it for long. I would appreciate your letting me know as soon as possible your views on timing so that I can work this out with the Chinese.
The Mood at this morning's meeting warmed up considerably as we got onto their favorite subject -- the Soviet Union, and Teng began to express Chinese positions on various issues. The Soviet threat clearly remains their overriding preoccupation and they made clear that their recent message to Moscow on a nonaggression pact contained nothing new. In any event, Brezhnev's speech yesterday in Mongolia meant to them that no progress was possible and even principles agreed upon in 1969 were "gone with the wind." I spend considerable time stressing our military strength and the advantages of the agreement you made in Vladivostok. That meeting, by the way, has clearly gotten the Chinese attention and I believe is helping us enormously on this visit. The Chinese also emphasized the need for Europe to keep up its guard at which point I emphasized that the demoralization of Europe through the oil crisis is not in the Chinese interest. We could go it alone on economic grounds, but we were cooperating with our friends in order to shore up Western unity and defenses.
We are meeting again this afternoon and I will send you another report this evening."
