Amidst current extensive globalization and international integration, hostile forces have made adverse adjustments to their artifices of “peaceful evolution” strategies in a bid to oppose the Vietnamese revolution. Therefore, thoroughly grasping those artifices to formulate sound countermeasures is a matter of great significance and urgency to the Party, people, and the Army.

Hostile forces have been employing malicious artifices to consistently and vigorously oppose the Vietnamese revolution with a view to toppling Communist Party of Vietnam’s leadership, and subsequently removing Vietnamese socialist regime. Recently, those artifices have been carried out in an increasingly diverse and merciless manner in response to domestic and international developments.

First, fine-tuning diplomatic policies via multi-faceted cooperation to infiltrate and step up “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” process in Vietnam. Whilst maximally restricting themselves to contentious issues in their relationships with Vietnam, hostile forces further infiltrate and strengthen “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” process through extensive relationship expansion. They have fostered conditional military-defence, economic-commercial collaboration and investment promotion to compel, steer, and pressurize Vietnam into amending policies and laws as a basis for transformation of political regime. This move is aimed at executing a “democratic” screenplay in Vietnam, steering Vietnamese diplomatic policies to their intentions in which they approach and support the “pro-Western” dissidents; cause an upheaval in “self-transformation”; accelerate diplomatic exchange activities to promote their image of “Western-style friendly diplomacy”; further infiltrate through intelligence trickery in order to “transform” Vietnam; and impede Vietnam’s potential investment partners. Simultaneously, they find every way to create imbalance in Vietname’s strategic relationships with its great powers; to ignite disagreement amongst Vietnam and its neighbouring nations and ASEAN countries; and to sever Vietnam-Lao special relationship, Vietnam-China and Vietnam-Russia strategic partnership in an attempt to isolate Vietnam from the international arena.

Second, strengthening infiltration and collusive activities to promote “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” process from inside. To this end, they spare no effort to use dissidents to secretly set up political forces and organizations, which act as a key and decisive element in bringing about the transformation to Vietnamese political regime. On the one hand, they resort to cruel cunning artifices such as bribery, psychological incitement to cause internal sectarian division in an effort to step-by-step break down solidarity and unity amongst Party, State, and social organizations. On the other, they capitalize on political dissidents and opportunists and public indignation to distort or exaggerate the weaknesses and shortcomings for the purpose of inciting the masses’ protests and rally, and disrupting political security and social order and safety. Their plot is to divide close relations among all-level Party and governmental offices and armed forces and people; to support and facilitate opposition forces’ activities in an effort to shake ideological foundation and undermine political and social stability. This plot is regularly carried out with a focus on such special occasions as Party congresses, National Assembly and all-level People’s Council elections, and national celebrations. Their common artifices are to manipulate and bribe retired bigwigs, especially those cadres with disciplinary records and signs of disaffection to “give recommendations to the Party”; “position papers”; “legal initiatives”, etc through which they overstate difficulties and shortcomings as well as retired cadres’ interests inferior to that of working cadres so as to trigger public furore. In addition, they also use various blatant trickery to cause political apathy amongst Vietnam’s young and student generations.

Third, stepping up infiltration activities to steer the Vietnamese media to their intentions of “self-evolution” and “self-transformation”. Their plot of the media “democratization” is intended to incorporate “democracy” into the national media, and facilitate the expansion and development of the unofficial media system which acts as a breeding ground for opposing the Vietnamese revolution on account of its enormous effects on societal life and ineffective control and censorship by national management authorities. To this end, they have used the modern media facilities with a large volume of broadcasting stations, publications, and other media facilities by Vietnamese expatriates in exile to distort Vietnam’s situation while taking full advantage of social networks to demand “freedom of the press”; “freedom of speech”, and the establishment of private press; to separate the national media and press from the Party leadership and State management; fully capitalizing on the potential and strength of the external press and media to “dominate” the internal one; approaching and manipulating the Vietnamese press and media, keeping them further away from the Party’s press motto, objectives and orientations; encouraging and facilitating the setup of sprawling websites, facebook accounts and blogs, etc; and misusing the Internet to build a myriad of websites and blogs with misleading contents. It is particularly worrying that a majority of Internet users in Vietnam at present and in the foreseeable future are teenagers, pupils, and students, hence false and misleading information renders them prone to deviant orientation pertaining to historical and social affairs, and Party guidelines and policies; to shake confidence and actions in opposition to the masses’ and peoples’ interests; to be in collusion with hostile forces to go against the Party and socialist regime.

They foster the creation of fake websites and blog platforms impersonating Party and State leaders and revolution veterans to deceive public opinion and attract viewers. When those media platforms draw in a high number of visitors, they upload the incremental amount of false and distorted information, causing readers’ confusion and leading to improper thinking and behaviour. In particular, they take full advantage of social networks to rapidly connect members, disseminate reactionary ideology, distort Party guidelines and State laws, divide close relationships amongst the Party, the State and people, circulate false information, and arouse suspicion about sensitive issues in society.

Fourth, hastily executing a malicious artifice of “peaceful evolution” in education and training field to “transform” Vietnam. Education and training field is considered one of the breakthrough, shortest, most effective factors to implement “self-evolution” and “self-transformation”, steer the Vietnamese education to Western trajectory. To this end, they conduct a double-edged policy. On the one hand, they launch a campaign of twisting and negating Vietnamese education and training accomplishments, stating that the root cause of the status quo of Vietnamese education results from the Party’s misguided policies of education and training leadership and the State’s ineffective management which is regarded as a pretext for calling for a reform in Vietnamese education’s situation via “Western enlightenment”. On the other, they make continued effort to promote, embellish, and exaggerate the Western education, which is considered an ideal destination for Vietnam’s young generation to “brighten their country’s future”. They actively utilize enticing trickery such as holding conferences, talks, exhibitions of overseas study, visiting well-known universities in a bid to entice Vietnamese students to go overseas for study, thereby building a “generation of pro-Western cadres”, who hold key positions economically, socially, and politically. To make matters worse, they demand the exclusion of subjects pertaining to Marxist-Leninist theory, Ho Chi Minh thought, and Communist Party of Vietnam guidelines from training curricula and a freedom of ideological system for teachers and students, thereby facilitating their political schemes.

Fifth, continuously intensifying various activities of “depoliticalized” armed forces. Their ultimate goal is to make our armed forces lose political directions, and give up fighting objectives. They have been taking full advantage of this scheme to negate Communist Party of Vietnam’s leadership over Vietnamese People’s Army and Public Security in an increasingly frequent and cunning fashion. On the ideological and theoretical fronts, they strive to negate Marxist-Leninist viewpoints on class and class struggle; distort Ho Chi Minh military ideology and the Party’s military guidelines and viewpoints; undermine the nature and traditions of the Army and Public Security; promote “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” amongst cadres and soldiers whilst negating the principle of “the Party’s direct and absolute leadership on all fronts” over armed forces; scrapping the operation of party and political work and the system of political offices and cadres at all level in the Army; and defaming the Army and Public Security. With cunning operations, they infiltrate disaffected members into the Army and Public Security; take full advantage of the dark side of market economy and social vices to falsify the tradition and revolutionary nature of the Army and Public Security, to tarnish the sacred image of “Uncle Ho’s soldiers”, etc.

Those afore-mentioned artifices of “peaceful evolution” strategy by hostile forces are amongst the most fundamental and noticeable ones with increasing level of sophistication, craftiness and malice. Therefore, it is vital to stay constantly vigilant about identifying and analyzing in a bid to expose the nature and work out proper countermeasures to deal with those malevolent artifices.

Major Nguyen Dinh Bac, PhD, Political Academy, Ministry of National Defence