Opportunity for Two

While the guns roared over the sands of Sinai and the hills of Galilee, the U.S. and the Soviet Union worked in tandem to avoid a catastrophic confrontation. With a Middle East cease-fire in effect and the superpowers back from the brink, the Big Two have arrived at a definitive new crossroads in world affairs. Will they revert to the arid pattern of cold-war contentiousness, or will they make a concerted effort to shape new agreements not only on the Middle East but also on a whole panoply of world problems?

On the face of it, the prospects for cooperation between Washington and Moscow have dimmed perceptibly since their hot-line harmony of two weeks ago. The Russians, having lost the better part of their $2 billion, decade-long military investment in the Moslem world, also saw their prestige plummet to an all-time low among the Arab states (see THE WORLD). Determined to recoup their psychological loss at least, Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin and his colleagues at this week's emergency meeting of the U.N. General Assembly faced the difficult task of inveighing against a fait accompli--Israel's shattering territorial gains. Backed into that corner, the Soviets might be expected to lash out with bitter denunciation not only of Israel but also of the U.S.

Metternichian Minuet. However, the Soviet position was made doubly complicated by the broad opportunity that Kosygin's presence in the U.S. offers for top-level talks between the Big Two. There were clear indications that both sides would welcome such talk; but a bitter public exchange in the U.N. might well reduce both the inclinations and the opportunity.

In a Metternichian minuet that seemed strangely out of place in the nuclear age, both Kosygin and Lyndon Johnson at week's end delicately refrained from making the first move. Kosygin feared that if he asked for a Washington meeting with the U.S. President, the Arabs would suspect him of a double cross, while Peking, which has already accused Moscow of "a perfidious betrayal, a monstrous sellout," would crow even more loudly. As for Johnson, White House Press Secretary George Christian said that if Kosygin wished to sit down and talk, the President "will, of course, be glad to see him"--but Washington did not extend an invitation.

Johnson had previously planned to spend ten days at his Texas ranch, awaiting the birth of his first grandchild, playing host to Australia's Prime Minister Harold Holt, and mending some local fences. Instead, after flying down to Austin for a long-scheduled Democratic fund-raising dinner at week's end, he jetted back to Washington the same night, touching down at 3:30 a.m., an hour and a half before Kosygin's arrival in New York. Johnson also shifted his weekend meeting with Holt from the L.B.J. Ranch to Camp David in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains, where Khrushchev conferred with Dwight Eisenhower in 1959.

Tour d'Horizon. Soviet officials, meanwhile, bustled around Washington on the eve of Kosygin's arrival in New York, dropping broad hints that if Johnson were willing to break the ice, talks might prove highly profitable. The Soviet Premier, they said, was prepared to join Johnson in a tour a"horizon encompassing not only the Mideast but also Viet Nam, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, and mutual limitations on costly new anti-ballistic missile systems. Another likely topic: Red China's successful explosion of a hydrogen bomb.

Clearly, if such a meeting were to take place--let alone get anywhere--Kosygin would have to demonstrate a remarkable degree of flexibility and reasonableness in his advocacy of the Arab cause before the U.N. and millions of U.S. televiewers. Though his Moslem clients would hardly relish a restrained stance by Moscow, they should be well aware by now that the task of constructing a peaceful Middle East is as far beyond their own means as have been their military efforts over the past decade. A just settlement of the ancient feud between Arab and Jew will not be easy to achieve in any circumstances. That goal will be almost impossible to attain without substantive diplomacy between the two superpowers.

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