Adjusting the Military’s organisational structure in the adept, compact, strong direction is  one of the Military’s three central strategic breakthroughs in 2022 and beyond, aimed at providing a solid precondition for realising the goal of building a modern Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) with great synergy and combat power for firmly protecting the Fatherland in any situation.

Over the past 77 years of construction, combat, and development, under the Party’s direct, absolute leadership, our VPA has surmounted all difficulties and challenges, achieved resounding feats of arms, and defeated all invaders, thereby significantly contributing to national liberation, construction, and protection. In the period of national renewal, in order to perform the Military’s functions as an army ready for combat, for work, and for production, the Central Military Commission (CMC) and the Ministry of National Defence (MND) have formulated several guidelines and measures for improving the VPA’s synergy and combat power as the basis for successfully fulfilling all assigned missions and deserving to be a core force in Fatherland protection. It should be noted that in recent years, grounded on resolutions and conclusions issued by the Party and the CMC, the entire Military has well implemented breakthroughs set by the Resolution of the 11^th Military Party Congress, with special importance attached to building an organisationally strong VPA, thus satisfying its task requirements in the new situation and making contributions to our whole Party and people’s fulfilment of the two strategic tasks of national construction and protection.

However, in addition to those above-mentioned achievements, there remain weaknesses in the building of an adept, compact, strong VPA, namely: overlaps in tasks and functions among several organisations across the Military; imbalance structure among Services. It is predicted that in the upcoming time, while peace, cooperation, and development will remain as the mainstream, the world and regional situations may see many difficulties and challenges. Strategic rivalry among major powers will be more intense. Trade wars, local wars, armed conflicts, and disputes over territories, natural resources, seas, and islands will be more complex. The military conflict between Russia and Ukraine will impact on the whole world. The robust developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are changing military and defence doctrines of countries, with military modernisation becoming a general trend of many nations across the globe. As for Viet Nam, after over 35 years of national renewal, we have obtained tremendous achievements of historic significance; our potential and international position and prestige have been considerably raised. However, we are confronted with numerous difficulties and challenges. Hostile forces are stepping up their “peaceful evolution” strategy, while promoting “self-evolution”, “self-transformation”, and their conspiracy to “depoliticise” our VPA. Traditional and non-traditional security challenges, such as cyber attack, terrorism, crime, natural disasters, and epidemics are extremely complicated. Besides, more demanding requirements are being imposed on the task of Fatherland protection. To meet its task requirements in accordance with modern, hi-tech war, the VPA must adjust its organisational structure in the adept, compact, strong, and modern direction to fulfil its missions in peacetime, remain ready for any war, and firmly defend the Fatherland in any situation. This is a major, sound, and urgent policy which should be closely, drastically, persistently implemented with an appropriate road map and scientific measures. To that end, it is necessary to focus on the following contents.

First, raise the awareness and responsibility of all party committees, commands, cadres, and soldiers towards the Military’s restructuring. Doing so will help achieve a consensus  amongst all organisations and individuals on this important policy. The reason is that force adjustment acts as a sound policy with its scientific basis on Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh’s thought, and the Party’s military and defence guidelines and strategy; such a policy has been grounded on the selective inheritance of lessons learned from the organisation of our Military and Viet Nam’s military historical tradition, relevant to the Fatherland protection in the new situation, and built upon experiences in organising their armed forces drawn by several countries around the world. Thus, party committees and commands of offices and units should focus on propagation and education to raise their cadres and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility and encouraging the role of party committee members, commanders, and competent offices in this work. Focuses of propagation and education must be placed on the key issues in resolutions, conclusions, and plans issued by the Party, the CMC, and the MND, such as the Resolutions of the 13^th National Party Congress and the 11^th Military Party Congress, the Politburo’s Resolution 05-NQ/TW, dated January 17^th, 2022, the CMC’s Resolution 230-NQ/QUTW, dated April 2^nd, 2022, and the MND’s Plan 1228/KH-BQP, dated April 25^th, 2022 on the organisation of the VPA in the period of 2021-2030 and beyond. Due attention should be paid to clarifying the inevitability of the Military’s force adjustment in the current revolutionary period, which is aimed at building an adept, compact, and strong VPA with great synergy and combat power.

An illustrative photo

Additionally, party committees and commands of offices and units shall keep renewing and diversifying forms and methods of propagation and education, combining routine education with the dissemination of specialised resolutions, and integrating education into party organisations’ regular resolutions, units’ working plans/programmes, and mass organisations’ meetings so as to achieve a consensus amongst cadres and soldiers about the guidelines and measures on force adjustment developed by higher echelons and units’ party committees and commands and guarantee sufficient policies and entitlements in the force adjustment process.

Second, enhance all-level party committees and commands’ leadership and direction in the force adjustment process. Party committees, commands, commissars, and political agencies at all levels should be fully aware that force adjustment is a central political task in 2022 and beyond for the Fatherland protection in the new situation. All-level party committees should proactively issue specialised resolutions with breakthrough measures to lead and direct the streamlining of the VPA. At the same time, it is necessary to formulate specific contents, requirements, targets, and measures in party committees’ resolutions and commanders’ working plans to be relevant to each office and unit’ characteristics and tasks as well as higher echelons’ intent of force adjustment, with importance attached to offices, units, and forces that will be merged, disbanded, and newly established.

In order to raise the effectiveness of leadership and direction, offices and units shall have great political determination and drastically, synchronously, flexibly, persistently implement measures to realise resolutions, plans, road maps, regulations, and procedures relating to force adjustment designed by all-level party committees and commands. Grounded on experiences in force adjustment in the period of 2017-2021, all-level party committees and commands should continue amending and supplementing viewpoints, mottos, principles, and measures for this work in the following period, with significance attached to identifying specific targets and requirements in each year and the whole period. Offices and units should frequently well supervise, inspect, assess, and review the work of force adjustment in all-level party committee’s 6-month and year-long resolutions according to targets and duration set by their plans and road maps. At the same time, the streamlining of the Military should be closely associated with the planning, training, and building of high-quality human resources and the provision of modern weapons and equipment.

In the process, all-level party committees and commands across the Military should renew their leadership methods towards grass-roots level, synchronously, drastically adopt breakthrough measures for force adjustment, well perform ideological work and policy work, and build typically strong, pure party organisations and “exemplarily, typically” comprehensively strong offices and units capable of successfully fulfilling all assigned missions.

Third, closely, scientifically develop plans and road maps for force adjustment in accordance with each office, unit, and force. Based on the MND’s master Plan for force adjustment, offices, units, and the MND’s affiliates shall proactively, closely, scientifically formulate highly feasible plans, programmes, and road maps for force adjustment for each year and the whole period in accordance with their tasks, higher echelons’ intent, and both long-term and short-term task requirements. Due regard should be paid to proactively conducting surveys on offices and units’ organisational structure and strength, making a comparison with the MND’s new payroll and offices and units’ tasks to make appropriate adjustments, and evaluating both negative and positive impacts made by the force adjustment process in order to opportunely work towards remedial measures.

Offices and units across the Military shall thoroughly grasp basic viewpoints and orientations of the CMC and the MND on adjusting the VPA’s organisational structure in the adept, compact and strong direction, disposing forces, and raising the quality of all-level human resources so as to ensure the wholeness, synchronicity, and appropriateness among  components and forces, reduce intermediate and service forces, and suit our country’s all-people national defence, people’s war, and armament support capability. Force adjustment should be made within offices and units at all strategic, campaign, and tactical levels, while force disposition should be adjusted in the North, the Central, and the South as well as in the air, on land, sea,  cyberspace, and  space domains. It is essential to disband offices and units with poor task performance, merge offices and units with similar functions and tasks, closely manage recruitment work, and gradually settle redundancies within each office and unit and across the Military, while due attention should be paid to ensuring sufficient policies and entitlements and establishing new offices, units, and forces according to new missions. Significance should be attached to training and step by step standardising a contingent of technical cadres and employees in accord with demands for the Military’s organisational structure, weapons, equipment, and strength within each region and area, organising training courses for the VPA’s particular professions, and providing conversion courses for redundant cadres and professional service men and women who are able to remain active long.

The force adjustment process requires great determination, a high level of uniformity, drastic action but caution to maintain stability. In such a process, it is vital to resolutely deal with negative practices, subjectivity, impatience, formalism, conservatism, and a lack of drastic and synchronous measures. Besides, great value should be attached to organising councils and steering boards on force adjustment at all levels, promoting their role and operational effectiveness, clearly delegating responsibilities to each office and unit, and close inspecting and supervising the implementation process.

Fourth, improve the effectiveness of coordination between offices and units to create synergy in the force adjustment process. Force adjustment is a task of strategic importance requiring the drastic participation of the whole political system, VPA, and people, particularly the Military’s offices and units in order to improve the VPA’s combat power for the firm protection of the Fatherland in the new situation. Therefore, the MND’s competent agencies shall adhere to resolutions and plans and closely cooperate with party committees and commands of offices, units, and the MND’s affiliates in the implementation process. As force adjustment relates to personnel work, facilities, weapons, equipment, military means, budget, investment plans, supervision work, investigation work, and audit work of both State and military competent offices, such as manpower, organisation, personnel work, policy, and social security in various fields, i.e. staff work, politics, logistics support, technical support, defence industry, and military science and technology, there should be close coordination and comprehensive mechanisms to create synergy for the building of an adept, compact, strong VPA capable of successfully fulfilling all assigned tasks.

In the implementation process, the MND Office, the General Staff Office, and the Departments of  Forces, Organisation, Personnel, and Planning and Investment shall advise the CMC and the MND to issue regulations on coordination and documents on guiding or directing other competent offices at same or subordinate levels. Great weight should be added to reaching agreement on contents and duration of force adjustment as well as methods of approving and reporting plans, road maps, and results of force adjustment in each year and phase. Coordination should be maintained to compare and inter-verify units’ strength, investigate units’ organisational structure and rate progress of force adjustment, and inspect financial work and logistics and technical support. Importance should be attached to cooperating in ensuring finance, supplies, petroleum, and barracks for newly-founded offices, units, and forces, supervising the distribution, replacement, and transfer of weapons, equipment, and means amongst newly-established or merged units, and developing logistics and technical support projects for forces which will be founded in the future. It is necessary to raise the effectiveness of direction and coordination amongst offices across sectors, while junior competent agencies shall proactively report the results and rate progress of regular and irregular force adjustment to their party committees, commands, and senior functional offices as the basis for submitting proposals to the CMC and the MND.

Fifth, intensify the fight for foiling all plots and artifices of hostile forces against our Military’s force adjustment. Combining “building” with “fighting” serves as a matter of principle in the building of a “revolutionary, regular, highly-skilled , and gradually modernised” VPA. Hence, while implementing measures for the streamlining of the Military and raising the VPA’s operational effectiveness, combat readiness, and combat power to win victories in all situations, the entire Military should enhance the fight against wrong, hostile viewpoints, the exploitation of our VPA’s force adjustment to deny the Military’s role, and particularly hostile forces’ claims that in peacetime there is no need for military modernisation or investment in arms procurement. Besides, it is vital to remain vigilant against hostile forces’ viewpoints on depoliticising our Military, building a professional military, which is aimed at depriving our Military of its goals, political ideal, and working-class nature, forcing our VPA to stay away from the Party’s leadership, and turning our Military into an army that will not fight for the Fatherland and the people. For that reason, the system of press agencies within the Military shall intensify measures to raise the effectiveness of propagation. Due attention should be paid to promoting the role of specialised forces within offices and units across the Military in resolutely fighting to safeguard the soundness, inevitability, and practical values of the guidelines on adjusting the VPA’s organisational structure, resolutely protecting the Party’s ideological foundation within the Military, and maintaining and enhancing the Party’s leadership over the VPA and its force adjustment process. Moreover, it is important to provide sharp, convincing scientific arguments and practical and theoretical bases to prevent hostile forces from sabotaging our force adjustment process. Offices and units across the VPA shall closely manage documents on force adjustment, while decentralising the management of those documents to ensure secrets and absolute safety.

The successful implementation of those above-mentioned breakthrough measures for force adjustment will contribute to realising the goal of building an adept, compact, strong VPA with great synergy and combat power in 2025 and provide a solid prerequisite for building a revolutionary, regular, highly-skilled, and modernised VPA capable of firmly protecting the Socialist Vietnamese Fatherland in any situation as the noble mission entrusted by our Party, State, and people.

Sr. Lt. Gen. NGUYEN TAN CUONG

Member of the Party Central Committee, Member of the CMC Standing Board,

Chief of the General Staff of the VPA and Deputy Minister of National Defence