CHAPTER 1
Sixty Years of Coexistence
Robert Oppenheimer once compared the United States and the Soviet
Union to two scorpions in a bottle， but the metaphor is not apt. True， each
society has fife-and-death power over the other， but the half dozen or so
individuals in Washington or Moscow who decide how that power is to be
used do not act by instinct. They are more like chess players in the dark，
absorbed in a game they can barely see. Each player depends upon the
other not to upset the table. Since neither quite knows what is happening
on the board， each imputes to the other a master plan that tends to be a
mirror image of his own. It is a dangerous game， but each uses it to define
who he is.
The era of d6tente， or razriadka as the Russians call it--both words
signify a relaxation or unwinding--is a new stage in the global contest
Walter Lippmann dubbed the \"cold war，\" in which the small group of
politicians， diplomats， generals， and businessmen on each side are chang-
ing their relationships in complex and curious ways. At the heart of the
controversy over d6tente is the question Tolstoy purported to settle in
War and Peace: What difference do individuals make in great historical
processes? Tolstoy thought that even the most powerful leaders were
merely blind instruments in the grip of glacial historical forces. (If Napo-
leon had not existed， he would have been invented.) The skeptics of
d6tente take much the ，same view， at least of the adversary， arguing that
for all the clinking of glasses in the Kremlin， the Politburo retains its
\"master plan\" to destroy the power of the United States and to succeed
her as the number one nation. \"Their objectives have not changed， only
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