If all goes well, the year's most spectacular photo opportunity will present itself in May, when Mikhail Gorbachev and Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing. But this will be much more than a photo-op. Such a summit would formally end an important advantage enjoyed by the U.S. since Richard Nixon visited China in 1972: Washington could talk to the leadership in both Beijing and Moscow, but ; there was no high-level dialogue between the Soviets and the Chinese and virtually no significant contact at lower levels.
Being able to speak to two sides while they cannot seriously talk to each other is...