In the early days of last October, a series of major newspapers around the world reported solemnly about the passing of General Vo Nguyen Giap. A common view shared by those newspapers was that General Vo Nguyen Giap was one of the greatest generals, the world’s most outstanding military strategist of the 20th century.
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General Giap working with High Command of Air-Defence and Air-Force on combat plans, 28-12-1972
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As a matter of fact, under the sound and clear-sighted leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh, General Vo Nguyen Giap, in his capacity as the General Commander of the People’s Armed Forces, directly organized, directed and commanded all activities of the People’s Army and the Militia and Self-Defense Forces, along with the entire Party, people and army, to subdue the two mighty invaders of the era – the French colonialists and American imperialists. The General’s military thinking, which was always associated with his thinking on organizing the people’s war, was a striking feature during the course of leading and directing the resistance wars. The General’s thinking on the people’s war was formed from very early days; originating from Marxist-Leninist theory of the role of the masses; inheriting the military art in the history of our nation against foreign aggressors; and from the revolutionary realities of Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh’s ideology on waging a people’s and comprehensive war. On being assigned to the position as the commander of Vietnam Propaganda Unit of the Liberation Army, the thinking on the people’s war had been shaped in his mind with the organizational model: “around the Vietnam Propaganda Unit of the Liberation Army are the armed units of districts and the militia units of communes who will be the sheet-anchors for the Vietnam Propaganda Unit of the Liberation Army to execute its tasks. Those three forces coordinate closely with one another on every activity, especially in combat operations”. That thinking on the art of people’s war became the General’s guiding ideology in the course of directing, commanding the national resistance against the aggressors. Later, in his lectures and talks with senior military officers, the General used to emphasize the art of people’s war, in which a combination between the extensive armed forces of the politically-enlightened masses and the regular force would create an invincible force; that was also the absolute superiority of the socialist regime.
On summarizing the five-year resistance war against the French colonialists (1945 to 1950), General Vo Nguyen Giap wrote “Here, I just want to put forth the most important creative achievement, that is, our people and People’s Armed Forces, under the leadership of our Party, have gradually built up the basic factors for the art of war to safeguard and emancipate a small and weak country which has a narrow land and small population. That can be named as the art of people’s war in the Ho Chi Minh Era: the art of all-people’s war”.
During the struggle against the French colonialists, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh, General Vo Nguyen Giap made important contributions to directing, carrying out the people’s war with the overall strength of the entire country: a comprehensive and all-people war. At the onset of dry season 1953–1954, the enemy’s main forces outnumbered markedly ours. However, apart from the regular and local forces, there were approximately two million militias and guerrillas nationwide to carry out the people’s war. These forces had stretched the enemy across the theatres. In Dien Bien Phu campaign, besides regular force, we mobilized about 200,000 conscripted laborers to ensure logistic support by means of shoulder poles, pack bikes, in combination with mechanized vehicles. French militarists could not believe that, by their feet, shoulders and pack bikes; Vietnamese people had transported tens of thousands of tonnes of combat rations and essential equipment, meeting the demands of the campaign. To achieve the victory at Dien Bien Phu, no one can ignore General Vo Nguyen Giap’s “historic decision”. With the mindset of a military genius, though all the units had been ready for the grand assault, General Vo Nguyen Giap decided to postpone the battle, shifting from “speedy fighting, rapid winning” to “steady fighting, steady advancing” based on the overall strength and combat methods of Vietnamese people’s war. Later, on summarizing the victory of Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, foreign generals and researchers were unanimous in their viewpoint that the main cause of Viet Minh’s victory was to stage the comprehensive and all-people’s war. Returning to France after his failure in 1954, General De Castries revealed before the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of Defense that it could defeat an army, but not a people.
After victory of the resistance war against the French colonialists, our country’s revolution leaped into a new era that was to implement the two strategic missions of carrying out the People’s National Democratic Revolution in the South and Socialist Revolution in the North. To meet the requirements of the struggle against American aggressors, General Vo Nguyen Giap’s strategic thinking on people’s war attained appropriate developments; People’s War for National Defense in the North and People’s War for Liberation in the South. The General’s strategic thinking contributed to properly handling the relationship between construction of militia forces and building of units of the main forces aimed at fulfilling the requirements of combined arms operations, launching major battles both in the South and the North. In early 1960s, given the situation, in which some military officers had misconceptions about the relationship between guerrilla warfare and regular warfare, General Vo Nguyen Giap pointed out: “Our Party never follows a purely military strategy, and has never limited the war at guerrilla level. Our Party’s strategy of the revolutionary war is an integrated strategy, combining military struggle, political struggle with diplomatic struggle, guerrilla warfare with regular warfare, and small-scale fighting with medium-scale and large-scale fighting”. The unique feature that the enemy never thought of is that the people’s war was not only carried out in the South, but also creatively organized in the North, making important contributions to vanquishing the destructive war staged by US Air Force and Navy in the North. A foreign journalist put that the term “people’s air defense” only exists in Vietnam; “once again, Vo Nguyen Giap is the initiator, the talented developer of this type of war”. Thus, when writing about General Vo Nguyen Giap, General Peter Mc Donald, a British historical and military science researcher remarked: “almost none of generals can compare with him in combining guerrilla warfare with regular warfare. That is an unprecedented combination”.
As an excellent and close learner of President Ho Chi Minh, General possessed a deep understanding of theories of revolutionary war, and creatively applied to commanding and directing construction and operation of the People’s Armed Forces during the resistance war against the U.S. for national salvation; developing the art of the people’s war to new heights, becoming a unique feature in Vietnamese military art. That was the thinking on organization and construction of the People’s Armed Forces comprising three types of forces under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam; deploying methods of the people’s war: closely combining the local people’s war with the regular army corps’ war at appropriate scales and forms; combining combat activities of the on-spot forces with the mobile forces’; the guerrilla warfare with the regular warfare; war of attrition with local war; closely associating military struggle with political, economic, cultural and diplomatic ones, etc.; considering military struggle on the battlefield as the decisive factor to defeat the enemy’s will, proactively terminating the war on Vietnam’s interests.
On directing the summary of the resistance war against the US, the General said the glorious victory in the war against American aggressors was attributed to a number of factors, including the important element, that was to say, we had carried out the people’s war on the basis of the Party’s revolutionary guidelines. The people’s war could not come into being by available recipes, or by borrowing from our ancestors or foreign militaries. It required a mental state, and clear and accurate conditions that had been recurred in different dimensions in the history of Vietnam.
Entering the period of national defense and construction, General Vo Nguyen Giap’s thinking on people’s war has shown new developments that is to associate the building of all-people’s national defense, all-people’s national defense posture with the building of people’s security posture, powerful People’s Armed Forces with three forces; “always upholding the spirit of vigilance, firmly preserving independence, sovereignty, attaching importance to building the overall strength of the all-people national defense”. According to the General, building the all-people national defense along the direction of comprehensiveness, independence, self-mastery, self-reliance and gradual modernization remains the basic principle of the cause of Homeland protection.
Proper performance of that task would not only help to meet the requirements for struggling in peacetime, generating strength to prevent the enemy’s war-waging plot, but also meet the requirements of war when it occurs.
General Vo Nguyen Giap passed away on October 4th 2013, but his strategic thinking on people’s war remains invaluable experience for the cause of protecting the Fatherland of Vietnam.
By Manh Dung