Forget Vietnam, You Get Iran And Iraq | Ask The Professor | 3 Oct 2026 | John Mearsheimer - Offensive Realism

1. Executive Briefing (TL;DR)

• Nationalism as the Dominant Political Force: The Vietnam War demonstrated that nationalism, rather than communism, is the single most powerful political ideology globally, driving populations to resist foreign domination at immense costs [00:01:52].
• Flaws of the Domino Theory & Non-Monolithic Communism: The Sino-Soviet split and border clashes (1969) proved that communism was never a monolithic bloc and exposed the fundamental logical flaws of the domino theory [00:05:19].