As usual, on the occasion of the founding anniversary of the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA), hostile forces and political opportunists “perform familiar refrains” aimed at denying our Party’s leadership over the VPA and “depoliticising” our armed forces. Hence, remaining vigilance and proactively fighting against the hostile forces’ distortions serve as a matter of importance and urgency.

Like other stale arguments, the hostile forces continue advocating that “the VPA should not be loyal to the Party and it should be loyal to the Fatherland and the people only.” In fact, that argument is nothing new as it is part of their “peaceful evolution” strategy. It is still their goal of “depoliticising” the VPA, repudiating our Military’s faithfulness, neutralising our Military, and making the VPA stand aloof from the political guidelines, revolutionary ideal, and working-class nature of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) and commit “self-evolution” and “self-transformation.” Scientifically, it is an extremely absurd argument and a farcical part of the hostile forces’ political game. Therefore, we should unmask the unscientific and hostile nature of that argument.

Linguistically, a lot of people will feel that argument is acceptable when they first hear it. The reason is that argument elaborates the qualities of the VPA, especially its loyalty to the Fatherland and the people. However, considering it seriously, we will recognise a very devious conspiracy as part of the hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution” strategy. They never publicise their hostile viewpoints; they only use methods of truncating words and swapping concepts, aka sophistry, to cover the nature of their sabotage scheme in a very sophisticated manner. Although sophistry focuses on different aspects and connections of things, it regards the non-basic as the basic and turns the non-essential into the essential or vice versa. In fact, with their malicious artifices, they have employed sophistry to distort and refute the nature and scientific value of Marxism-Leninism and our Party’s guidelines and viewpoints for many times. Nevertheless, they could hardly fool the public and certainly they will suffer failure. 

More specifically, they apply sophistry to the argument: “the VPA should not be loyal to the Party and it should be loyal to the Fatherland and the people only,” with a view to transforming the non-basic and the non-essential into the basic and the essential respectively. In fact, they are striving to deny the VPA’s loyalty which has been formed and forged since our Military’s inception. They remove the VPA’s absolute loyalty to the CPV’s leadership in order to completely distort the connotation of our Military’s “loyalty.” It could be said that bowdlerising the VPA’s absolute loyalty to the CPV is a blatant misrepresentation of our VPA’s revolutionary nature. The sufficient, accurate interpretation here must be as follows: “the VPA is placed under the CPV’s leadership and absolutely loyal to the Socialist Vietnamese Fatherland and the goal of safeguarding the people’s life, freedom, and happiness.” That fact is stipulated in Article 65 of Chapter IV of the 2013 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam as follows: “The people's armed forces must show absolute loyalty to the Fatherland, the People, the Party, and the State. Their duty is to defend national independence and sovereignty, the country's unification and territorial integrity, national security and social order and safety, to protect the People, the Party, the State, and the socialist regime, and to join the entire people in national construction and fulfilment of international duties.” It is clear for us to see that the hostile forces remove the most important part, which is “absolute loyalty to the CPV’s leadership,” from the concept of “loyalty” of our Military. That is arbitrariness, subjectivity, and illogicality frequently used in sophistry. They underline the VPA’s loyalty to the Fatherland and the people only so as to shape everyone’s perception of an inconsequential generic thing instead of considering the root of the issue. Obviously, they are devoting effort to making all people equate the Fatherland having the bourgeois nature with the Socialist Vietnamese Fatherland having the working-class nature. More seriously, they are striving to make our Military uncertain about its combat goal and ideal. That is an extremely cunning trick aimed at eliminating our Party’s leadership over the VPA, which was clearly pointed out by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that under an exploitative regime, “workers have no fatherland.” Therefore, there is no reason for the masses to sacrifice themselves for the so-called “fatherland” of the bourgeoisie. Apparently, the hostile forces’ argument on the VPA’s loyalty to the Fatherland and the people only is a technique to deceive our citizens, cadres, and military staff members.

When it comes to the removal of the VPA’s absolute loyalty to the CPV’s leadership, it completely changes the contents of the concept of “loyalty.” There is a fact that loyalty to the Party’s leadership is the most decisive factor in our Military’s political nature and combat goal and ideal. Without its absolute loyalty to the Party’s leadership, our VPA will be neutralised and depoliticised, and eventually its loyalty to the Fatherland and the people will disappear. In essence, preserving the absolute loyalty of our Military to the CPV’s leadership include its faithfulness to the Socialist Vietnamese Fatherland and the goal of protecting the people’s life, freedom, and happiness. The removal of that part leads to the meaninglessness of the concept of “loyalty” of our VPA and more dangerously makes our Military lose its revolutionary political nature, stay away from its combat ideal and goal and socialism, and follow capitalism.

Both theoretically and practically, there has not been and there can not be any army that has no connection with a ruling party. An army must have political nature of the class or the state which organises or employs it. In Vietnam, our Party is the organiser and leader of our Military, which is specified in Article 25 of Chapter VI of the CPV’s Charter as follows: “the Party exercises its absolute, direct leadership over the VPA and the  People’s Public Security of Vietnam; that leadership by the Party is uniformly centred around the Party Central Committee, particularly the Politburo and the Party Central Committee’s Secretariat; the Party makes basic decisions on building pure, politically, ideologically, organisationally strong VPA and People’s Public Security absolutely loyal to the Party and the Fatherland, dedicated to serving the people, and capable of acting as the core fore to join the entire people in firmly protecting the Socialist Vietnamese Fatherland, maintaining political security and social order and safety, and constructing the country. The State uniformly manages the VPA, the People’s Public Security, and national defence and security cause under the Constitution and laws.” Accordingly, the political qualities of our Military are most clearly demonstrated in its absolute loyalty to the Party’s leadership. The removal of the VPA’s absolute loyalty to the CPV’s leadership means “depoliticising” our Military and making it lose socialist orientations like “a body without a soul.” That was evidenced in East European nations and former Soviet Union. When those countries were facing political upheavals, the militaries there declared their neutrality, leading to the collapse of a whole social regime. There were many reasons for losing the absolute loyalty of those militaries to communist Parties. In this regard, the most decisive factor was that hostile viewpoints had penetrated into social mental life without being opportunely handled, prevented, and repelled. The process of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” was commenced by sophistry and more specifically the argument that “the military should not be loyal to a ruling communist Party and it should be loyal to the Fatherland and the people only.” From the beginning, cadres, citizens, and military staff members of those countries disregarded that argument, but they gradually accepted it and made concessions; as a result, their militaries lost the absolute loyalty to communist Parties and were “depoliticised.” This is a very dangerous trick of the hostile forces.

Things mentioned above allow us to say that we will never acknowledge the argument that “our VPA should not be loyal to the Party and it should be loyal to the Fatherland and the people.” The reason is that it is a conspiracy of the hostile forces aimed at fooling the public, denying our CPV’s sole leadership over the VPA, destroying our Military’s political foundation, forcing the VPA to lose its combat goal and ideal, and making it unable to play a core role in the Fatherland protection. Thus, we need to resolutely fight against that argument and continue grasping Vladimir Ilyich Lenin’s instructions on ideological work. According to Lenin, in ideological and theoretical work, we must clarify “class confrontation” and “demarcation of ideology.” We must disseminate “radical ideology” adopted by the “vanguard class.” Those instructions of Lenin, therefore, must be applied to ensuring that the VPA’s “loyalty” can not be distorted. Besides, there should be guidelines for taking steps of propagation and education, renewing methods of unmasking the hostile forces’ sophistry and unscientific viewpoints, and raising the quality of this work. Only by doing so could we have scientific basis for criticising and combating wrong viewpoints convincingly, thwarting the hostile forces’ “peaceful evolution” strategy, and building a really strong VPA against all distortions from the hostile forces.

DUC MINH