Books in Brief: The Duel of the Giants: China and Russia in Asia

The Duel of the Giants: China and Russia in Asia, by Drew Middleton (Scribner’s, 241 pp., $10.95). Mr. Middleton, military correspondent for the New York Times, calls his study “one man’s assessment of the military, political, and economic situation in East Asia.” Though written before Washington’s establishment of diplomatic ties with Peking and the recent fighting in Southeast Asia, it is nonetheless as reliable an account of the current status and likely future course of Sino-Soviet relations as we can reasonably expect. Whatever the meaning of events in China since Mao’s death, Middleton argues persuasively that Peking’s fear and distrust of Moscow have not abated. The view from the Kremlin may be inferred from the sheer magnitude of Russia’s military buildup along the Chinese border. Middleton convincingly details the vast superiority of the Muscovite military-industrial complex over the Chinese. But his most intriguing, if necessarily somewhat conjectural, pages deal with the likelihood, nature, and possible course of a major war between the two countries. Though neither imminent nor inevitable, such a showdown is, he opines, “probable.” For the rest, he fears that, should a Sino-Soviet war come in the near future, the United States will be confronted with a very difficult decision: whether or not to send military supplies to a badly outmatched China in order to preclude a massive and decisive tilt of the vital Eurasian power balance in the direction of Moscow. Whatever one’s personal response to such projections, one thing seems certain: we can best deter the Soviets from this and all ventures designed to effect a serious alteration in the world’s balance of power only if our own power and the firmness of will required to use it are beyond question. Drew Middleton, meanwhile, provocatively surveys the potential for just such an ambitious Soviet venture.