COLD WAR: WHAT NEXT?

As a direct result of the Nixon party's tour of the Soviet Union and Poland, some new assumptions are bound to be cranked into high-level U.S. policy decisions. Among the assumptions, as pieced together by TIME'S White House Correspondent Charles Mohr, who traveled with the Nixon party:

P: Nikita Khrushchev is a doctrinaire Communist--a true believer; whatever he sees in the U.S., he will see through Communist glasses that will magnify and/or distort according to Communist gospel; it is therefore not realistic to think that his U.S. tour will change any of his basic ideas about the evils of capitalist society.

P:Khrushchev is convinced that the U.S.S.R. is militarily more powerful than the U.S. Since no argument to the contrary is likely to get through to him, the best basis for U.S. debate is to convince him that in any war, both sides would turn out the loser. The worst thing the U.S. can do is to show signs of jitters over Soviet military threats.

P: Khrushchev talks peace all the time, not only to impress the free world, but because the Soviet people, badly hurt during World War II, want nothing else so desperately and want to hear nothing else.

P:Despite a generation of Communist propaganda, the Soviet people do not believe that Americans are villainous. After seeing spontaneous demonstrations for the Nixon party, an American who had known Russia in Stalin's day said: "I had to pinch myself to be sure I wasn't dreaming."

P:Khrushchev and his deputy, Frol Kozlov, are the only top Communists who are able to get through to the people across the extraordinary gap of class distinction that separates the Communist hierarchy from the people. Communist leadership in general has failed to develop any enthusiasm or support for the system itself; this lack of enthusiasm does not promise incipient revolution, but does promise minds receptive to logical Western argument.

P: Khrushchev has without question made marked progress in increasing the supply of consumer goods since 1953, but the U.S.S.R. is not likely to "catch up" with the U.S. in seven years as Khrushchev promised, or in 17 years.

P: Despite Sputnik, the Soviet drive to scientific advancement is not as far advanced as many Americans believe--even the impressive new scientific center at Novosibirsk represents primarily a plan to uproot scientists in other cities and put them to work under government domination in Siberia; in its atomic power programs, the U.S.S.R. still uses old devices that the U.S. abandoned years ago.

P: The single most important conclusion to come out of the tour is that the U.S. can exist safely on the same globe with the Russians for a long time, provided that the Soviets learn the facts and do the waking up.

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