I'm reading Patrick Tyler's A Great Wall: Six Presidents and China, An Investigative History. Previously, the Carter Administration normalized relations with the People's Republic of China and currently, the Reagan Administration is wrangling with its conflicting desires to befriend China as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union and remain loyal to its long-standing friends on Taiwan. I understand that the Cold War dominated the entire geopolitical scene from the end fo the Second World War to the fall of Communism, but it's still shocking to read how broadly and completely everything always came back to the Soviets. The Berlin Wall fell when I was nine, and by the time I was twelve the Soviet Union had dissolved; so, much as I might consciously resist the notion, the collapse of the Soviet Union has always seemed pretty much a foregone conclusion. It's fascinating to read about the motives of men who thought that the USSR would stand forever, and might even defeat the United States. Odd, that.