Rethinking the Vietnam War: Vietnamese representation and the Limits of Superpower Narratives

Wang  Yung Yi

doi:10.57260/csdj.2025.281525

Authors

Wang Yung Yi Independent Researcher, Taiwan

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.57260/csdj.2025.281525

Keywords:

Vietnam war, Vietnamese agency, Cold war historiography, Small-state strategy, Postcolonial theory, Contested memory, Sino-Vietnamese relations

Abstract

This study re-examines the Vietnam War through an agent-centered analytical framework, challenging dominant Cold War historiography that positions Vietnam as a passive battleground for superpower competition. Drawing on political science, postcolonial theory, and international relations, the research integrates diplomatic archives, oral histories, and cultural memory studies to recentralize Vietnamese agency and foreground Sino-Vietnamese interactions. The analysis reveals how indigenous political movements, postcolonial state-building imperatives, and small-state survival strategies shaped the conflict's trajectory and outcomes.
Findings demonstrate that while U.S. containment policies and Sino-Soviet rivalries provided structural constraints, Vietnamese political elites, civil society actors, and ordinary citizens actively negotiated, redefined, and ultimately determined the war's meaning and legacy. The study contributes to international relations theory by advancing a decentered geopolitical framework that reconceptualizes minor states and local actors as co-architects rather than passive recipients of global order. Contemporary implications include strategic lessons for small states navigating great-power competition and methodological innovations for writing inclusive, multi-vocal histories of conflict.

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