Authors: professor Ljubica Vasic, PhD and professor Jelena Lopicic Jancic, PhD
Abstract: The paper analyzes the Vietnam War from the perspective of international law, criminal law, and sociology, as well as its broader impact on society in general. Historically, most wars have been accompanied by violations of international and criminal law, especially regarding the treatment of civilian population, prisoners of war, the wounded, and the sick. The Vietnam War stands as one of the most drastic examples of systematic violence and war crimes in the modern era, with many crimes remaining without an adequate judicial response, while the topic itself has been marginalized in juris prudence. This paper aims to critically examine the legal framework applicable to the Vietnam War, as well as the practice of (non-)sanctioning war crimes committed during that war.
Keywords: Vietnam war, sociological aspect, ideology, war crimes
INTRODUCTION
The consequences of wars and armed conflicts have always been huge. Human losses, the number of victims and the wounded, are the most obvious and most tragic aspect of those conflicts. Most modern wars and armed conflicts are accompanied by grave violations of international law, criminal law and war law, including war crimes committed against civilian population, the wounded, the sick and prisoners of war.
According to the vision presented by Althusser (Althusser, 2009), the state does not exist solely as a neutral creation, but as an invisible conductor whose ultimate aim is to provide the rhythmical functioning of the entire system. Its true power does not lie only in government buildings, but in its monopoly over violence – in the legitimate force dosed as necessary and used as a quitter language of coercion. It is from this centre that modern technologies of surveillance, observation and control emerge (Perišić, 2021, 2025). The military cannot be seen as a mere combat formation – it was an institution deeply founded in class hierarchy (Vasić, 2021, pp. 17–18). Its political role in the United States (US) is not hidden; on the contrary, it is clearly written on the symbols – as loyalty to the anti-communist dogma and conservative idea, it was an unwritten but binding law. In the US, neo-conservatism has grown into something more than ideology. It has become an architect of the geopolitical vision in which the US is designed to rule the world not as a conqueror, but as an “order keeper”, whose hegemony is presented as a charitable mission.
The end of the 19th century was a period in which the discursive matrix of the American frontier myth had a strong effect on the formulation of historiographic paradigms and political strategies. This ideological construct, visible in the acting of Frederick Jackson Turner and Theodore Roosevelt, functioned as a hegemonic narrative that articulated collective self-understanding of the US society. Turner’s “frontier thesis” from 1893 imposed the need for redefining the national developmental course in the conditions of the end of agrarian expansion, while Roosevelt, in line with the principles of social Darwinism, in his political rhetoric affirmed biological and cultural essentialism of “pure blood” Americans (Vasić, 2021, p. 12). Within this framework, the Manifest Destiny doctrine constituted the key normative pattern and ideological instrument of legitimizing the US expansion. This doctrine relied on the assumption of historical necessity of territorial expansion to “natural frontiers”, which justified the process of territorial and political consolidation of the United States (Vasić, 2021, p. 12). Historical actualization of this idea can be seen in a number of territorial acquisitions: annexation of Florida (1819), purchase of Alaska (1867), as well as the armed conflict with Mexico, which resulted in the annexation of New Mexico and California. After the Second World War, the US political subject transformed its geopolitical paradigm: original expansionism, limited to the North American continent, was replaced by the global hegemonic strategy. While the Manifest Destiny doctrine was an expression of the geopolitical domestic direction, the US foreign policy towards Europe was guided by the principle of isolationism throughout to the mid-20th century (Vasić, 2021, pp. 12–13).
The socio-cultural dimension of this ideology was manifested through conservative normative structures that emphasized the integrity of the family institution, the gender division of social roles, the primacy of military power, as well as loyalty to the protestant ethics of “decency”. Although the public articulation of these values culminated in the 1980 presidential campaign, their political articulation emerged already in Goldwater’s campaign (1964), continuing with Nixon’s appointment (1968) and reaching its full hegemonic expression in Ronald Reagan’s era, when the neo-conservative discourse became a central political matrix (Vasić, 2021, p. 13).
The analysis of the post-Vietnam period shows that the acceptability of these ideas was not solely conditioned by the acting of individuals and specific historical events, but also by the structural transformations of the US society. Historically speaking, the prerogative of articulating social criteria of success and legitimacy lay in the domain of socially dominant classes, primarily the middle class. This social stratum, thanks to its economic and political power, managed to conduct the process of ideological internalization of own values within key institutions – family, educational system and the church. These institutions acted as mechanisms of socialization and reproduction of normative patterns, ensuring an inter-generational transfer of moral and cultural codes (Vasić, 2021, p. 14).
Within that context, religion had a function of a catalyst and a symbolic legitimizer, providing an ideological resource and emotional-social capital for preserving and articulating the middle-class values. Therefore, this period in the US history was used by analysts to explore the way in which the articulation of masculinity in the post-Vietnam US was intertwined with social structures of power and the anti-communist ideology (Vasić, 2017). The relation between politics and religion in the US society was not founded on a mere functional connection, but on mutual empowerment: religion provided symbolic authority and a constitutive meaning, while politics ensured institutional expansion and social normalization of these values. This is exactly the reason why the process of raising middle-class ideals to the hegemonic level inevitably implied the re-affirmation of religiosity, particularly within the protestant, as well as catholic corpus (Vasić, 2021, pp. 14–15).
In the Vietnam War context, the military appears as a class-stratified institution whose acting goes beyond the frameworks of a mere defending and repressive structure. Its political function was undoubtedly pronounced, which was manifested in the implicit commitment to the anti-communist ideology and the conservative value system. Although in its ranks there were individuals oriented towards progressive political attitudes, they constituted a marginalized minority (Vasić, 2021, p. 17).
Gramsci’s critical insight deconstructs the myth about the alleged depoliticization of the military (Gramsci, 1971). In his opinion, the military is not constitutionally excluded from the political sphere, but its mission implies protecting the constitution as a legal form of the state and the institutional order. The so-called neutrality of the military, therefore, only hides its structural inclination towards reactionary forces. This attitude supports the thesis about the military as a state apparatus which does not act outside political space, but actively participates in the hegemony reproduction process (Vasić, 2021, p. 17).
As for the US modern neo-conservatism, it should be understood not only as a political ideology oriented towards foreign policy, security and defense, but also as a comprehensive geopolitical doctrine. Its programmatic orientation implied the analysis of the method for preserving and improving the US military superiority, the identification of strategic regions of global importance, and the prevention of the emancipation of potential rivals on the world scene (Vasić, 2017). With Ronald Reagan’s administration, neo-conservatism assumed visible political legitimacy, while in 2001, when George W. Bush came to power, it became a dominant pattern in governing the state. Within Bush’s administration, the neo-conservatives and the unipolar actors close to them took over key positions in the spheres of foreign policy, defense and national security.
The conceptual articulation of neo-conservatism during the 1990s gave rise to the concept of “hegemony of goodwill” and it advocated the necessity of constantly strengthening the US military capacities by promoting the doctrine of preventive interventions as an instrument of threat control. These principles in their essence constitute geopolitical postulates with a global reach, thus profiling modern neo-conservatism as an overall geopolitical strategy of hegemonic character (Vasić, 2021, pp. 17–18).
IMPACT OF WARS ON SOCIETY THROUGHOUT HISTORY
New age patriotism can no longer be blind loyalty to the flag, frontier or color of the passport, but must be permeated by broader, more humane loyalty – faithfulness to mankind itself. It is a moral order of the modern world, the slogan of the epoch in which global consciousness is beginning to overcome national selfishness. In that spirit, Noam Chomsky’s book Profit over People stands out as one of the key works of modern critical thought, as a blunt and ruthless analysis of the American ideological matrix that served as the ground for the Vietnam War, as well as for many subsequent interventions remaining recorded as political wounds ion history, and as human tragedies in reality. Chomsky begins his debate from the concept of ideology, not as an abstract category, but as a real power shaping the world (Chomsky, 1993). To him, ideology is not limited only to the specific dictatorships of fascism or communism, but it also emerges wherever the political speech begins to distort reality. Any speech that, instead of seeking truth, carefully filters data, silences disagreement and reduces public debate to permitted frameworks, is ideological speech (Vasić, 2021, pp. 19–20). Ideology is not only what is falsely promised, but also what is carefully kept quiet. According to him, ideology is neither truth nor misconception, but a mechanism determining what can be called truth at all. If we accept this approach as a methodological guideline, we should face the fact that no society is immune to ideological speech. Wherever there are those speaking on behalf of all and acting to the benefit of the few, ideology finds its refuge regardless of the flag, regime or political order. And that is exactly why critical consciousness must remain awake, not only in front of the ideology of “others”, but also in front of the ideology speaking in our language, on our behalf (Vasić, 2021, pp. 19–20).
Nevertheless, although these ideas represented fundamental contributions in the ethical and legal consideration of the war, it was not until the second half of the 19th century that they were actually applied in the form of binding international law instruments. The year of 1856 saw the adoption of the Declaration of Paris, which constitutes the first attempt to regulate the rules of naval warfare, particularly in terms of blockades and seizures at sea. The essential turning point, however, ensued in 1864 with the adoption of the first Geneva Convention, which lay the foundations of the right to humane treatment and medical protection of wounded and sick soldiers regardless of their national affiliation (Lopičić Jančić, 2011).
This developmental course was directly inspired by the heavy casualties in the battle of Solferino and the actions of Henry Dunant, whose humanitarian efforts led to the foundation of the committee for helping wounded soldiers, the predecessor of the International Committee of the Red Cross (Dunant, 1959). Furthermore, the Saint Petersburg Declaration of 1868 was the first to prohibit the use of certain types of ammunition, while the Brussels Declaration of 1874, although it was not enforced, constitutes an important contribution to the codification of the rules of armed conflicts, particularly in relation to protecting civilian population (Kalshoven, 1971).
An important contribution was also made by the Oxford Manual from 1880, which was formally adopted by the Institute of International Law as the first systematize attempt of establishing the rules of warfare (Lopičić Jančić, 2012). What was particularly emphasized was the prohibition of reprisals against civilians, the introduction of criminal sanctions for acts against international war law, including reprisals against civilians.
An important impetus to war humanization were the Hague Conferences in 1899 and 1907. At the second conference, thirteen conventions were adopted, including the Hague Convention IV and the Rules on Laws and Customs of War on Land regulating a number of restrictions in warfare, particularly in relation to protecting civilian population, prohibiting attacks on undefended places, and collective punishment (Hague Convention [IV] respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its Annex: Regulations, 1907). Although these norms were signed by all great powers, the First World War proved their insufficient applicability and efficiency (Best, 1994).
In the period between the two wars, the international community, encouraged by the League of Nations, adopted a series of documents which tried to restrict warfare instruments and methods. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of gases and bacteriological agents (Geneva Protocol, 1925), while the 1928 Briand-Kellogg Pact proclaimed to refuse war as a means of resolving international disputes. In addition, two Geneva Conventions from 1929 improved the position of the wounded, the sick and prisoners of war (Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armies in the Field, 1929; Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 1929), while the London Naval Convention from 1930 attempted to regulate the matters of naval war. However, despite such legal progress, all the above-listed norms were gravely violated by Germany, Italy, Japan and their allies in the Second World War (Roberts & Guelff, 2000).
During the war itself, in the conditions of the formal legal gap regarding the protection of civilian population, the Allies applied analogy in trying to extend the rules of the 1929 Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War to civilians in the occupied territories as well, which points to the increasing awareness of the necessary institutional protection of this most vulnerable category (Forsythe, 2005, pp. 73–75).
Unfortunately, wars continue in the modern world. The share of civilian population in the total number of casualties in the First World War was 5%, while in the Second World War in increased to 45%, in the Korean War to 85%, and in the Vietnam War to 95% (Andrassy, 1976, p. 595).
INTERNATIONAL LAW AND CRIMINAL LAW ASPECTS OF THE VIETNAM WAR
No ideology, no matter how rich and convincing it is in its theoretical framework, triumphs only with the power of its own content. No thought and no system of beliefs become socially alive and politically powerful only through its internal logic or moral call. The US historians, aestheticians and literary critics warned about a truth that looked simple, but was in fact deeply radical: no value is universally valid, no moral is just by the nature of things, and no ideological framework is convincing in itself. Every thought, in order to live as collective reality, must find its echo in the hearts and interests of certain social groups. Only when these groups – bearers of a certain social and political influence – recognize in that idea something that reflects, protects or advances them, it starts acting, circulating as social energy. In other words, ideology does not live in abstract space, but in specific communities which instill life into it, give it language, form and, eventually – power (Vasić, 2021, p. 42). If an idea wants to ascend the throne of social domination, it must be nested exactly where political decisions are made – within the classes with the institutional strength to turn those ideas into laws, strategies or public values. To understand how a certain ideology has marked the modern course of the US history – particularly in the post-Vietnam era – we cannot stop only at names and dates. We must look more deeply: into the social biography of the ideas themselves, into the history of classes embracing it, into the currents which, often unnoticed, returned them to the core of the social order. Hence, the key question arises: why do certain ideas, at a specific historical moment, encounter such an echo? Why does society exactly then, at that moment, open its doors to an ideological construction, making it the master of its political horizon?
The history of the United States, if seen through the prism of the Manifest Destiny concept, testifies about a permanent rule: power to define the measure of success, values and even social identity itself, has always belonged to the dominant class – the class that is not only econom9ically enabled, but also able to shape the nation’s cultural map (Vasić, 2021, p. 42). The Vietnam War lasted for twenty years and ended in 1975 with the fall of the pro-American regime in Saigon. The war is a specific example of disproportional application of force, mass suffering of civilians and the controversial role of international law in the conditions of asymmetric warfare. The conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, along with the active intervention of the USA and its allies, raised numerous questions from the field of international and criminal law, including the protection of civilian population, the wounded and the sick, and the treatment of prisoners of war and the application of the 1949 Geneva C.
It is estimated that there more than four million casualties, most of which were killed during the air strikes by the US and ally forces (Obrenović, 1973). Special weight to the crimes was added by the actions of the US air forces, during which more than seven million tons of explosives were used – more than during the entire Second World War (Kolendić, 1963). In those attacks, napalm bombs and different chemical substances were intensively used, which led to the permanent devastation of the agrarian regions, forests and pastures (Vuković, 1979, pp. 163–165). The consequences of these attacks including soil contamination, are still present.
The international public reacted with huge indignation to these events. In that context, the International Tribunal for War Crimes was founded in Sweden in 1966, also known as Russell Tribunal, because the initiative for it was made by philosopher Bertrand Russell with the support of Jean-Paul Sartre, who during the sessions ion Stockholm and Copenhagen publicly accused the USA of aggression and war crimes committed in Vietnam. 3 Although it did not have an official legal mandate, Russell Tribunal was an important form of civil justice and international moral resistance. It was the first to draw attention of the broader public to the systematic bombardment of civilian targets, the use of chemical weapons, tortures and massacres. Russell Tribunal laid the foundations for subsequent forms of so-called people’s or alternative tribunals and encouraged the development of a critical discussion about the responsibility of great powers for crimes committed in wars and armed conflicts (Russell Tribunal: Trial at Stockholm and final trial in Copenhagen, 1969).
In an attempt to reduce its own responsibility, the USA claimed that its army acted in line with the internal rules which prohibited the commission of war crimes (Paust et al., 1999). To justify itself somehow in the eyes of the world public for the mass crimes and to reduce its responsibility as much as possible, the USA stated that its army acted by the War Crimes Regulations prohibiting the commission of war crimes and other criminal acts. It was stated that “there was a dirty war on both conflicted sides, but the difference was in the following: 1) the communist side waged a dirty war which was the matter of official politics, while for South Vietnam and the USA, the dirty war was the matter of individual actions, and not of the official politics, and 2) the individuals on the US side who committed war crimes and violated war law were tried and punished, while the communist side did not see such treatment“ (Levie, 1992, pp. 206–207).
According to the official data, in the period between 1st January 1965 and 31st January 1973, as many as 241 cases were registered of war crimes committed by the US soldiers (Hammond, 1998). In 160 cases, after the investigation, it was stated that those were not criminal acts and further criminal proceedings were suspended. According to the available data, in the period from 1965 to 1973, according to the Uniform Military Law Code (Glahn, 1996), the US military courts convicted 201 soldiers for war crimes against Vietnamese civilians (Lewy, 1978). These criminal acts included murders, rapes, tortures and systematic destruction of property, which gravely violated not only American, but also international law regarding armed conflicts and the protection of civilians (Bilton & Sim, 1992). Due to the limited length of this text, we will give a brief overview of several cases involving war crimes committed during the Vietnam War, where were crimes were committed against the persons protected by the 1949 Geneva Conventions also signed by the USA.
One of the most drastic examples of war crimes is the massacre in the village of My Lai, where an American unit commanded by Lieutenant William L. Calley killed about 150 civilians. Calley was court-martialled in Fort Benning, Georgia, 1971. His initial life sentence having been modified to a term of 20 years and then further reduced to ten. In 1974, he was released and then served three and a half years of house arrest. This case remains one of the best-known symbols of the suffering of civilian population in the Vietnam War and caused deep moral and legal controversies throughout the world (Friedman, 1972, pp. 1703–1706).
The trial against Staff Sergeant Walter Griffen was held before the US Military Court in July 1968. He was convicted of the war crime against civilian population and the wounded after having ordered his platoon to kill unarmed civilians and wounded people in Vietnam during the retreat on 4th April 1967. His initial ten-year sentence was modified by the second-instance court to seven years’ hard labor (Reisman & Antoniou, 1994).
Private Michael Schwartz, who stood trial in the USA in October 1971, was charged with killing 16 Vietnamese civilians, which was qualified as a war crime against civilian population. The court of first instance sentenced him to life in prison, but the court of second instance, after his appeal, modified the sentence into one year’s hard labor. This legal ending provoked plenty of criticism in public and among experts, having in mind the disproportion between the gravity of the committed act and the decision made in the second-instance proceedings (Wells, 1984, pp. 102–105).
The case of Captain Ernest L. Medina is one of the best-known and most controversial trails in relation to the war crimes committed during the Vietnam War. The trial was held before the US Military Court in Fort McPherson, Georgia) in September 1971. Medina was charged with the war crime against civilian population which involved giving an order to his soldiers to attack the village of My Lai in Vietnam. He was also charged with knowing that his soldiers had begun killing innocent civilian population, but he had not stopped it despite being able to. In that operation, more than 100 Vietnamese civilians were killed. The court acquitted Medina on 22nd September 1971. This case provoked fierce reactions both in the academic circles and in the broader US public, raising numerous ethical and legal questions about command responsibility, efficiency of the military judiciary, and the respect for international and criminal law in modern armed conflicts (Goldstein, Marshall, Schwartz, 1979, pp. 459–468).
Despite numerous documented war crimes committed by the USA during the Vietnam War, criminal responsibility of individuals before domestic courts remained extremely limited. Very few US soldiers and officers stood trial and even fewer were actually convicted. It is particularly important that in the available US legal literature there are no cases of the convicting decisions for command responsibility, although this very legal institute was originally developed in the USA after the Second World War (Bassiouni, 2013). This phenomenon remains an unsolved question in the US criminal law science because neither scientific nor official sources provide an explanation for its absence (Parks, 1973).
Some authors believe that the American public, influenced by the traumatic experiences from Vietnam, was emotionally paralyzed, which prevented a critical and progressive debate about command responsibility and its application (Eckhardt, 1982). In that context, there are assumptions that initiating proceedings against high-ranking army commanders, in line with the principles of command responsibility, would produce far-reaching political implications. Namely, it would mean admitting that crimes were the system part of the US military and political strategy and not isolated incidents (Chomsky, 1993). That is why war crimes committed in Vietnam had no adequate judicial sanction, which marginalized the overall truth about it and, with time, displaced it from the dominant legal and public discourse. Today, this topic is almost non-existent in the modern US criminal law literature.
IMPACT OF THE VIETNAM WAR ON SOCIETY AND CULTURE IN THE USA
It is a rooted opinion that power often emerges as a dark side of freedom – its shadow, or its antipode. In political terms, the state with a strong institutional apparatus is a common perception: the greater power is, the smaller freedom becomes. However, when speaking of so-called popular power – arising from masses, from the voices that cannot be silenced – freedom is not its opposite, but its sister, its ally, its close reflection in the mirror of struggle. What is freedom if not the possibility to counter the burden of someone else’s wealth and influence? Without that power – power of resistance, defiance and dignity – freedom is an empty shell. Today, the fight for justice no longer means simply reducing government power in favor of democratic mechanisms. In the modern world, challenging the structures that run capital, the country and digital spheres means stepping on the dangerous ground. These mechanisms have become official, elusive, often invisible. However, in the same way, doing nothing and staying mute to injustice is a far greater danger – the danger of social and human retardation, of the loss of the very idea of freedom.
History is not a mere collection of events, but a chronicle of unconquered dreams. Through centuries, people did not silently accept misery as their destiny. Guided by the vision of something better, they rose against the conditions imposed on them. Sometimes, when injustice becomes more ruthless than fear, when submission no longer guarantees bare life, resistance arises as a necessity, as the only remaining hope. It is not only a matter of instinct, but the fruit of a complex combination: simmering wrath, undying hope and organization that gives shape to what was previously only a feeling. Between anger, vision and togetherness, history-moving strength hides. Strength that sometimes, when there is nothing else to be lost, becomes the seed of transformation (Vasić, 2021, pp. 62–63).
For example, through Baudrillard’s approach to the analysis of the literary texts written after the Vietnam War, understanding reality resembled the simulacrum games or shadows of what used to be real. It is exactly through this prism that the Vietnam War is perceived, assuming a shape different from the usual one, and more than a conflict of weapons and bodies, it is revealed as a scene with a deeper, hidden intention. Behind the spectacle of violence, behind the well-0played role of irreconcilable opponents that seem to be fighting for survival, hidden complicity is revealed. Namely, in essence they are not enemies to each other as much as they are fellow fighters in a joint feat: eradicating something third, insufficiently articulated, but obviously dangerous. The aim is not the victory of one side, but of both sides, the systematic liquidation of what precedes modern sociability – destruction of tribe and collective ties, forms of symbolic exchange, language, self-government. Therefore, war is a means of erasing that world so as to enable building an order on its ruins, either communist or capitalist one, it is all the same. Ironically, those who justify war can find consolation in the fact that, although a simulacrum, it is by no means less horrible. Suffering is real, pain is physical, while the dead are more than real. However, what has disappeared is the very essence of antagonism, former ideological seriousness of conflicts. Instead of a true opposite, only a shadow of the fight remains – an empty form that still keeps killing (Vasić, 2020, pp. 17–18).
In line with Baudrillard’s approach, the Vietnam War can also be seen as a biopolitical peak of modernity and as an entry into post-modernity (Perišić, 2025, p. 262). According to Dugin, the Vietnam War exposed the emergence of neoliberalism, transcapital and the post-individual (Perišić, 2021). In fact, although the war served to defend the colonial system and to oppose decolonization, i.e.., to defend modern surveillance over the body and life of man and community, the US defeat in that war did not put an end to biopolitical surveillance; on the contrary, it acquired new and more dangerous dimensions. “Since the Vietnam War, biopolitics in modernity, as the power of institutions over the life and body of an individual” has definitely become a post-modern economy, whereas countries and nations are sucked into the cauldron of globalization with the aid of transcapital (Perišić, 2023, p. 429). The modern epoch has seen the emergence of yet another new subject – homo economicus. He is completely different from homo juridicus, but in such a manner that a new world hierarchy is beginning to form in the domination relations (Perišić, 2025, pp. 259–260, 262).
As for the US cultural scene during the 1970s and the 1980s, it developed in the shadow of the painful legacy of the Vietnam War, constituting a specific continuation of the turbulent 1960s, the period marked by political rebellion and literary innovation, which today makes it possible to analyze the works of American playwrights from different theoretical perspectives, without being limited to strictly genre classifications. It could be emphasized that the end of the Cold War led to the re-examination of the US role in the world, because the structure of its global power began to intersect with the erosion processes of its own national image (Vasić, 2021, pp. 7–9).
Christopher Bigsby asserts that until the 1970s and the 1980s, the American theatre was strongly influenced by political and cultural turbulences dating back to the 1960s, which led to significant changes in stage art (Bigsby, 1999). Those changes resulted in the development of drama which becomes alienated from realistic depictions and strives towards anti-realistic forms in order to dispel the illusion of reality on the stage. This approach was shared by Martin Esslin, who stresses that in post-modern drama, there is an increase in experimenting with the story structure and character deconstruction (Esslin, 1976). These drama experiments are diverse; while some stay closed to the realistic model, others resort to completely alternative, non-representative means, aiming at a deepened interpretation of current social and political phenomena (Vasić, 2017, p. 368). At the same time, the United States theatre begins re-examining the relationship between authenticity and acting, especially in the context of building and understanding personal and collective identities, which was one of the prevailing motives during the 1970s and the 1980s. According to Bigsby, a deep impact of one of the most painful historical events in the US society emerges in this period – the impact of the Vietnam War. While politics and media began perceiving that war through the revision process, the theatre offered its own, essentially different mythological answer. By casting light on the events that were often beyond the reach of rational understanding and deeply traumatic, drama used the war as a stage metaphor, thus leading to the formation of identity both at individual and social levels, during the conflict itself and its immediate post-war stage (Vasić, 2021, p. 368).
Richard Slotkin’s work helps to understand the manner in which the USA changed the mythological and historical matrix of its national identity (Slotkin, 1992). While Slotkin particularly emphasizes how the frontier myth shapes the American national ideology and history, he devotes less attention to how all these factors affect the formation of masculinity. (Michael Parenti points out that, according to one hypothesis, if there was some change in identity (Parenti, 1993), the concept of masculinity and gender also had to change in general (Vasić, 2017, pp. 373–374). Historically speaking, attitudes and artistic reactions to war and complex conflicts have often been interpreted as a manner in which individuals and society try to identify themselves with conflicts and to take their position towards them. In that context, we can say that literary works from this period developed in the post-modern setting, in which, as indicated by Fredrick Jameson, accelerated withdrawal of historicity occurred. That leads to the emergence of the subject that is no longer able to encompass or represent its own experience in a meaningful way, thus remaining trapped in the field of simulation, i.e., in what Sartre described as disintegration of everyday life and its rational course (Vasić, 2021, pp. 7–9).
CONCLUSION
Historical experiences from antiquity to modern times, confirm the continuity of armed conflicts as key factors in shaping political and social relations, but also as a source of mass suffering, particularly of civilians, prisoners of war, the wounded and the sick. The Vietnam War remains one of the examples of the violation of international and criminal law in the second half of the 20th century, especially in terms of the Geneva Convention from 1949, whose consequences still have a deep impact on theoretical, political and legal trends in the 21st century. Theoretically speaking, this conflict encouraged the development of a critical approach to international law, particularly within concepts of unjust wars and the theories stressing the domination of great powers in the creation and application of legal norms. In political terms, the Vietnam experience led to the emergence of the “Vietnam syndrome” that affected the US and world politics towards military interventions, strengthened global anti-war movements, and de-legitimized one-sided military actions opposing the mechanisms of the United Nations. Legal consequences were particularly pronounced in the development of international humanitarian law. Crimes against civilian population, the use of chemical substances such as “Agent Orange” and the destruction of the environment pointed to serious limitations of law at the time and created the need for its further development. Trials such as the case of Lieutenant Calley for the My Lai massacre, were the first examples of the application of the command responsibility principle since the case of General Yamashita after the Second World War, which subsequently became the foundation of international criminal law and practice of ad hoc tribunals (ICTY, ICTR). These experiences also accelerated the adoption of new instruments, including the Chemical Weapons Convention (1993), as well as broader promotion of individual and command criminal responsibility. In the 21st century, this debate was further extended to the introduction of the concept of “ecocide” as a potential new category of international crime, whereas the Vietnam experience is stated as a starting point. The US participation in the Vietnam War was marked by numerous war crimes. Although plenty of evidence was documented in public and in literature, criminal responsibility remains limited before the US judiciary: most perpetrators were never prosecuted, while the convicted ones received lighter sentences or were released. This approach points not only to institutional and legal weaknesses, but also to political and social resistance to confronting own accountability. Consequently, legal protection of victims remained insufficient, while the question of efficient prevention of future violations was raised. In that respect, the Vietnam War marked a specific victory of homo economicus over homo juridicus, which continued in the globalization process and transformed into a modern crisis of law, society and international order. That is why studying the Vietnam War is not only relevant historically and sociologically, but it is also of crucial importance for the development of international and criminal law. This acknowledges the necessity of promoting the principle that no individual, regardless of their position, must not be above the law, because this principle exactly constitutes the foundation of preserving peace, human security and a stable international legal order.
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This scientific paper was originally published in magazine Sociološki pregled with cooauthor: Ljubica M. Vasic, Jelena Dj. Lopicic Jancic, “The Vietnam War: International Law, Criminal Law and Sociological Aspects”, Belgrade, Sociološki pregled / Sociological Review, vol. LIX (2025), nо. 3, pp. 741–765
