The New Waves

Some, at first, felt a slightly stunned euphoria about Richard Nixon's planned trip to China, a kind of excitement about impending historic change. Vermont Senator George Aiken, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, sees the trip instead as setting off a new round of international anxiety.

"The proof of it," he reflected last week, "is rolling in from every direction. Pravda was uneasy, in a long article, about the U.S.-China rapprochement, fearing what effect it would have on U.S.-Soviet relations. Red China, through Chou En-lai's interview with the New York Times's James Reston, was uneasy about Japan, fearing it would turn into a nuclear nation, that it would swoop into Taiwan and Korea.

"Japan is uneasy about its place now that the U.S. is talking again to Japan's old enemy. India is worried about the U.S. overtures to China and the fact that Pakistan is enjoying a new stature with the White House since playing its role in the secret plans. So now India signs a new pact with Russia. The worries go on and on." It is, said Aiken, as if Nixon had dropped a large stone into a previously stagnant pond. The waves from the impact are widening.

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