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> Improve relations with China. In dealing with Peking, Reagan initially let his anti-Communism get in the way of his anti-Sovietism. He spoke during the campaign of establishing "official" relations with Taiwan and, as President, sold enough arms to that island to chill relations with the Chinese. Andropov, in contrast, has continued negotiations to paper over the split between the two Communist giants, though Soviet-Chinese hostility and suspicion have kept them from getting very far.
Reagan has now agreed to exchange visits in 1984 with Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang. Such efforts should be continued and intensified. The strategic importance to the U.S. of China, which keeps a quarter of all Soviet military forces tied down guarding a 4,200-mile frontier, is obvious. Moreover, Soviet foreign policy gives a high priority to heading off anything resembling a U.S.-Chinese alliance. Historians have long suspected that Nixon's 1971 opening to China helped prod Brezhnev into signing the agreements with the U.S. that launched détente the next year.
> Build up conventional forces more rapidly, and encourage European allies to do the same. At present, NATO may not have enough troops, tanks, artillery pieces and tactical aircraft to fight the forces of the U.S.S.R. and its Warsaw Pact allies to a draw on the ground. As a result, NATO strategy contemplates the possibility of using tactical atomic weapons from the first day of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. That has handed Moscow a two-pronged propaganda advantage. The Kremlin has made a pledge never to use nuclear weapons first. The U.S. has felt unable to match this pledge because it would "make Europe safe for conventional aggression" by superior Soviet ground forces. At the same time, Moscow stirs terror by warning incessantly that the firing of any atomic weapon of any size at Soviet troops would trigger an all-out Soviet nuclear attack in response.
Propaganda, however, is the least of it. NATO would reduce the real risk of nuclear war if it built the conventional forces that could defeat Soviet aggression without resort to atomic weaponry. But Western Europe has been reluctant to make the major financial sacrifices that would be required. However, the U.S. is in no condition to preach. A serious attempt to defend Western Europe without atomic weapons would probably require reviving the draft, and many U.S. politicians from Reagan on down refuse to consider that idea.
The preliminary to any attempt to thaw relations between the superpowers is to tone down the rhetoric. By year's end Washington showed signs of realizing that it had carried the war of words too far. Reagan did not denounce the Soviets for suspending the arms-control talks, contenting himself with expressions of regret and of hope that Moscow will reconsider. In an interview with TIME, he went so far as to say that he would not make his "focus of evil" statement again (see following story).
But there is some doubt that the Soviets will take any change in rhetoric at face value. According to Sovietologist Bialer, the U.S.S.R.'s distrust of Reagan is now so high that Moscow would probably reject even the most reasonable U.S. arms-control proposals. The Kremlin is convinced that Reagan is trying to nullify the Soviet Union's most important achievement of the past 20 years: