(the last part)

 

II. Theoretical and practical basis of the absurdity of the idea of “depoliticizing” the military.

 

First, we should begin with the argument that “war is the continuation of politics” in which the military appears to meet the demand of war (offensive or defensive). This is generalized by Clausewitz (1780-1831), a well-known military theorist of Prussian (now Germany). This argument is widely accepted by both bourgeois and proletarian militaries, hence it cannot be denied. V.I. Lenin himself highly valued this argument. Once we admit that “war is the continuation of politics” we must acknowledge that: at no time and in no place there is no military standing outside politics or without political involvement since every war has its political aims, reflecting political stance of the belligerent countries and the militaries of the belligerent countries are organized, educated by the political forces to finalize those political aims of the war.

 

Second, military always bares the same nature as the one of the state organizes and nurtures it. This is because the military is part of the state, the state’s instrument for violence to protect the achievements that the ruling parties gain in the struggles for power. The history of military associates with the inception of the state. State is the inevitable product of the class struggle so any states have its class nature. Nowadays, in capitalist countries with multi-parties regime, despite the fact that those countries are ruled by alternative parties (the Democrat or the Republican in the United States of America; the Conservative or the Labour in England…), they remain political unitary.

 

That is the politics of the bourgeois because in such countries, any political parties in power represent different groups and class of the bourgeois; so the governments dominated by the ruling parties must serve the basic interests of the bourgeois although they still perform their public function, one of the two basic functions (class and public function) – of any states. Accordingly, the military, as a functional body of the state, is founded to protect political institution of the ruling class. It must have the class nature of the state organizes, manages and nurtures it. Those support the idea of “depoliticizing” the military don’t understand or don’t want to understand that: to mention  “politics” of an organization is to mention the class characteristic that the organization grasp and carry out in the reality of building ideology and organization and performing its tasks and functions. As a part of the state, armed forces of any societies depend on political guidelines of the ruling class. Furthermore, ruling forces always try to control armed forces through different ways in politics, ideology, organization and policy. For this reason, right at its inception, the military is imbued with the politics of the state and of the ruling class. There is no and cannot be a military “standing outside politics” or “politically neutralized” as the bourgeois still says to hide the class characteristic of the armed forces in capitalist countries. Criticizing the military of the bourgeois for hiding its class characteristic, V.I. Lenin clearly pointed out: “The armed forces cannot and should not be neutral. Not to drag them into politics is the slogan of the hypocritical servants of the bourgeoisie and of tsarism, who in fact have always dragged the forces into reactionary politics”. 

 

Publicizing the working class nature of the revolutionary armed forces, V.I. Lenin set out principles for building the Red Army under the leadership of the Communist Party. Creatively applying Lenin’s thought into Vietnam concrete circumstance, right in the year of 1930, in his Abridged Political Platform, leader Nguyen Ai Quoc – Ho Chi Minh – demanded to “found a military of the workers and peasants” and throughout the course of organizing, building, leading and educating our military he usually said: “Our military has a championship strength since it is a people’s army, built, led and educated by the Party”; for this reason, we have to “strengthen the Party’s leadership over the military; intensify political education  to heighten troops’ consciousness of socialism”. 

 

Third, the world reality shows that: there are no armed forces in the world being politically “neutralized” or “standing outside politics” because this is the instrument for armed violence to protect political institution of the ruling class. It’s not difficult to see the involvement of many armed forces  where coups are staged elsewhere in the world, especially in Asia, Africa in recent years. As of Thailand, over the past 70 years, its armed forces have staged 19 coups. The militaries of America, England, France…are used not only for protecting independence and national territory but also for invading, overthrowing, intervening into other territorial countries with the aim of establishing pro-Western governments in these countries. This, in essence, is to serve the internal and external policies of the ruling parties, and ultimately the interests of monopoly capitalists standing behind the currents governments. 

 

Since 1990, the US armed forces have involved in the political life of many countries and regions, including staging wars, such as: the Persian Gulf in 1991, in Yugoslavia in 1999, in Afghanistan in 2001, in Iraq in 2003, in Libya in 2011… Our resistant wars for national salvation against the French, Japanese and America also show that their militaries have never been “politically neutralized”, especially when their troops were taught about their “noble mission” of “protecting freedom”, “preventing communism from spreading all over Southeast Asia”!

 

It should be aware that in multi-party society, any parties coming to power will try to take control of military because this will make it easy for them to maintain their power. However, when the competition for power between parties becomes severe leading to a political crisis, then a call for a “depoliticalized military” is usually made but in fact, they try to gain support from the military. In Thailand, although politicians required that the military be “depoliticalized”, even at times its Minister of Defence committed that “the military not to involve in politics” as ruled in the 1997 of Thai Constitution, reality showed a different fact. On 19 September 2006, General Sonthi and some other military generals staged a coup, overthrowing Thaksin’s government and founded a Military Council. Two successive pro-Thaksin governments of Samak and Somchai didn’t exist long because they were not supported by the military. During the time of Abhisit’s government in power, Thai military was used to suppress demonstrations of the Red Shirts (from March to May 2010) killing 90 people and wounded many others.

 

Recently, on 22 May 2014, Thai military again staged a coup to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Yingluck and appointed the Commander of its Army, General Prayuth Chan-ocha, as Thai Prime Minister. The US military does not stand outside domestic political conflicts, either. On 21 August 2012, General Martin Dempsey – US Joint Chief of Staff – criticized some US ex-military officers for conducting a campaign against President B. Obama. He demands that the military “stand outside politics” but he himself suffers from criticism of the Republican for his bias in favour of the Democrat in the presidential election in 2012. In Russia Federation, on 4 October 1993, President B. Yeltsin did not hesitate to order the Russian military to lay down fire on the Parliament (where supporters for national and communist MPs were sheltering) to settle the conflict with the legislature (parliament).  

 

Fourth, as the reality of the Vietnamese revolution shows: the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) was born from political movements of the mass, organized, led and educated by the Communist Party of Vietnam to gain and hold the government, therefore it is a political force. Throughout 70 years of founding, fighting and developing, the VPA clearly proves a fact that: the VPA is a political force, absolutely loyal to the Party, Fatherland and people. This is manifested firstly in the   unification between the goal for fighting of the military and that of the Party: national independence and socialism. For this reason, against the call for “the military standing outside politics” our Party and State have always taken care of making the VPA strong politically for enhancing its synergy, capability, combat readiness ability and for victorious combat. 

 

Leader Ho Chi Minh for many times stressed the necessity to make the Army strong politically. He taught: “A military good at both politics and combat is the champion one” and “If we want to make our military more determined to fight and determined to win, then we must care for their lives, enhance their competence in tactics and technique, especially pay attention to political education to make them firmly aware of the political stance that the military is of the people, led by the working class”. When visiting the Politics Secondary School (now the Academy of Politics under the Ministry of National Defence) on 25 October 1951, he reminded its learners: “You must study both politics and military thoroughly: military without politics is just like a tree without root, useless and harmful”.

 

Building the military strong politically with the Party’s strengthened leadership being the core, building the working class nature along with building people’s and nation’s characters for the VPA is a success lesson of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh in creatively applying Marxism – Leninism theory on building new type army of working class in underdeveloped countries. History of Vietnamese revolutionary has tested and proved the correctness of that lesson. Since the very first days of its inception, the Vietnam Propaganda Unit of the Liberation Army has been organized in the way that it was led by a party cell; besides the team leader, there was a political cadre in charge of  political work in accordance with the Party’s line. Reality of our revolution also showed that once not being put under the leadership of the Party, armed forces will deteriorate, disorientate politically  and lose their  fighting  goals; no longer being armed force of the people, the political and fighting force for national independence and socialism; hence, it is unable to fulfill its function of protecting the Fatherland and protecting people. This was shown clearly in the early days when the South took up arm in late1945 with the early disintegration of Regiments of Republican Guard and most terribly the “Third Republican Guard Regiment” acted against Viet Minh, betrayed people  because they were not built under the leadership of a communist party. Another event happened during the period of 1983 – 1985. The foreign experience of establishing a Military Council, dismantling party organizations that we mechanically applied has weakened greatly the military’s synergy due to the fact that the Party’s leadership over the military is lessened. Therefore, after 2 years of implementing the Resolution 07-NQ/TW of the Politburo (V tenure) our Party decided to revive  the system of party organizations from the Central Military Commission to grassroots level by issuing the Resolution 27-NQ/TW. In 2005, the Politburo (IX tenure) issued the Resolution 51-NQ/TW on “Continue to perfect the leading mechanism of the Party, exercising the mechanism of a commander associated with a commissar or a junior commissar in the VPA”  in order to  strengthen the leadership of the Party over the VPA. By building its politics strong, first and foremost maintaining the leadership of the Party, the VPA has always accomplished its missions perfectly in every stage of the revolution, deserving Uncle Ho’s praise (in 1964): “Our Army is loyal to the Party, pious to the People, ready to fight and sacrifice for independence and freedom of the Fatherland, for socialism; fulfill any missions, overcome any hardships, defeat any enemies”. It should be noted, by the way, that the event that Uncle Ho presented Tran Quoc Tuan military school with the flag embroidered with the words “loyal to the country, pious to the people” happened in a special historical context. At that time, in the Union Government, Viet Minh only held some ministries. Others were shared by Viet Quoc and Viet Cach. The Ministry of National Defence was governed by non-party peoples. Our Party has withdrawn into secret operations since November 1945. Separating from that context to say that President Ho Chi Minh has never told the military to be loyal to the Party is a distortion of his consistent thought on the relationship between Army and communist party. In fact, many but not one time Uncle Ho has told cadres and troops of the VPA to be always loyal to the Fatherland, to the Party and to the people, since in his opinion: Our Party is the loyal representative for not only the interest of the working class but also for the labouring people and for the whole nation; at the same time, our military is the army of the people, built, led and educated by the Party. Right in the Fifth Military Conference convened in August 1948 (when Viet Quoc and Viet Cach were disintegrated after On Nhu Hau street case), Uncle Ho stated clearly six virtures of an army general: intellect, might, humanity, credibility, purity, loyalty. When explaining Loyalty, Uncle Ho said: “Loyalty means being absolutely loyal to the Fatherland, to the people, to the revolution and to the Party”. At a promoting anniversary for senior cadres of the army on 22 December 1958, he said: “Throughout 14 years of striving, our military has accomplished missions assigned by the Party and Government, and has been absolutely loyal to the Party, the people, bravely fought, been proactive in their mass work and labour…” So in Ho Chi Minh Thought the VPA being “loyal to the country, pious to the people” and the VPA being “loyal to the Party, pious to the people” are the same. This is his consistent viewpoint on building the VPA and on the close relationship between people’s army with the Fatherland and communist party. 

Countering the plot of “depoliticizing” the military and building the army strong politically are two issues of the process of building the military towards “revolutionary, regular, seasoned and gradually modern” direction. It requires us to lay bare the absurdity and the essence of the idea to  “depoliticize” the military ; at the same time to carry out synchronously solutions in politics, ideology, organization and policy with the key task is to build military party committees strong in politics, ideology and organization. This is the responsibility of the whole political system under the leadership of the Party, and directly the effort of the VPA.

Nguyen Ngoc Hoi