A very important part of the conduct of the war, military art has to solve all problems relating to armed struggle. Our military art reflects the laws of revolutionary armed struggle in general and those of our fight in particular, and the relations between armed struggle and political struggle, between revolutionary war and armed uprising.
Our military art correctly determines the organic relationship and interaction between its three components: strategy, operational art and tactics, and the role of each of them. Strategy plays the leading role. A correct strategy creates basic conditions for the fulfilment of operational and tactical missions. Conversely, only by satisfactorily solving tactical and operational problems and fulfilling combat tasks can strategic objectives be attained.
1. Our military art is first and foremost the military art of a war fought by the entire people. In his appeal of December 1946, President Ho Chi Minh said:
“Men and women, old and young, regardless of religious creed, political affiliation and nationality, all Vietnamese must stand up to fight the French colonialists to save the Fatherland! Those who have rifles will use their rifles, those who have swords will use their swords! Those who have no swords will use spades, hoes or sticks!”
Our military art directs the operational activity of the people’s army and, at the same time, the military activity of the entire people in arms. It must correctly determine the task of the armed forces and armed struggle in the national war waged by our people. Parallel with the annihilation of the enemy’s military forces, armed struggle must constantly create favourable conditions for the establishment and development of political bases, step up the political struggle of the masses and agitation work among enemy troops and pave the way for mass uprisings. Moreover, armed struggle must take the utmost advantage of the success of political struggle and agitation work. To this end the armed forces must grasp the tasks and requirements of the political struggle in each locality and actively support them.
Therefore, as we have stressed, the close combination of military with political struggle, of combat task with agitation work, of the annihilation of the enemy’s military forces with the mobilization of the masses to wrest power, has long been a principle governing the operational direction of our armed forces.
The core of our people’s war is constituted by the people’s army with its three categories of troops. Only by closely combining the operational activities of regular forces, regional forces and self-defence militia, by combining guerilla warfare with regular warfare and small engagements with medium-scale and big operations can we maintain and intensify the revolutionary war until victory.
2. If our conduct of the war is imbued with a strategy of offensive, our military art is also essentially an art of offensive. It is the art of offensive of the armed forces.
In armed struggle, we try to attack the enemy as hard as we can, resolutely, unremittingly, allsidedly with all forces, with all weapons, in all forms of tactical and operational engagements, on all scales, in all places and at all times. Mobilizing the armed forces and the entire people for the fighting, our military art brings into play all our fortes and strikes at the weak points of the adversary, each time creating a relation of forces in our favour which enables us to attack the enemy and develop our offensive posture in the whole theatre of war. As regards combat methods, they include attack and defence, but attack is the chief means. When necessary, in certain places, and at certain times, defence is carried out to support attack but it is only partial and aims at enabling the bulk of our forces to launch an offensive; it is only a temporary means used to create conditions for switching over to attack. All defence tasks should be achieved with a dynamic, firm and persevering spirit with the constant aim of seeking to attack the adversary.
Animated by this offensive spirit, our military art aims at turning to full account the moral factor, the political superiority, the courage and resourcefulness of our people, of our closely united nation with its high political awareness, its traditions of fearless struggle and its military gifts. It develops the strong points of the socialist regime and of a just war waged on our own land, makes the best use of all modern and rudimentary weapons, devises highly efficient combat methods to defeat an aggressive army superior in number and technique, but plagued by basic weaknesses in the political, moral and even military fields. While enhancing the revolutionary consciousness, the courage and intelligence of our men, correctly handling the relationship between man and weaponry, laying stress on the human factor, the political and moral factor, and nevertheless attaching great importance to weapons, to the material and technical factor, our military art has infused our armed forces and people with an ever higher dynamic and with huge offensive capabilities.
3. Our military art is the art of “defeating a big force with a smaller one.” At all times, national wars have set our nation an imperative strategic objective: to defeat an enemy having a huge army and an economic and military potential many times superior to ours. In face of this requirement, our forefathers mastered the art of “pitting a weak force against a stronger one”, of “defeating a big force with a smaller one”, of “winning great battles with small armies” in order to get the upper hand of huge aggressor armies or even, at times, wipe them out wholesale. With the present disparity of forces, especially in manpower and technical equipment, we must, now more than ever, try to “defeat a big force by using a smaller one.”
In this spirit, on the operational and tactical planes we must know how to defeat an enemy superior in number and armament, and to concentrate our forces to annihilate him when necessary. To crush a big force with a smaller one means to win significant success over it with a lesser force, which does not exclude medium-scale and great battles. With only a smaller force, our forefathers often wiped out in a single engagement thousands and even tens of thousands of enemy troops. With small but seasoned units our Southern army and people have annihilated or put out of action, in a single battle, one regiment or even one brigade, or destroyed tens of aircraft, hundreds of armoured vehicles, thousands and tens of thousands of tons of fuel and munitions. Likewise, in the North, in many engagements we have opposed small units of militia, A.A. artillery or air force to important air force units of the enemy and downed his planes with but little ammunition.
When concentration of forces is needed, we must know how to deploy and use them in a most rational way to obtain a maximum striking power in order to crush the adversary by sweeping offensives. Our operational conduct requires that in each battle we must fight from a position of strength, achieve superiority, create a global force stronger than that of the enemy so as to wipe him out, by adequately organizing our forces, bringing into full play our courage and resourcefulness, making the best use of our armaments, choosing an ingenious and efficient combat method, securing and maintaining such conditions as to check the enemy’s power and favourite combat methods, drive important hostile forces into passivity and expose them to our blows.
4. One of the leading principles of our military art is to try by every means to annihilate the enemy. Fighting him with a high offensive spirit and a small force, we must attain the goal of all operational activity: to wipe out the hostile military forces.
Parallel with the destruction and attrition of small detachments of the enemy by guerilla warfare throughout the war theatre, our regular armed forces must resolutely smash ever more important enemy forces. They must be determined to shatter ever bigger units of the enemy, capture prisoners, seize weapons and control the battlefield while suffering but minimum losses.
The hostile military forces include manpower, war means and rear-bases. While manpower is the essential element, war means and rear-bases also constitute very important components of imperialist armies. While annihilating the enemy’s manpower, we must destroy his war means and rear-bases, especially the more important ones.
Our armed forces must co-ordinate their action with our political forces to crush his administration at all levels, smash his local apparatus of coercion, and disintegrate his armed “civilian” organizations.
By destroying and disintegrating his military and political forces (both regular and regional troops), his manpower, war means and rear-bases, shattering both his ordinary and his crack units, we can weaken the enemy in every respect. With a small force we can deal him very hard blows, inflict upon him very heavy losses, check his strong points, and thwart his favourite combat methods, thereby vigorously pushing ahead our all-out war of resistance. This is also the most rational and efficient way to defeat an enemy having a huge manpower and an abundant modern equipment.
5. Our military art is that of fighting with dynamic and initiative, determination and flexibility, resourcefulness and creativeness, making the best use of secrecy and surprise.
Fired with a high offensive spirit, our armed forces and people constantly display zeal and initiative, seek out the enemy to go at him and fight him with determination, always starting from a posture of strength.
Each combat action of our armed forces and people is inspired by general rules from our military art; however, the war unfolds in a most diverse and changing way according to each stage and the concrete situation of each theatre of operations as regards troop numbers, population, terrain and climate. So our military art requires much resourcefulness and creativeness. Only by bringing them into full play on the basis of the thoroughly revolutionary spirit of the proletariat, of ardent love for the fatherland and socialism, can we carry into effect the offensive spirit and the principle of defeating a big force with a smaller one in all circumstances.
In our military art, now as in the past, secrecy and surprise constitute a striking feature. Animated by a firm determination to destroy the enemy, knowing how to rely on the population and having a high sense of discipline, our armed forces always operate unexpectedly concerning the direction of attack, targets, time, deployment of troops, size of the engagement, combat methods, etc. While refuting the imperialists’ thesis according to which “surprise decides the outcome of a war”, we nevertheless set great store by the surprise element for the annihilation of the enemy. In strategy as well as in tactics, it has enabled our armed forces and people to win great victories.
Based on all those conceptions, the art of people’s war has successfully solved many problems of strategy, operational conduct and tactics, by adapting itself to the specific conditions of each of our wars of liberation or national defence.
1. First, we must vigorously impel the operational activity of the three categories of troops serving as the core of people’s war, and wage both guerilla and regular warfare by closely combining them in the most efficient way.
While co-ordination between armed forces and political forces, between armed struggle and political struggle and between revolutionary war and armed uprising, is the main content of the method of conducting the war in the field of armed struggle, coordination between guerilla and regular warfare is the fundamental content of the art of mobilizing the entire people to fight.
Guerilla warfare is the form of armed struggle of the large masses of people. The entire people up in arms: this characteristic of our people’s war makes guerilla warfare develop extensively, deeply, vigorously and multifariously.
Using guerilla fighting, the various popular strata and ethnic groups fight the enemy in their own localities, with all weapons and means available, in all places and at all times. Hence, guerilla warfare develops a great strategic action by wearing down and destroying the enemy’s forces, dispersing them to the utmost and upsetting their strategic battle-array, while creating an advantageous strategic posture for us, and protecting and tempering the revolutionary masses. Not only is guerilla warfare of great strategic importance, it has also a great revolutionary significance: it enables the revolutionary masses to start partial uprisings and wrest back power at grassroots level.
At the start, when the revolutionary people launch partial uprisings they have only small armed forces and can only wage guerilla warfare. To maintain our offensive posture and foil the enemy’s counter-offensives, we must unceasingly widen guerilla warfare and partial uprisings, build an ever stronger regular army from regional forces, and pass from guerilla to regular warfare. Only regular warfare – in which regular troops, co-ordinating the actions of various arms in great battles, co-operate with regional troops, militia and guerilla units and the political forces of the entire people – can wipe out sizable forces of the enemy, liberate vast areas and win greater and greater successes, thus creating conditions for the war to develop by leaps and bounds.
In our revolutionary war, guerilla warfare constitutes the basis of regular warfare. Regular warfare must always be closely co-ordinated with guerilla warfare and foil all the enemy’s efforts so as to help guerilla warfare maintain and develop. Only when guerilla warfare expands can regular warfare fully develop and progress. The close co-ordination between the three categories of troops, the mutual support between the two forms of warfare and their co-ordination with political struggle and other aspects of the struggle contribute to the vigorous expansion of the might of people’s war.
Guerilla warfare must advance to regular warfare and the two must be closely co-ordinated. This is a general law of our protracted revolutionary war. The problem in the conduct of the war is to know when and where to turn guerilla warfare into regular warfare, to closely and appropriately co-ordinate them in each period and on each battlefield so as to enable them to develop unceasingly and increase their strategic efficacy.
Should the enemy venture to invade North Viet Nam, our three categories of troops being ready, regular warfare and guerilla warfare would be fought simultaneously right from the beginning in close co-ordination with each other.
2. To enable all combat forces to develop their fighting ability to the fullest extent, it is necessary to build an advantageous strategic posture. The development of guerilla and regular warfare, together with political struggle and armed uprising, creates favourable conditions for the building of an advantageous strategic posture. To build a favourable strategic posture for us, and drive the enemy into a disadvantageous strategic posture, is a most important problem in military art.
The strategic forces of each belligerent need to be appropriately deployed in order to develop their power fully. Imperialism wages its wars of aggression with regular armies abundantly provided with modern armaments and technical means on a large scale. These forces must be deployed on a definite frontline. In our revolutionary war, we rely on the strength of the whole country, with the people’s armed forces as the core, to fight the aggressor on our own soil. Mobilizing our entire people, we therefore create a political and military encirclement and offensive right in the areas occupied by the enemy. By co-ordinating political struggle with armed struggle, armed uprising with revolutionary war, guerilla warfare with regular warfare, and by coordinating our activities in the three strategic zones: mountain regions, plains, and cities, we create a posture in which the forces of the two sides are interlocked like the hair with the teeth of a comb.
The enemy’s modern armies are sliced up, surrounded and attacked from all sides and everywhere; he can find no safe place in a war with no frontline, no rear, no definite fireline but with an ubiquitous battlefield. Engulfed in the ocean of people’s war, the enemy gets his ears stopped and his eyes blindfolded, hits only vacuums and cannot apply his favourite combat methods. His forces are dispersed and weakened. His numerous troops and abundant material fail to give the expected results. Conversely, our armed and political forces can besiege the enemy, attack him and rise up everywhere. Thus they can engage in vigorous action, keep constant initiative and successfully attack at the place and time of their choice.
Therefore, despite his superiority in manpower and material, the enemy is incapable of putting up a solid defence everywhere. His dispersed and passive strategic battle-array shows many weak points and shortcomings. Relying on their advantageous strategic posture, our armed forces and people can field appropriate forces to deal him unexpected and hard blows.
In the course of development of our armed and political forces, the three categories of troops take shape and grow up in all theatres of operations. To defeat an adversary having a high mobility, we must deploy our regular troops, regional forces and political forces and closely co-ordinate their action in vital strategic places. With such a posture, we can at will deal hard blows at the enemy on important theatres while he is assailed wherever he sets foot. Despite the adversary’s modern means of transportation, our troops, operating on their own soil, are more combat-ready. Thanks to this disposition, when American troops landed in force to invade our country in 1965, our armed forces and people immediately attacked them wherever they set foot, developing an offensive strategy which caused heavy losses to the enemy and foiled his two dry-season counteroffensives.
3. Judiciously to determine the direction and time of the offensive.
With a given force, if we attack in a certain direction, we can wipe out a given enemy force, but the effect on the situation as a whole may be only mediocre, success being at best tactical or operational; on the other hand, if we attack in another direction, our blows can be highly effective and we can win a success of strategic significance. Our people’s armed struggle is rich in examples of victories due to the judicious determination of the direction of attack in uprising and war. The choice of the direction of strategic attack is a great problem of military art.
The choice of the time of attack, together with that of the direction of attack has a decisive impact in uprising and a great importance in war. We must attack the enemy when his forces are dispersed, when he is not on his guard or when he is in a fix. As he cannot cope with the situation he can be easily annihilated.
4. To choose the most effective combat methods while determining the most appropriate forms of organization and methods of using our forces.
Together with the determination of strategic tasks, we must apply combat methods and forms of using our forces that are suited for each situation and for the balance of forces and other strategic conditions in each period.
During the preparation of the August Revolution, to promote guerilla warfare which had become a strategic task, our Party elaborated appropriate combat methods (“dispersal or regrouping according to circumstances”, “ambush”, “surprise attack”) and appropriate forms of organization (clandestine armed groups, guerilla detachments).
In the first years of the war of resistance against the French colonialists, to promote and step up guerilla warfare behind the enemy’s lines we adopted armed propaganda and guerilla activities of various scopes with such organizational forms as armed propaganda platoons, autonomous companies and mobile battalions. Step by step we mounted small operations by regular regiments in co-ordination with regional forces, while in the enemy’s rear we launched guerilla operations. Later, we engaged in operations of a larger scale with mobile warfare and attacks on fortified positions in co-ordination with guerilla activities. To apply these combat methods, regular troops were organized into divisions (mainly composed of infantry) operating in co-ordination with specialized arms.
In South Viet Nam, during their operations and uprisings, our armed forces and people have worked out multifarious combat methods, highly efficient and thoroughly suited for the situation of the theatre of operations. In the course of the war, there have gradually appeared many kinds of operations with a newer and newer content: guerilla operations and regular troops’ campaign in co-ordination with regional armed forces and political forces of the masses, attacking the enemy in all strategic sectors. To apply these combat methods, there is an adequate organization and use of forces.
In North Viet Nam, the ingenious combat methods of the anti-aircraft forces belonging to the three categories of troops and their appropriate organization and use have greatly contributed to the victory over the US war of destruction.
Thus, with appropriate combat methods, appropriate organization and use of forces, we can successfully carry out our strategic tasks.
By determining suitable combat methods in a timely way, we can increase the capacities of our forces to attack and destroy the enemy, thwart his combat methods and tactics, and foil his strategic plans and designs. It is important to co-ordinate the various combat methods cleverly and in a way suited to the specific conditions of any given place, time and stage of the war. We must direct the evolution of these methods and replace the obsolete ones when necessary. The organization and execution of operations and combats must unceasingly develop; we must turn to advantage the experience acquired while watching out for all eventual changes and constantly relying on practice to improve our strategic, operational and tactical direction. We should neither make use of old experiences in a mechanical way nor cling to obsolete combat methods.
It is also important to satisfactorily settle the problem of organization and use of forces. By constantly improving the organization of forces to suit the requirements of combat methods, we have a good organizational basis on which to apply the latter on the battlefield. At present, with ever-growing political awareness of our armed forces and population and the building up of their technical equipment, our combat methods as well as our organization and use of forces become richer and more fecund in content day after day. The co-ordination of various arms gives birth to more and more efficient forms. We must direct the organization and use of forces in such a way as to bring into full play the role of each service, each arm as well as each category of troops in order to meet the ever-growing combat requirements.
5. Unceasingly to raise to the utmost the combat efficiency of our armed forces.
In the wars we have fought, the imperialist aggressors have set in motion a huge war machinery but have not been able to fulfil their strategic tasks, and finally have been beaten. On the battlefield they usually deploy big forces but fail to wipe out ours and achieve their operational goals. For our part, in various circumstances, we have victoriously fought against more numerous and better equipped forces, annihilated them and thwarted their plans, inflicting upon them very heavy losses. The enemy cannot bring into play his combat efficiency while we can develop ours.
The reason is that the organization of our forces is rational, their numbers adequate and their quality high, that we have acquired an advantageous posture, and that we possess ingenious and efficient combat methods which enable us to bring into full play our might and exploit the enemy’s weaknesses. We prevent him from developing his efficiency by fighting with initiative and energy, determination and flexibility, secrecy and suddenness.
Our blows hit home and annihilate his forces, while he strikes at vacuums and cannot destroy us, the efficiency of his troops not being in proportion to their numbers.
To assess the combat efficiency of troops, we must not base ourselves solely on the results of each battle. For there are key-battles in which the enemy must be wiped out at any cost whatever the difficulties may be, because they pave the way for the victory of a whole campaign. These victorious battles have a great efficiency.
The above-mentioned problems have been set and solved in our national history. To fight small engagements before waging great battles in order to win the final victory in a protracted war; to co-ordinate small engagements fought by regional forces with great battles fought by the army; to seek by all means to build an advantageous posture in the war so as to weaken then annihilate a stronger adversary; to choose the propitious direction and moment to deal the decisive blow; to apply bold combat methods, rapidly move an army to suddenly strike a decisive blow at the enemy’s nerve centres so as to win great lightning victories: such are the striking features of the military art of Ly Thuong Kiet, Tran Hung Dao, Le Loi, Nguyen Trai, Nguyen Hue. Our military art has inherited the military knowledge and skill of our people and raised them to a higher level, thus imparting an invincible strength to people’s war.
*
* *
Those are the main content, the leading thought and principles, the problems and rules in the conduct of the war and the military art of our people, derived from the practice of combat during the last decades. Closely related to one another and forming an indivisible whole, these problems are essentially experiences of national-liberation war.
War is the fiercest test of strength between the forces of two sides in concrete objective conditions. Our Party has made a thorough analysis of the objective conditions of war, accurately assessed our forces and those of the enemy, elaborated the laws of development of war, successfully applied our mode of conduct of war and our military art, and played a decisive role in the victorious confrontation of our people with the aggressor armies of three imperialist powers.
Correct appraisal of the enemy’s forces and our own is a fundamental problem. A great achievement of our Party is its ability to assess the relation of forces between the enemy and us in a scientific way, and to do it in concrete situations and specific circumstances.
The assessment of the relation of forces in presence must be multi-sided and go deep into the essence of things: on the military and political planes, in quantity and quality; it must take into account not only the strength of the army but also that of the revolutionary people; it must discern not only the enemy’s fortes and our weaknesses, but also all our fortes and all his weak points.
The appraisal of the fighting capacity of the two parties must be based not only on the forces in presence, but also on their respective strategic postures, not only on each side’s strength and posture, but also on its combat efficiency; not only on the forces in presence in the whole of the operational theatre but also those in each regional theatre. The relation of forces between us and the enemy must be assessed not only in Viet Nam but also in the world. Only an appraisal made on all planes enables us to accurately assess the capacity of each party and to use all our potential on the battlefield.
The assessment of the relation of forces must be dialectic, and we must foresee all the changes and leaps likely to happen in the course of the war.
It is of great importance that, together with this assessment, we accurately appraise the conduct of the war by each belligerent, confront the incomparable effects of our correct line with those of the enemy’s erroneous line, the effects of our superior military art with those of his reactionary and obsolete military art.
It is on the basis of this objective appraisal of the enemy and ourselves made according to a correct view-point that our Party has led our people to rise up against the aggressor and brought into full play its talents in the conduct of the war so as to win victory.
In the wars waged in our country, the two sides rely on different forces, have different fortes and weaknesses, excel in different methods of struggle and have different strategic plans.
The striking feature in our conduct of the war is that we know how to develop our might and carry out our methods of struggle, prevent the enemy from developing his might and carrying out his favourite methods of struggle, directly hit his weak points with our strong points, gradually wipe out his forces and foil all his strategic schemes on an ever larger scale eventually to defeat him completely.
Faced with our Party’s superior military line and correct conduct of the war, faced with our people’s invincible force, the enemy is at last driven to impotence. He wants a lightning war but must fight a long war. He wants to combat on definite frontlines but must accept a war in which the belligerent forces imbricate. He wants to keep the initiative, bring his might to bear and make war on his terms, but must passively cope with our might and our combat methods. He wants to launch offensives, but must act on the defensive. He wants to annihilate our forces, but his own are wiped out. He wants to destroy our potential by force, but his own is seriously worn down. His strategic goals founder one after another in an ever more lamentable way. The more efforts he makes, the more setbacks he suffers; the more he escalates, the heavier his failure. And so it goes until his final defeat.
Thus a big nation having a considerable force of aggression with a modem equipment may be perfectly beaten by a small but resolute people with ingenious and efficient combat methods, a people who are courageous and intelligent, are determined to fight and know how to fight.
US imperialism now sees its military theses collapse: “Numbers decide victory”, “equipment and armaments make victory”, “the air force is the decisive factor”. Gone is the myth of the “fantastic might” of the US army.
With an appropriate mode of conduct of the war and military art, the Vietnamese people have won great victories, brilliantly materializing this genial thought expressed by Engels 120 years ago:
“…A people eager to wrest back independence should not confine themselves to routine modes of war prosecution. Mass insurrection, revolutionary warfare, ubiquitous guerilla detachments, such is the only method which makes it possible for a small nation to beat a bigger one, a weaker army to resist a stronger and better organized one.”(1)
(1) Engels: Setbacks of the Piedmontese people, Neue Rheinish Zeitung, 1849.
Previous: V - MODE OF CONDUCTING THE WAR
Next: VII - THE LEADERSHIP OF THE PARTY, THE ESSENTIAL FACTOR OF VICTORY