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The overall goal should be the evolution of an Asian balance of power, a mosaic of self-interest that induces Asians, including the Chinese, to trade rather than quarrel with their neighbors. To that end, distant as it now seems, Washington might well take several small to middling unilateral steps demonstrating that the U.S. poses no threat to China and its regime, and that it desires conciliation whenever Peking is ready for it. Says Harvard Sinologist James C. Thomson Jr., a former State Department and National Security Council official: "Why wait for the other man to blink? Why not try winking at him?" Among the many winks—some possible at once, others at a later time—that U.S. China specialists have suggested:
> Despite repeated Chinese rejections in recent years, the U.S. should reiterate its willingness to exchange journalists, artists, scientists and scholars with China.
> With the exception of strategic goods, such as armaments and fissionable materials, the U.S. should drop its trade embargo, which makes little sense now that U.S. allies like Japan, West Germany, Britain and France are trading with the mainland. The Chinese regard the mere existence of the embargo as a hostile act; its removal could be interpreted as a conciliatory gesture. In view of China's limited industrial capabilities and shortage of foreign exchange, such trade would be modest in any case—perhaps up to $10 million a year initially, rising to possibly $100 million after five years.
>The U.S. should play a less conspicuous role in the annual campaign at the United Nations against Peking's admission. Says former Ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer: "The moral judgment implied in the blackballing of the largest nonwhite nation by the most powerful white nation is deeply insulting to the Chinese and irritating to many other people in the world." With or without U.S. lobbying, the vote will probably go against Peking for some time. Even if it turns favorable, there are no indications that Peking will accept a seat until its terms for entering the U.N. are met; Peking insists that it be absolved of the Korean War aggressor label and that Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists be expelled. Neither is likely to happen soon.
> U.S. Government officials might be more cautious in the language they use about Communist China. Much justification for the ABM, for instance, initially stressed that the system was designed against Chinese nuclear attack. The implication, holds University of Chicago Political Scientist Tang Tsou, is that "the Chinese leaders are mad enough to think of attacking the U.S. and thus inviting U.S. retaliation. The argument only encourages the radicals in China."
> The U.S. might consider scaling down its nuclear presence on Okinawa. This presence alarms not only China but also Japan, which has residual sovereignty over the Ryu—kyus. Alleged U.S. "colonial" rule there feeds Peking propaganda and incites those Japanese who demand both the return of the islands and the abolition of U.S. bases in Japan. Such a scale-down might be strategically risky, but the U.S. could compensate in part by relying on the deterrent of its submarine-borne Polaris and forthcoming Poseidon nuclear missiles.