndrome" would have to be labeled "ster ile." That may or may not have sounded soothing to Haig's congressional critics. — By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Laurence I. Barrett and Gregory H.

Wierzynski/Washington