70 SOCIAL SCIENTIST its leadership's perceived national interest at any particular moment/' One may concede Pike's proposition to be correct, if one assumes that the intervention in Vietnam serves American national interests. Confusion, however, is created in interpreting the term ^American national interests'. And here the task of the American ideologist to consciously confuse begins. If national interests are defined on the basis of an analysis of the social conditions and the political economy of America, these will lead to a set of correct conclusions. If, on the other hand, national interests are defined in terms of certain tenuous beliefs, these will lead to entirely distorted conclusions. All American ideologists seek to defend American foreign policy by following the second alternative. In this note we shall first examine what American national interests are, particularly as defined by Douglas Pike, before we attempt to offer our own analysis. American Interests and American Ideologists ? According to Douglas Pike, the essential perceived American national interest following World War II was summed-up in the "Munich syndrome : the belief that aggression could not be appeased ; that once on the march it must be stopped ; and stopped sooner rather than later, because the later, the higher the cost." Subsequent to this belief, the 'domino theory9 briefly held the stage. This theory as stated by President Elsenhower declared : "The loss of Indo-China will cause the fall of South-East Asia like a set of dominoes... (i.e. cards).993 Both these theories, according to Pike, "gave way in the 1960's to an altered theoretical formulation of American national interest in Vietnam as well as, more broadly, throughout Asia. This is commonly referred to as the Pacific Lake equilibrium thesis, or (improperly I think) the ideological balance-of-power doctrine... the equilibrium thesis can be explained broadly thus : it is in the national interest of every nation rimming the Pacific that no nation dominate the Pacific, neither the Chinese, nor the Japanese, nor the Americans, nor any nation, and that if events move towards single-country domination...it is in the interest of all to resist this." Having thus stated the case. Pike self-righteously concludes : "As for America, both early and late, with the Munich syndrome in 1946 and the equilibrium thesis in the 1950's, involvement in Vietnam was Seen and cast as a high sense of American responsibility... "The assessment that national interest, and the belief that common humanity placed on America a special burden of commitment, shaped American perception and dictated American response during the pre-1960 period. It put America on a track in Vietnam which made largely inevitable all of the fateful decisions that were subsequently t^en."