Sure, it's a Vietnam allegory (if not a perfect one). But that's the least interesting thing about it. LeGuin uses it all to talk language - what new concepts do to language, what new words do to old concepts. Once you've turned someone into "creatures" and their villages into "warrens", what can you do but turn a "police action" into "genocide"? Once you've adopted terrorism in the name of freedom, can you ever go back or is this who you are now? Unlike some of the others in the cycle, it's over in just 169 pages with no clear conclusions to be drawn; once you're that far apart, once you can no longer agree on what words mean, how do you even begin to contemplate coexistence?

Good thing this was only ever applicable in the early 70s.