Promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law is one of three breakthroughs that the 11th Military Party Congress continues to identify with a view to ceaselessly enhancing overall quality and combat power of the entire military. This is a consistent and important measure. If the measure is carried out well, it will provide the solid foundation and strength to build a revolutionary, regular, elite, modern People’s Army capable of meeting the requirement to safeguard the Fatherland in any situations. On clearly perceiving this role, over the past few years, the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Ministry of National Defence (MND) have focused on leading and directing the whole military to adopt synchronous, radical solutions to enhance quality of promoting good order and discipline and have achieved many prominent results, bringing about drastic, comprehensive changes.

On the basis of functions, missions, and practical situations, strategic advisory bodies of the MND have proactively studied and advised the CMC and MND to amend, improve, and promulgate many directives, documents, materials, and regulations on promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law and instructed uniform implementation in the entire military. Party committees and commanders of departments, units, and colleges in the military have had a lot of innovation in leadership and direction, ensuring closeness, comprehensiveness, focus, and drastic changes. The role of party organisations, authorities, and unions have been leveraged. Political education, ideological leadership, and discipline management have been carried out effectively. Importance has been attached to emulation, building of exemplary units in every aspect, and summation, thus creating overall power in promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law. In fact, awareness, responsibility, and compliance with discipline and law of cadres and soldiers have been improved. Order and discipline in every department and unit have been maintained strictly and seriously. Compliance with discipline and law in recruitment, training, combat readiness, defence production, etc., have witnessed positive, steady changes. Most of cadres and soldiers are self-aware to abide by military discipline and state law and dedicated to building of departments and units. Discipline violations are less than 0.2%. Cadres and soldiers are united in performing assigned duties and missions. The image, quality, and tradition of “Uncle Ho’s Soldiers” in the new era are brought into play, contributing to increased prestige and position of the military.

Apart from achievements, the quality and effectiveness of promoting good order and discipline in some departments and units have not been stable. Violations of serious discipline have not been prevented effectively, affecting task performance of departments, units, and the military.

Sr. Lt. Gen. Nguyen Tan Cuong checks regularity building at Battalion 8, Regiment 98, Division 316 (Photo credit: qdnd.vn)

In the coming time, together with multidimensional, complex influence of international, regional, domestic situation, hostile forces will exploit difficulties in social life, shortcomings of the market mechanism, and cadres’ and soldiers’ limitations in abiding by discipline and law to incite sabotage with the aim of undermining prestige and position of the military. Meanwhile, the building of the People’s Army, strengthening of national defence, and protection of the Fatherland place increasingly high requirements. The situation requires the entire military, together with stepping up work aspects, to make further breakthroughs in promoting good order, compliance with discipline and law, and combat power in order to complete all assigned missions successfully, most notably the following fundamental solutions.

First, party committees and commanders at all echelons are to enhance leadership, direction, and management of promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law. Promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law is both a content, requirement, principle of building the People’s Army, and factor that fosters the military’s comprehensive quality, combat power, accomplishment of assigned tasks, and solid foundation for advancing to modernity. Therefore, party committees and commanders at all levels in the military need to grasp the position, role, and importance of this work deeply; regularly review and correctly assess situations and outcomes of promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law in their departments and units; clearly identify solutions to lead, direct, and coordinate implementation of this work in their annual, quarterly, monthly resolutions, working plans of commanders at all echelons, and plans to build comprehensively strong, exemplary, representative units. They are also to attach importance to inspection and supervision; regularly conduct preliminary summing-up and summation to assess their leadership and direction while drawing lessons learnt and proposing subsequent leadership measures; focus on addressing shortcomings and weaknesses, especially in departments and units with poor results of promoting good order and discipline, striving for equality and sustainability in the entire military. Party committees and commanders at all levels must successfully bring into play the role and responsibility of the system of party, command, mass organisations as well as responsibility of the corps of cadres and party members in the spirit of “seven dares”; combine building of comprehensively strong, exemplary, representative departments and units with making party organisations pure, strong, and representative and mass organisations strong and excellent; take result of promoting good order and discipline as a vital criterion for evaluating emulation and praising, rewarding, and grading collectives and individuals every year. It is necessary to closely combine leadership of making a breakthrough in promoting good order and discipline with adjusting organisations and staffing and improving training quality, thereby creating drastic, comprehensive, robust changes in building departments and units as well as enhancement of comprehensive quality and combat power.

Second, there is a need to step up education aimed at raising cadres’ and soldiers’ awareness and responsibility for promoting good order and compliance with law and discipline. Party committees and commanders at all echelons in the military need to focus on leadership of good implementation of propagation and education in order to make soldiers deeply aware of the significance, importance, and necessity of making a breakthrough in improving quality of promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law. They are to attach importance to education about military, defence guidelines of the Party; perspective on building an elite, compact, strong, modern military; regulations, rules, resolutions, directives, and documents about promoting good order, compliance with discipline and law, and ensuring safety, most notably Directive No. 79/CT-BQP, dated 22 July 2022, of the Minister of National Defence on building comprehensively strong, exemplary, representative units, Directive No. 103/CT-BQP, dated 28 November 2019, of the Minister of National Defence on “Further strengthening management and education about discipline compliance as well as safety assurance in Viet Nam People’s Army,” thus fostering suitable motives, responsibility, and resolve to carry out this work effectively in departments and units.

Party committees and commanders at all echelons must actively reform content, forms, and methods to conduct propagation and education in a practical, effective direction conducive to missions of units as well as characteristics and competence of learners; attach importance to inclusion of new content, documents, materials, and information in educational processes; combine the role of functional departments of the General Political Departments and General Staff in leadership, direction, inspection, and supervision of educational content and methods with enhancing propagation effectiveness of newspapers and television and radio companies in the military and beyond. They are also to well leverage the role and responsibility of political departments and cadres at all echelons, especially the corps of commissars, for propagandising and educating cadres and soldiers about promoting good order and compliance with law and discipline. There is a need to combine political education with popularisation and education about laws as well as education about missions and traditions. Education according to the basic military training – political, legal education programme must be combined with education through workplace realities. Party committees and commanders at all echelons should step up guiding ideology and public opinions to prevent adverse influence from social networks as well as through discipline violations and losses of safety in the entire military, thereby creating drastic changes in cadres’ and soldiers’ awareness, responsibility, and actions to promote good order and discipline compliance in departments and units; step up making a breakthrough in enhancing junior officers’ knowledge, skills, and methods to maintain good order, conduct legal education and management, and command soldiers, meeting the requirement of building a regular military advancing to modernity.

Third, it is necessary to focus on raising quality of promoting good order and discipline. This is a vital content and measure to directly enhance degree of regularity and sustainability of compliance with discipline and law in each department, unit, and the military. Consequently, party committees and commanders at all echelons need to make every effort to adopt synchronous, drastic measures to carry out this important work.

Regarding promoting good order, the entire military continues to build regular, exemplary departments, units, and schools, ensuring uniformity and synchronicity of both organisation, staffing, weapons, equipment, clothing, command, control, regulation, and rule; ensuring comprehensive regularity in all working aspects such as staff, politics, logistics, techniques, finance, etc., and in combat readiness, training, conduct of exercises, education, study, work, and life. There is a need to implement daily, weekly work items in a regular, effective manner; improve quality of meeting at all echelons; enhance training to build regular, scientific working methods and styles and leverage the vanguard, exemplary role of cadres at all levels under the motto: “the higher echelons set an example for the lower echelons, cadres set an example for soldiers, departments set an example for units.” All actions and deeds must be uniform as stipulated by regulations and rules of the military and units. Inspection of emulation carried out by departments of units is to be closely combined with inspection, supervision, and re-examination by functional bodies of the MND, thereby timely rectifying and addressing weaknesses and ensuring that the building of good order in the entire military is effective, practical, equal, and sustainable.

As for compliance with discipline and law, party committees and commanders at all levels need to further grasp the Regulation on management of military personnel’s ideology and adopt measures to perceive, manage, and predict evolution of ideology and discipline compliance; anticipate potential complexity; have a good understanding of violations to proactively prevent and respond to situations right at the grassroots level in a timely, effective manner. During implementation, they should stick to realities and specific missions of each unit; closely combine building with countering, in which building is primary while countering is important; take education, persuasion, and prevention as the main method; take the positives as a means to push back the negatives; punish violations of discipline, law, and traffic safety in a strict, democratic, public, transparent manner without exceptions; seriously pursue the regime of cadres’ liable responsibility as provided by regulations and law. Departments, units, and schools must work closely with relevant departments of the MND, local party committees and authorities, and other units deployed in their areas to find out suitable, effective preventive measures. When problems occur, they must be dealt with timely and thoroughly to prevent hostile forces from exploiting these affairs to conduct acts of sabotage, creating adverse public opinions and undermining prestige and position of the military. Special importance should be attached to inspection committees’ examination and supervision at all echelons aimed to timely prevent violations of discipline and law, striving for zero-serious violation and less 0.2% punishment cases. Moreover, there is a need to bring into play and align responsibility of party committees and commanders at all echelons, especially that of leading cadres and commissars, with results of education and compliance with discipline and law; step up measures to establish a healthy military cultural environment; pay attention to provision of good material, spiritual life, thus making cadres and soldiers keep their mind on their work and building of departments and units.

Fourth, it is necessary to accelerate practical summation and theoretical development in promoting good order and managing discipline and law. Currently, practical operations of the People’s Army are considerably influenced by the social environment; always evolve and face emerging new issues. Meanwhile, due to different characteristics, natures, missions, deployment areas, departments and units have an increasingly high requirement for promoting good order and discipline management. Therefore, party committees and commanders of departments, units, and schools need to deeply grasp these characteristics, functions, missions, goals, and requirements, which provides the foundation for leading and directing good implementation of practical summation and theoretical development in this vital work. Accordingly, the preliminary summing-up and summation held by organisations of units must focus on the grassroots level and base on grassroots realities. The assessment of one working aspect among the overall working aspects or one standard among standards for building monthly, quarterly, annual, periodical comprehensively strong, exemplary, representative units is to be combined with in-depth, specific preliminary summing-up and summation of promoting good order and compliance with discipline and law. During the implementation process, there is a need to assess outcomes, limitations, and causes objectively and honestly to draw lessons learnt, thus laying the basis for proposing solutions to further enhance quality of promoting good order and managing discipline and law.

Additionally, attention should be paid to systematic, in-depth research, correct evaluation of the nature and laws, prediction about positive, negative factors, and proposal on bold, science-based ideas and measures, suitable to new organisation, staffing, weapons, and equipment as well as characteristics and missions of the People’s Army and State law, meeting both short- and long-term requirements. Theoretical development should also be selectively drawn on foreign militaries’ experience in promoting good order and managing ideology and discipline in order to expand ideas into scientific projects, approved by scientific councils at all levels, before being put into training process to ensure uniform implementation in the entire military, contribution to enhanced comprehensive quality and combat power, and the military’s successful accomplishment of all assigned tasks.

Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Tan Cuong, Member of the Party Central Committee, Member of the Standing Committee of the Central Military Commission, Chief of the General Staff, Deputy Minister of National Defence