T | rHE fighting which flared up in Vietnam at the end of January had two distinct effects in the United States and the rest of the Western world. First, it broke up the old debate between doves and hawks, as both sides to this debate seemed to find themselves at a loss before the new turn of events. Secondly, it diverted attention from a new round of concern about the possibility of negotiations: indeed, the Vietcong offensive followed hard on the heels of the famous transition of tenses in North Vietnamese statements which seemed to indicate that negotiations 'will '-rather than 'would'-follow a halt in the bombing of the North. It also followed a number of ambiguous statements from American officials, which, in turn, seemed to indicate that the U.S. government was now prepared to make its conditions for ending the bombing flexible enough to leave virtually unlimited room for manoeuvre in bringing about negotiations. Both of these developments were significant for a central reason: they raised anew the questions of why Americans were fighting in Vietnam, and what they felt they must achieve in any negotiations. There has been little discussion in the United States of the objectives for which the war is being fought, except in the most general and ill-defined terms, and what there has been has done nothing to clarify such basic political questions as: How does Vietnam fit into U.S. policy in Asia? How does current U.S. policy in Vietnam contribute to the long-term objectives of the United States? This article will analyse these and other questions which discussion in the United States has hitherto ignored or obscured. In his press conference on October 12, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said that in a decade or two ' there would be a billion Chinese on the mainland, armed with nuclear weapons . . .' There would also be a billion other Asians, and ' They don't want China to overrun them on the basis of a doctrine of the world revolution'. Did this mean that Americans must try to contain China, and become the ' policemen of all Asia'? Not at all, said Rusk; the answer to both problems was to get the 'free nations of Asia ' to ' brace themselves 'by implication, to take an active role in defining the relations of China with the outside world. In November, Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy, taking issue with President Johnson's handling of the