From The Guardian Unlimited:
The Chinese incursion into Vietnam is intended, they say, to be merely a limited action. Maybe, but setting limits on such actions is something which is easier talked about than practised. What they have done creates a clear possibility of Soviet intervention, and so adds new layers of tension to an international system whose signals increasingly are set at danger.
Directly or indirectly, the great powers have become involved in a sequence of unrehearsed events for which there is no readily available machinery of crisis management. With two members of the Security Council confronting each other, the United Nations is even more powerless than usual; and the responsibility of the United States, China and the Soviet Union to seek other means of limiting the damage becomes all the greater.
