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The Vietnam War eye-opening documentary shows full horror of imperialism

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary The Vietnam War, despite its liberal framing, provides an indispensable window into the barbarity of imperialist warfare — precisely because it allows the Vietnamese side to speak, however partially. The article argues that the war was not a tragic mistake made by both sides, but a logical outcome of French and then US imperialist strategy to crush a national liberation movement. The documentary's power lies in exposing the mechanics of imperialist war: the lies told to domestic populations, the "mission creep" that draws powers ever deeper into unwinnable conflicts, the substitution of body counts for strategic reality, and the systematic brutality required to maintain colonial and neocolonial domination. The article insists that the war's "lessons" were not about avoiding future conflicts but about how to better manage domestic opposition and media coverage in subsequent imperialist adventures.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in the Marxist theory of imperialism as developed by Lenin and Trotsky, particularly the understanding that colonial and neocolonial wars arise from the competitive logic of capital accumulation and the drive to maintain spheres of influence. The article draws on the classical Marxist distinction between just and unjust wars — wars of national liberation versus wars of imperialist conquest — and positions the Vietnamese struggle firmly in the former camp. It rejects the liberal-humanist framing of the documentary, which presents the war as a "tragedy" for which both sides share responsibility, and instead insists on the Leninist understanding that imperialism is a system, not a series of policy errors. The analysis also implicitly draws on Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development: a peasant army armed with revolutionary politics defeats the most technologically advanced military power on earth. The critique of "mission creep" and the exposure of systematic lying to domestic populations connects to the Marxist understanding of the bourgeois state as an instrument of class rule that must manufacture consent for its wars.

Conjunctural Relevance

Written in January 2018, the article connects the Vietnam War directly to the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The argument is that the US ruling class learned from Vietnam not to avoid imperialist war but to better control media coverage and manage domestic opposition — hence the embedded journalist system in Iraq and the suppression of images of American casualties. The article notes that the collapse of the Soviet Union emboldened the US to believe Vietnam was a "one-off blip," leading directly to the Iraq fiasco and the Afghan quagmire. The piece is thus a conjunctural intervention against the triumphalist "end of history" narrative that dominated the 1990s and early 2000s. It argues that the anti-war movements of the Vietnam era — the politicisation of millions, the radicalisation of black ghettos and university campuses, the turning of veterans against the war — are not historical relics but recurring possibilities. The article's publication in 2018 places it in the context of the Trump presidency, when the US was still bogged down in Afghanistan and the "forever wars" were generating renewed domestic opposition.

Where the Argument Continues

The article leaves several threads open. It does not develop a class analysis of the South Vietnamese regime or the social composition of the National Liberation Front. The relationship between the Vietnamese revolution and the broader international communist movement — including the Sino-Soviet split and its impact on the war — is mentioned only in passing. The article also does not explore the post-war reconstruction of Vietnam or the country's subsequent turn to market reforms, which would complicate any simple narrative of revolutionary victory. These questions are taken up in other IDOM articles on Vietnam, particularly those examining the legacy of Ho Chi Minh and the fate of the Vietnamese revolution after 1975. The broader theoretical question of how revolutionary movements can defeat imperialist powers — and what conditions make such victories possible — is a recurring theme across the IDOM corpus, with parallels drawn to Cuba, Angola, and more recently to the resistance in Palestine and Yemen.

Connections

The article should be read alongside Lenin's Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism for the theoretical framework, and alongside Trotsky's writings on the colonial question and national liberation struggles. Within the IDOM corpus, it connects to articles on the Iraq War, the Afghan War, and the US intervention in Libya, all of which examine the same pattern of imperialist overreach, domestic lying, and eventual defeat. The documentary itself is compared favourably to Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, which the article critiques for their exclusive focus on American experience. The article also implicitly engages with the "lessons of Vietnam" debates within the US military and strategic studies literature, arguing that the real lesson was about media management and the suppression of anti-war movements.

Key Quotes

  1. "The US lost 58,318 men during the war — but, over a thirty-year period of struggle, three million Vietnamese troops and civilians were also killed."

  2. "As one Saigon official later put it: they (the communists) were fighting for something; what were we fighting for?"

  3. "The US military commanders are rightly portrayed as clueless, fighting the battles as if they were General Custer — and with the same outcome."

  4. "The documentary tries to suggest that in retrospect both sides could see that the war had been a 'terrible tragedy' and a 'huge waste' for which both must take responsibility. This is wrong. The blame for the brutal conflict lies solely with the imperialists, starting with the French and later the US."

  5. "What the American military did learn was that, in future conflicts, it would be best to lie and hide from the public what was happening and why — be it over Kuwait, Iraq, or Afghanistan."

  6. "The collapse of the Soviet Union would embolden the US ruling class into believing that the Vietnam war was just a one-off blip and that US forces could do what they like with impunity. The fiasco of the Iraq war and the quagmire of Afghanistan, however, would once again bring people out onto the streets to protest and challenge the system."