2. Building strong and stable people’s armed forces, meeting the requirements of the Homeland protection

Reality of the Vietnamese revolution in the cause of national liberation in the past and today’s Homeland protection has proved the important role and great contribution of the people’s armed forces. Under the leadership of our Party and beloved Uncle Ho, with the sound, creative political and military guidelines, the people’s armed forces have unceasingly developed, become stronger and stronger, and clinched landslide feats of arms in the national history in company with the people nationwide, namely the great August Revolution (1945), victories against the French colonialists and US imperialists as well as the protection of the socialist Vietnamese Homeland. Thus, building the people’s armed forces is a matter of paramount importance to the whole revolutionary process and each revolutionary phase, being the nucleus of our Party’s military guidelines.

With a thorough grasp of that spirit, the National Defence Strategy (NDS) continues mentioning the importance and necessity of the building of defence and security forces, with the people’s armed forces as the focus and the three-category armed forces (main force, local force, and militia and self-defence force) as the core. In this regard, special importance should be attached to building the People’s Army and the People’s Public Security, making them “revolutionary, regular, seasoned, gradually modern” under the Party’s guidelines confirmed at the 12^th National Party Congress. Since its inception and during the process of construction, combat and development, our military has always been a revolutionary army of the people, by the people and for the people, carrying the nature of the working class, the nation-ness and the people-ness. Currently, hostile forces’ acts of severe sabotage against our armed forces in a bid to depoliticize our military have necessitated us maintaining and consolidating that nature and those particularities. To make the People’s Army a loyal, reliable political force of the Party, the State and the people as well as the core in the Homeland protection cause, priority should be given to building up the revolutionary element. In addition, it is necessary to continue building a regular military, to achieve a sense of unity, and to maintain discipline and order in all military operations, especially the work of training and combat readiness. Building an elite military - a revolutionary, heroic, invincible army - is not only a goal and objective requirement, but also a desire of the entire Party and people. The Vietnam People’s Army must be a really elite army, first and foremost in the political and operational terms. To meet the increasingly higher requirements of the Homeland protection, amidst the developments of military science and technology as well as the impacts by the 4^th industrial revolution, we need to well implement the Party’s guideline on making our military gradually modern, with several forces moving forward to modernity. It could be said that the building of a revolutionary, regular, elite, gradually modern” army is a whole; each component holds its own role, but they all connect and impact one another. The successful building of such an army will ensure the People’s Army’s high-level synergy and combat strength to fulfil its functions and tasks in both peacetime and wartime. In the process, significance should be attached to building both active force and reserve force as well as to renewing the method to organize, manage, train, and ensure polices for those forces suitable for the new conditions. Beside, it is essential that we should be fully aware of the strategic role of the reserve force to pay due regard to this force and gradually narrow the qualitative gap between the reserve force and the active force.

Grasping and implementing the Party’s guideline on closely combining the defence missions and the security missions in the new situation, the NDS has stressed the enhanced coordination between the Military and the Public Security under the Government’s Decree 77/2010/NĐ-CP in order to effectively deal with the defence and security situations identified by the National Security Strategy and the NDS.

In addition to the building of the People’s Army, the NDS has referred to the necessity of making the militia and self-defence force strong and extensive as the core in performing the military mission associated with the security missions and fighting the enemy in the local people’s warfare when the country is at war.

The main elements set by the Party’s military guidelines on building the three-category armed forces have been grasped and quite sufficiently and comprehensively expressed by the NDS with new points in order to well perform the defence missions associated with the security missions in the new situation.

3. Conducting the people’s war for the Homeland protection in the new period

Reality has shown that the people’s war is not a product made by Vietnam only; it is the product made by all countries worldwide, especially by small countries against overwhelming aggressive enemies in economic and military terms. Nevertheless, Vietnamese people’s warfare has its own particularities, full of creativity, and it has become a source of great internal strength of our nation. Perhaps, due to Vietnam’s heroic tradition and intelligent, creative, courageous Vietnamese people, the Vietnamese people’s warfare is diverse and conducted not only in the national liberation wars, but also in the wars to defend the Homeland, national independence, sovereignty, unification and territorial integrity. That is why the Vietnamese people’s warfare made the enemies terrified out of their wits and was highly appreciated by all countries and those who loved peace and justice worldwide. It has really become an invaluable asset of our nation and a core element in the Party’s military guidelines.

The NDS has not mentioned specifically and comprehensively the people’s warfare; it has only emphasized the importance and ways to conduct the people’s war while continuing to confirm the Party’s consistent guideline on the people’s war against the enemy’s war of aggression. In the event of a people’s war, it will be developed to a high level with characteristics and requirements which are very different from those in our previous national liberation wars. Therefore, during the process of studying, grasping and implementing the NDS, cadres at all levels, especially those at the strategic level should firmly grasp the Party’s guidelines on the people’s warfare, particularly the military arts of the people’s war and valuable experience in reality of the previous wars to creatively and effectively apply to the new conditions. At the same time, that process will give us ideas on the guidelines and measures to build the all-people national defence and the people’s armed forces (organizational structure, equipment, etc.), meeting the requirements of the defence and security mission in the peacetime, maintaining readiness to deal with the armed conflicts and defeat the enemy’s wars of aggression on all scales and in all forms.

It is a typical feature of the Vietnamese people’s warfare that when in war, each Vietnamese person acts as a soldier, each street and canal is a combat trench, each village and hamlet is a fortification. When in war, Vietnamese people fight the enemy with all weapons and equipment in hands, including primitive, rather modern and modern ones; we fight the enemy both day and night, everywhere with various forms of operations and on proper scales. Another feature of the Vietnamese people’s warfare is its military arts including the elements of “advantage, force, opportunity, and strategy” which are effectively employed and flexibly combined. The other elements of space, time, terrain, weather, man, and materiel are employed creatively, flexible and become formidable. With an extensive, solid, and flexible posture of the people’s war as well as the Party’s clever strategy, we always take and maintain the strategic initiative while the enemy gradually falls into the passivity.

War is a duel of will between two sides; therefore, when losing the strategic initiative, one side will certainly lose. Reality of the wars, especially our war against America has clearly proved that. While the U.S. hoped to “attack quickly and win quickly” the war, we pursued a long-lasting resistance war to break their strategic plans. When the enemy escalated and expanded the war, we forced them to de-escalate the war and narrow the battlefield. While the enemy gathered their strategic forces, we compelled them to disperse and reinforce the battlefields. When the enemy relied on the superiority of weapons and equipment and wanted to conduct distant operations, we stayed close to the enemy to fight them. While the enemy desired to select plain as their main operational direction, we lured them into the area we had selected. Moreover, in our people’s war, when the opportunity came, we promoted the combined strength of the whole country and people to proactively organize decisive strategic offensives right in the plain and urban areas to quickly end the war in the most convenient way.

The most central element in the military arts of the Vietnamese people’s warfare is the way to conduct the war. It is the close combination of the conventional warfare staged by main corps and the people’s warfare by the local armed forces during the process of the war with the proper use of forces in each phase. At the onset of the war, when the enemy force is still powerful and takes the initiative, we mainly use the local armed forces (including the local force and the militia and self-defence force) with the moderate support of several units of the main force, and we take defence as the basic operational mode. In the middle and final phase of the war, when the enemy gradually become weaker and lose the initiative, we mount the joint operations with the participation of our corps in the selected strategic directions and areas associated with the widespread operations by the local armed forces in the forms of counter-attack and offensive to rapidly end the war in our favour. In that process, each force plays an important role. In the local people’s warfare, the local armed forces act as the core in fighting the enemy, launching continuous, extensive operations to annihilate the enemy and contain their planned offensive as well as to create a posture favourable for the main force’s operations. Meanwhile, the conventional warfare by the main corps, conducted in the forms of counter-attack and offensive of the people’s warfare posture, plays the most decisive role in order to annihilate a large number of the enemy troops and change the complexion of the war in our favour as the basis for the unceasing development of the local people’s warfare. Reality of our previous national liberation wars revealed that our enemy were always more powerful than us in terms of economic and military potentiality and superior to us in terms of weapons and technical equipment. Therefore, it is hard for us to win a war if we simply conduct the conventional warfare or the local people’s warfare, which necessitates us closely combining those two types of warfare to create the superiority in military strength to the enemy. Besides, it is important to closely combine military struggle with political and diplomatic struggle to achieve the synergy for the sake of the final victory; in this regard, military struggle on the battlefield holds a directly decisive role.

In the future, if we are forced to launch a people’s war against the enemy to defend the Homeland, it will be an extremely fierce clash and much more different from the previous ones due to new requirements and developments of both the enemy and our country. Thus, we must remain steadfast in the all-round, all-people warfare and flexibly apply the method to conduct the war and Vietnam’s military arts to the new conditions. It should be fully aware that we launch the people’s war with new, basic advantages clearly expressed in the following points. First, we carry out the operations in a firm posture of the people’s warfare with the provincial (municipal) defensive zones being built and consolidated in peacetime as the foundation. Second, the synergy and combat power of the people’s armed forces ceaselessly improve. Third, the close combination of defence missions and security mission with the coordination between the Military and Public Security forces as the core are strengthened to fight against the enemy from the outside and riots and conversions from the inside. Fourth, we have the clever leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam - the experienced High Command. Fifth, our people’s war is a patriotic, just war against a war of aggression, thereby taking advantage of the strength of the times and the whole nation to be victorious.

To conclude, it is clear to see that our Party’s military guidelines on building the all-people national defence, building the people’s armed forces, and carrying out the people’s war represent the crystallization of the Party’s intelligence which has been tested and proved in the previous fierce wars, and become a “manual” for our nation in the cause of national liberation. Thoroughly grasping that spirit, the NDS has institutionalized the Party’s military guidelines concisely and clearly in line with the new situation. The NDS, the National Security Strategy, and other specialized strategies act as the important basis for the entire Party, military and people to safeguard the socialist Vietnamese Homeland.

Maj. Gen. Nguyen Manh Hung

(The end)