Building a strong all-people national defence is a consistent strategic policy of our Party and State, aimed at increasing defence power and defensive capacity to firmly protect the Homeland in any situation. Therefore, sectors, forces, and localities should continue grasping and effectively implementing this policy in practice.

Being fully aware of our Party’s military-defence guidelines and especially the policy on building the all-people national defence, over the years, sectors, localities, the armed forces, and the entire people have synchronously implemented measures for the building of the all-people national defence and achieved a lot of encouraging results, thereby making contributions to increasing our defence strength in terms of potential, force, and posture, foiling all plots and artifices of hostile forces, and firmly protecting each area, each strategic direction, and the whole country.

It can’t be denied that the potential of the all-people national defence has been developed rather comprehensively. The people’s faith in our Party and State has been cemented. Great value has been attached to defence and security education. Socio-economic, cultural, scientific, and technological development has been facilitated as a prerequisite for mobilising resources in defence work and the Homeland protection. The armed forces have been made politically strong with great combat strength, gradually moved towards modernity, and promoted their core role in the Homeland protection, particularly in natural disaster and COVID-19 prevention and control as well as search and rescue, thus greatly contributing to bringing our country to new normality. Provincial-level defensive zones have been constructed in an increasingly solid way. The system of defensive works at sea, along the border, and in strategic areas has been gradually perfected. Great weight has been added to combining socio-economic development with defence-security consolidation and building political bases. The postures of all-people national defence and people’s security have been linked to each other rather closely to promote synergy created by forces in each sector, each area, and the entire country.

However, in addition to those good results, a section of cadres, party members, and citizens have yet to be fully aware of the all-people national defence, the people’s security, and the Homeland protection. Combining economic development with defence consolidation in some strategic, sea, island areas has yet to be close. Coordination between the armed forces in some places has yet to be effective. Several localities have shown their confusion about how to deal with defence-related situations. In order to settle those above-mentioned problems, the following measures should be adopted to increase defence-security potential, form and bring into play a “posture of people’s hearts and minds” within the all-people national defence, build and consolidate the postures of all-people national defence and people’s security, and closely, effectively combine socio-economic, cultural development and diplomacy with defence and security.

First, keep building the potential of the all-people national defence to meet the requirements of the Homeland protection. Types of potential of the all-people national defence include political potential, economic potential, scientific and technological potential, military potential, and diplomatic potential, amongst which the first potential acts as an incentive for mobilising and building other types of potential. Thus, emphasis should be placed on making all-level party organisations and authorities pure and strong, raising the efficiency of the political system, building a firm “posture of people’s hearts and minds,” and especially cementing the people’s faith in the Party, the State, and the socialist regime. Due regard should be paid to consolidating the national great unity block and a sense of unity within the Party, opportunely dealing with degradation in political ideology, ethics, and lifestyle, actively fighting to defend the Party’s ideological foundation, and accelerating the study and following of Ho Chi Minh’s ideology, ethics, and lifestyle under the 13th Politburo’s Conclusion 01-KL/TW, dated May 18th, 2021 on continuing implementing the 12th Politburo’s Directive 05-CT/TW, dated May 15th, 2016. It is essential to proactively renew and improve the work of propagation and education to render people from all walks of life fully aware of national culture and tradition, the Party’s guidelines and the State’s laws and policies on military-defence work and the building of the all-people national defence. Moreover, democracy should be promoted widely to achieve a consensus about defence task and the Homeland protection. In the building of the economic potential, it is necessary to step up international integration, make more investments in increasing the economy’s self-reliance and independence, closely combine socio-economic, cultural development and diplomacy with defence-security consolidation and vice versa, adjust economic development plans in line with national defence, national security, and Homeland protection strategies, accelerate national industrialisation and modernisation, and facilitate rapid, sustainable economic development to keep supplementing reserves for the country and national defence. In the building of the scientific-technologic potential and the military potential, significance should be attached to applying achievements in the 4th industrial revolution to modernising the Military, developing defence industry, and ensuring cyber security of national defence and the country. In the building of the diplomatic potential, importance should be attached to completing policies, laws, and facilities for diplomacy, leveraging bilateral and multilateral defence diplomacy, cementing strategic trust, expanding partnerships, creating a favourable international condition to attract external resources for defence consolidation and national development.

Second, increase the synergy of the people’s armed forces, particularly the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) so that they will play a core role in building a strong all-people national defence. To that end, sectors, forces, localities, and the entire political system should synchronously implement measures for making the people’s armed forces strong. Significance should be attached to building a “revolutionary, regular, elite, gradually modern” VPA, while priority should be given to modernising several services, corps, and forces as the basis for building a revolutionary, regular, elite, modern VPA from 2030. In addition to adjusting its organisational structure in a “compact, strong” fashion, the VPA should actively renew its political education, training, and exercises, raise its combat readiness capacity, and combine training with military standard order building and discipline. It should proactively develop and adjust combat documents at all levels, strictly maintain regulations on combat readiness, employ new mechanisms of logistics, financial, and technical support for missions, and apply achievements in the 4th industrial revolution to training, combat readiness, combat, and development of military science, technology, and art. It should frequently review and develop theories of military build-up, defence consolidation, and Homeland protection, while enhancing state management of national defence as the basis for raising the quality of building the all-people national defence.

All-level military offices should cooperate with other offices and sectors in advising local party committees and authorities to concentrate all resources on making local armed forces comprehensively strong with sufficient components and forces to protect local areas. Moreover, it is important to build a powerful reserve force with the increasingly high quality so that this force will be always ready to reinforce the standing force when necessary. Due attention should be paid to building a strong, extensive militia and self-defence force, particularly in coastal and key areas, capable of cooperating with the Public Security Force in opportunely, effectively dealing with situations to maintain political security and social order and safety at grass-roots level.

Third, focus on building a solid all-people national defence in each region, in each strategic direction, and nationwide. Grounded on reviews of theories relating to the building of the all-people national defence, especially the execution of the Politburo’s Resolution 28-NQ/TW on building defensive zones, sectors and localities should continue grasping and realising the Government’s Decree 21/2019/NĐ-CP on defensive zones. Emphasis should be placed on building strong provincial-level defensive zones in accordance with localities’ tasks and economic condition to facilitate production and combat readiness simultaneously. Besides, provincial-level defensive zones should be closely linked with military regions’ defensive combat postures to establish defensive postures in strategic directions and across the country. The VPA should continue adjusting the strategic disposition of its main units and border guard force, with priority given to main defensive directions and border areas. Due attention should be paid to adjusting and supplementing defensive combat projects at all levels, measures of information warfare and cyber warfare prevention and combat, and plans for civil defence to meet the requirements set by the defence of the country in both long and short term.

Additionally, master plans on defence-security disposition combined with socio-economic development in each territory, strategic area, sea, island, and border area, economic zone, and key industry zone should be formulated. It is necessary to continue adjusting, supplementing, and building economic-defence zones in accordance with strategies on socio-economic development combined with defence-security consolidation. Due regard should be paid to developing marine economy in tandem with defending national sovereignty over seas and islands, constructing more marine economic zones, and providing more assistance for fishermen at sea as the basis for protecting and controlling the Homeland’s seas. It is vital to ensure that socio-economic development will always help consolidate national defence and security to firmly protect the Homeland and maintain a peaceful, stable environment for realising our people’s desire to build a prosperous, happy country.

Sr. Col., Dr DO QUANG VINH, Infantry Officer College No.1