This set of compelling interests requires a table to talk around and where superpower diplomacy is properly brought to bear.

Month by month, he has set the pace for superpower diplomacy, often throwing Washington on the defensive.

There were plenty of copies of Newsweek with its cover story on superpower diplomacy.

If the playwright-dramaturge relationship requires tact, the three-way dance that ensues when the director enters the picture demands superpower diplomacy.

He takes superpower diplomacy seriously, which makes him something of an oddity in the Reagan Administration, and he derives satisfaction from its skillful practice.

President Bush, for whom relations with China have provided a tense introduction to superpower diplomacy, has chosen a course of diplomatic caution by assembling an arms sales package that sends appropriate signals in both directions.

But to Microsoft, business is business, and its stranglehold on something the Chinese desperately need - an understanding of the software that will make or break China's huge investment in the personal computer industry - allows it to stay clear of superpower diplomacy.

Viktor P. Nikonov, a rising star in the ruling Soviet Politburo and the man in charge of Mikhail S. Gorbachev's drive to rejuvenate Soviet agriculture, will arrive in the United States on Tuesday for a week of farm tours and superpower diplomacy.