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The Middle East. The Soviets continue to advocate an international peace conference, and the idea has recently gained momentum. But the U.S. has been wary. Administration officials fear that Moscow, which continues to back the P.L.O., would use such a conference to expand its influence in the region and ultimately control the meeting to favor Arab aspirations. The Soviets sent an eight-member consular team to Israel last week. The mission marks the first time an official Soviet delegation has visited Jerusalem since Moscow severed relations with Israel over the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The Soviets may soon be the only major power to have contact with all of the parties, including Israel, moderate and radical Arab states, and the P.L.O.
Economic Cooperation. How far are the Soviets willing to go to join the international economic community? Here too their words are surprising. They profess to be interested, for example, in participating in such capitalist cabals as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the International Monetary Fund. The question is whether they are willing to make the substantial accommodations involved. Says Peter Peterson, former Commerce Secretary under Richard Nixon and now chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations: "For GATT, this would mean having market prices for commodities in order to prevent unfair dumping practices. For the IMF, this would mean, among other things, being open about the size of their gold reserves."
More than 60 years before the Bolshevik Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote of Russia and America that "each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world." Thus it has been for 42 years since the celebratory meeting of Soviet and American troops on the Elbe River at the end of World War II gave way to the deadly distrust of the postwar era.
If, perchance, some of the ideological underpinnings of that struggle are beginning to fade away, the rivalry could become far more manageable. Unlike other great international rivals, the U.S. and the Soviets have little serious conflict over commercial markets. And despite the struggle for political influence, both sides share an interest in calming certain regional disputes, like the Iran-Iraq war.
Even if Moscow's actions fall far short of its rhetoric, there are forces outside the control of either superpower that are fundamentally changing the nature of the cold war. With nuclear weapons an unusable tool, the military might of the two countries has become less important in shaping global relations. In terms of economic influence and total share of global production, the status of the two superpowers is already declining.
In addition, the growing commercial clout of the developing industrial world has made such countries less susceptible to superpower domination. So too has rising nationalist sentiment. "Quietly, erratically, the capacity of the developing regions to resist intrusion and to shape their own destiny has been increasing," notes University of Texas Professor Walt Rostow, who was Lyndon Johnson's National Security Adviser.