Under the Party’s leadership and through combat practice, we have succeeded in working out a mode of conducting the war and a military art which display high effectiveness and rich content.
These are a mode of conducting the war and a military art that are adapted to people’s war waged in all fields by a nation not very large in size and not very numerous in population against aggressive armies of big imperialist powers. They consist for a long period in staging armed uprising and waging revolutionary war, resolutely attacking the enemy with armed and political forces in both town and countryside; annihilating enemy forces while striving to win and keep sovereignty for the people so as to maintain and increase our potential and score successes as we fight on; driving the enemy back step by step and destroying his forces piecemeal so as eventually to defeat him completely; essentially relying on our own forces, bringing into full play our just cause and the propitious conditions deriving from the fact that this is a national war fought on our own soil, while striving to win the sympathy, support and help of the other peoples and turning to account the favourable factors of our time. All these combined forces of people’s war make it possible for us to defeat the enemy and liberate and defend our land.
1. To wage a war that is fought by the entire people in all fields; to combine armed with political forces, armed with political struggle, armed uprising with revolutionary war.
Imperialism relies on its armies to invade our country and try to rule over our people. To defeat it, we must arm the entire people, organize armed forces and wage an armed struggle. However, in order to bring into full play the immense power of the entire people against an enemy who, although possessed of a huge and well-equipped army, is waging a war of aggression, an unjust war, and is rent by contradictions and affected by many weaknesses, we must fight him in all fields, – not only military, but also political, economic, cultural and diplomatic – and use various forms of struggle of which the most fundamental ones are armed and political struggle. To combine armed with political forces, armed with political struggle, armed uprising with revolutionary war – there lies the essential content of our mode of conducting the war, a war fought by the entire people in all fields.
In the course of our long history, while fielding regular armies, our forefathers already knew how to mobilize the masses against foreign aggressors, and to combine actions by the armed forces with struggles and uprisings by the population. At present, under the Party’s leadership, our people have made considerable progress along that line.
Armed fighting is a fundamental form of struggle. It plays a decisive role and has a direct bearing on the destruction of the enemy’s military forces. Besides it must defend the people and be associated with uprisings and political struggles by the popular masses. The fiercer the war grows, the more the enemy intensifies the use of his armed forces, the more importance armed fighting assumes. We must destroy the hostile forces and foil their strategic plans. Military victory is indispensable for the success of the resistance.
Political action, the other fundamental form of struggle, is the basis on which to develop armed fighting and at the same time a mode of offensive against the enemy. It mobilizes and organizes the people, and involves them in combat, passing from lower to higher forms. It unmasks the enemy and foils his political machinations, disperses and weakens his armed forces, upsets his rear area, protects the life and work of the people, safeguards the political bases of the revolution. In uprisings and in war, political action never ceases to be closely allied with armed fighting and to evolve into armed fighting. The people’s political forces gradually progress from the ordinary forms of political action to armed uprising and, hand in hand with the armed forces, decide the outcome of the war.
The combination of political with armed forces, of political action with armed fighting, of armed insurrection with revolutionary war, is the general rule of the use of revolutionary violence in our country. At certain times, the political forces play the main role, relying on support by the armed forces and combining political action with armed fighting in order to launch a popular uprising in the whole country; at other times, the armed forces play the major part, serving as the core of the entire people involved in fighting and combining armed with political struggle in order to wage a protracted people’s war; at other times still, armed and political forces are brought into play parallelly and simultaneously, armed action is associated with political struggle and armed insurrection with revolutionary war in a single and complex process.
In August 1945, the powerful political forces of the people, leaning on the liberation armed forces, launched a general insurrection to seize power all over the country, in both town and countryside. “The success of the August Revolution was fundamentally due to the fact that the people’s political forces seized the favourable opportunity in a timely way to launch insurrection and win power. But if our Party had not built armed forces and set up solid resistance bases to support these forces and the political struggle, and, conditions having grown ripe, if it had not rapidly started an armed uprising, it would not have been possible for the revolution to triumph so quickly.”(1)
In the first war of resistance, the entire people rose up, with the popular armed forces serving as the core, for armed fighting was essential. The armed forces passed from guerilla to regular warfare, associating ever more closely their operations with the political struggle and partial insurrections of the masses in the enemy’s rear area. The revolutionary masses, both rural and urban, confronted old colonialism with various forms of struggle: struggle against terror and massacre, against bombing, strafing and plunder, against press-ganging of soldiers and labourers; struggle waged by women to demand the return of their forcibly drafted sons and husbands, agitation among puppet troops to win them over to the ranks of the revolution...; and lastly, combination of armed fighting with political agitation and partial insurrections to overthrow the local enemy administrations in the countryside.
At present in the South, the association of armed with political struggle, of armed insurrection with revolutionary war, is carried out at another level and in new historical conditions. The aim is to topple neo-colonialist domination, and foil the neo-colonialist war of aggression waged by American imperialism. The war waged by the entire people in all fields has been brought to a very high level. All the people in the South participate in the struggle; they attack the Americans and the puppet administration and army with both military and political means, and carry out both revolutionary war and mass uprising.
As it extends, the revolutionary war reaches unprecedented proportions, and inflicts ever more bitter defeats on the best-equipped units of the American expeditionary corps. Thanks to general political struggle co-ordinated with action by the armed forces, mass insurrections have erupted repeatedly with increasing vigour. Insurrection expands the field of action of revolutionary war, strengthens it and causes it to expand ceaselessly, while war ripens conditions for uprising and allows it to spread. Insurrection and war, though different, are inseparable. “It is hard to distinguish between war and insurrection,” said Lenin.
Along with military and political struggle, we conduct a vast and patient political work in the enemy’s ranks – a propaganda work which aims at awakening the political consciousness of the puppet militarymen and winning them over to the side of the people, thereby launching another strategic thrust, an important element of revolutionary action.
Economic struggle also plays a very important role, especially when we have already set up bases and rear areas, when liberation war extends and spreads, or when we fight a war for the defence of our fatherland. While mobilizing our own economy for war, we must wage economic struggle against the enemy in conjunction with military and political struggle in order to attack and destroy his economic bases, upset and ruin his economy while defending and developing our own, safeguarding the people’s life and property and ensuring conditions for them to work and produce.
2. To set up firm positions in the rural areas, to wage people’s war in both rural and urban regions, develop and closely combine offensive thrusts against the enemy in appropriate forms and in all three strategic zones: mountains, plains, and towns.
To fight the enemy in all three strategic zones, using appropriate forms, is a very important aspect of the mode of conducting revolutionary war. One must correctly define the strategic position of the rural and urban regions, establish firm positions in the rural ones, attack the enemy in both at the same time, closely co-ordinate our offensives in all three strategic zones, paying proper attention to conditions prevailing in each, combine armed with political struggle and uprising with war at a suitable level, and take into account the concrete conditions of each period of uprising or war in order to pick the zone which should receive particular attention from the leadership.
During the Second World War and before the August 1945 Revolution, the revolution essentially unfolded in the mountain region in the form of local guerilla warfare and partial insurrections. However, the revolutionary movement continued to develop in the plains and the towns in suitable forms. When the favourable moment came, our people scored success in the August Revolution by co-ordinating the revolutionary movement in the towns with that in the countryside and political with armed forces and by seizing upon the right opportunity to bring the general insurrection to victory.
The first war of resistance broke out at first in the cities. Then over a long period, the people’s war against French colonialist aggression, essentially using armed struggle, took place mainly in the rural areas. Our political struggle and armed action in the enemy’s areas (rural regions and towns) also developed in close co-ordination with military operations in the other rural regions of the delta and the highlands.
The “chain uprising” which broke out in the South in 1959-60 did so at first in the countryside then became a vast guerilla movement closely bound to the political movement in the cities. From 1963 to 1965 in particular, armed actions and peasant uprisings for the destruction of “strategic hamlets”, combined with action by the urban masses, made up a considerable aggregate force which foiled the “special war” of the American imperialists.
From 1965 to 1967, the armed forces and people of the South, continuing their victorious offensive, vigorously attacked the enemy in the three strategic zones with armed and political means. The main theatre for combat and insurrection remained the rural regions of the highlands and the delta while in the towns political action took place alongside combat activities of a certain scope. With the general offensive of early 1968, the armed forces and people of the South attacked and rose up everywhere in both town and countryside and recorded ever greater successes.
As said above, the rural regions and the towns are both important but occupy different positions. By combining armed with political struggle and combat with insurrection to an appropriate extent according to the strategic zone, setting up solid positions in the countryside and considering it our firmest support base while developing the revolutionary forces in the towns and considering them a crucial sector, we can attack the enemy in both town and countryside. We can also compel him to disperse his forces, while being able to co-ordinate our actions in all sectors, launch unremitting assaults everywhere and at all times, upset his rear areas and strike him dangerous blows. We can win in a protracted war, and we can also bring about favourable situations, steal a march on the enemy, deal him crushing blows at opportune moments and win ever greater victories.
When we have become masters of a State with its complete structure, its towns and countryside, and a developing industry, the role played by the urban and rural regions in defence and in war is no longer the same. Co-ordination between town and countryside in a national-defence war is not carried out in the same way as in a liberation war. This can be seen these last few years in the socialist North in the course of our heroic people’s war waged against the American war of destruction. But rational coordination between town and countryside remains an important problem, a necessity for bringing into full play the potential of our country and our regime with a view to defeating the enemy.
3. To be inspired by an offensive strategic thought in both armed uprising and revolutionary war.
By mobilizing the entire people, by combining armed with political struggle in all three strategic zones, we have created that immense force of people’s war in order to attack the enemy.
Revolution means offensive. In forty years of struggle under the leadership of the Party, our people have attacked the enemy in a resolute, continuous and successful way. Rising up to overthrow the yoke of the imperialists and their valets and to wrest back and safeguard their sovereignty, they are deeply imbued with the offensive strategic thought of the revolution.
An insurrection is an offensive. A revolutionary war viewed in the whole of its unfolding is an offensive. It is possible that at certain moments and in certain places one may act on the defensive, but this is in order to create necessary conditions for the continuation of the offensive.
In the 1940’s our people, passing from political to armed struggle, launched resolute attacks. Especially from March 1945 onwards partial insurrections toppled enemy power at the base in vast rural regions. At the same time the enemy was attacked everywhere through appropriate forms of struggle. Then our people ceaselessly expanded partial insurrections and local guerilla war, intensified political struggle everywhere in the country and, launched the August general insurrection, thus triggering off a many-sided, vigorous and resolute strategic offensive at the most opportune moment to overthrow the enemy power and seize control all over the country.
Immediately after the August Revolution, our Party had to lead the national resistance against the French colonialists. As the aggressors’ army was then much more powerful than ours, we decided to preserve the bulk of our forces, avoid disadvantageous engagements, operate a certain retreat while seeking tactically to attack the enemy everywhere and to destroy him partially through partial attacks. Later, determined to drive the enemy to the defensive, we waged guerilla warfare, penetrated the enemy’s rear areas and turned them into battlefields. Gradually, we developed our offensive, using both guerilla and regular warfare. Following local counter-offensives in the wake of the Frontier Campaign (1950) we started a great strategic counter-offensive in winter 1953-spring 1954 which came to a climax with the heroic campaign of Dien Bien Phu, brought our war of resistance to a victorious conclusion and liberated the northern half of our country.
In the South, in the struggle against American neo-colonialist domination, the revolution started the offensive with the chain uprisings of 1959-60. Then, expanding its offensive, it developed partial insurrections, mass political struggle and guerilla warfare, and gradually engaged in regular combat operations. Always combining armed with political action, it foiled the “special war” of the American imperialists. When the latter started a direct aggression with hundreds of thousands of well-equipped troops, our armed forces and people, without the slightest hesitation, continued to firmly keep the initiative, attacked the enemy ceaselessly and carried out an offensive strategy against the infamous “limited war”, frustrating all enemy schemes. The general offensive and concerted uprisings of the spring of 1968 strengthened our offensive strategic posture even more and marked a turning point in the war.
Our armed forces and people are imbued with the thoroughly revolutionary spirit of the proletariat; they are inspired by the offensive strategic thought which characterizes revolution and revolutionary war.
This offensive strategic thought is not without relation to our people’s traditional military thought. In our history, the victorious uprisings and national wars led by the Trung Sisters, Ly Bon, Trieu Quang Phuc, Le Loi, Nguyen Trai were so many continual offensives against the yoke of foreign feudalists. The victorious national-defence wars led by Ly Thuong Kiet, Tran Hung Dao, Nguyen Hue included of course defensive stages and strategic retreats, which were indispensable at the beginning, but the offensive strategic thought remained dominant throughout, as illustrated by the heroic battles fought on the Nhu Nguyet river, at Van Kiep and Chi Lang, on the Bach Dang river, and at Dong Da.
How to launch resolute and continuous offensives against enemies having an economic and military potential by far superior to ours, drive them to the defensive and to passivity, eventually to defeat and destroy them?
It is with a definitely offensive spirit that we engage in armed insurrections and revolutionary wars. The offensive thought is the ideological basis of revolutionary strategy and war in Viet Nam. It springs from the thoroughly revolutionary character of our Party’s political and military line, and from the ardent patriotism and resolute and heroic combativeness of our people fighting for independence, freedom and socialism.
Our offensive capability is closely bound up with our correct appraisal of the features and trend of the relation of forces between the enemy and us. The enemy has strong points, but also weaknesses, even fundamental ones. Our people have weaknesses, but also fundamental strong points. These lie in the strength of an entire people rising up to defend their country, the strength of a just war in our time. It is entirely possible for us to bring our strong points into full play and aim our blows at the enemy’s weaknesses.
Our offensive capability is also closely tied to our skill in conducting people’s war and to our original and ingenious forms of struggle and methods of combat. Knowing how to assail the enemy in all fields and using at the same time both armed and political struggle, military combat and mass uprising, guerilla and regular warfare, our armed forces and people have brought their capabilities into full play. By creating appropriate and highly effective combat methods, we have developed our offensive capacity to a high degree.
4. To apply the strategy of a protracted war and at the same time to strive to bring about a propitious moment and steal a march on the enemy so as to win ever bigger victories.
Our history had known many victorious insurrections and wars against powerful enemies. The duration of those uprisings and wars depended on many factors, first of all on the relation of forces between the two parties and on our skill in conducting the war. Some of those wars were relatively short, others were protracted liberation wars.
The Tran fought three wars of resistance against Yuan troops in the space of thirty years, but each of those wars lasted but a few months. The lightning offensive mounted by Nguyen Hue against Ching troops led to a great victory within a very short time. On the other hand, the liberation war led by Le Loi and Nguyen Trai lasted ten years. So, our people are possessed of traditions of persevering and protracted resistance and the art of fighting wars of long duration while knowing how to create and capitalize on propitious conditions to win success in a relatively short space of time.
At present, with a progressive political regime, the unity of the entire people and the leadership of the Party, we are in a position to bring into full play all the material and moral forces of our people and our country. We also receive precious help from the fraternal socialist countries and the sympathy and support of progressive people all over the world. But our territory is not very large, our population not very numerous; we were formerly a colonial and semi-feudal country with an under-developed economy. We have been fighting against powerful, stubborn, machiavellian and adventurous imperialist countries. In those conditions, we need time to gradually weaken and destroy enemy forces, check their strong points, aggravate their weaknesses, increase our own strength, promote our strong points, overcome our weaknesses, so that as the fighting goes on the enemy grows weaker and we stronger. The strategy of people’s war is one of a protracted war. The continual battles and glorious victories of our people in the last few decades prove the soundness of that strategy.
This protracted war is, viewed in its entirety, a process of continual offensives against the enemy, who is destroyed part by part, driven back step by step, knocked down chunk by chunk, and sees his strategic designs foiled one after another while we go from success to success to ultimate victory.
The duration of a war depends on the way in which the relation of forces evolves and the war is conducted by each side. Our national wars show that in the course of a long war, whenever a new phase begins, there often happen abrupt changes, due either to our own efforts, or to the enemy’s errors, or to favourable objective conditions. The passing from a progressive evolution to a development by leaps and bounds is the general law governing all movements. Insurrection and war are sharp confrontations, struggles to the death, in which this law manifests itself very clearly.
We strive to create favourable conditions leading to ever more important leaps and ever greater victories. We must know how to exert the greatest efforts, turn to account all propitious objective conditions, provoke errors on the part of the enemy and capitalize on his weaknesses, create ingenious and effective forms of struggle, provide clear-sighted strategic leadership, aim our attacks in the right direction and at the right target, seize the opportune moment, hit at key spots, skilfully combine armed with political struggle and military combat with insurrection. Thus, while carrying on a protracted war, we must exert the greatest efforts in all fields, and act speedily so as to record ever more important victories.
5. To couple the destruction of enemy troops with winning and maintaining control for the people; to actively annihilate hostile forces while fostering and strengthening our own, so as to grow stronger as we fight.
Power is the fundamental question of all revolutions and the destruction of hostile forces that of all wars. Our war is a revolutionary one and is used as a way of struggle to win power. It aims at destroying enemy forces and solve the problem of annihilating the enemy’s power and winning power for the people.
In our people’s war, we combine the military action of people’s armed forces aimed at destroying hostile troops with mass uprisings with a view to win power. The toppling of enemy power and the winning of power for the people at various levels in different conditions aim at creating new possibilities for attacking and annihilating the enemy. Conversely, it is necessary to destroy enemy forces in order to give support to the masses rising up to win power, and create new bases and forces.
In August 1945, the main action was mass uprising to win power; but action by armed forces was needed to assist it.
In the first war of resistance, the main factor was the annihilation of enemy forces by our own armed forces; but the masses also rose up to disband puppet village councils of elders and punish traitors, wrest back power in areas behind enemy lines, build, consolidate and expand guerilla bases and zones right in enemy-occupied regions. At the same time our people and armed forces actively built and consolidated free zones in every respect, built and consolidated people’s power, and repelled enemy counter-offensives.
At present in the South, the coupling of the annihilation of the enemy with the winning and safeguarding of power for the people has made a new step forward. The liberation armed forces actively attack the enemy to destroy him and lend support to mass uprisings and political struggles. The masses’ political forces create favourable conditions for the armed forces by attacking the enemy in appropriate ways, starting partial insurrections, toppling puppet power at the base, winning sovereignty at various levels, setting up revolutionary power in one form or another. In the liberated zones, the armed forces actively fight to protect the people, and to assert and consolidate their right to sovereignty in the political and economic fields.
All that requires conformity to this leading principle: ceaselessly to safeguard and increase our forces while destroying the enemy’s.
To destroy the enemy’s forces means to annihilate both his political and military forces, both the forces of the foreign aggressors and those of their valets.
To safeguard and increase our forces means to safeguard and increase both the forces of our army and those of our people, our military, political and economic forces.
Only by assimilating and correctly applying that rule, by getting imbued with that thought, can we carry out this leading principle: the more we fight, the stronger we grow; the more we fight, the more victories we win. As we fight on, our forces grow more mature, our field of action widens, our manifold offensive capabilities in revolutionary war expand, eventually to defeat the enemy’s forces and foil his military strategy, break up his power at various levels, and win power in its entirety for the people.
6. To rely essentially on our own forces, while striving to secure international help.
This is also a general rule. It marks a new development in our Party’s art of conducting the war, compared with previous historical periods. Considering revolution the work of the masses, it expresses the unshakable confidence of our Party in the power of our people and nation. It also proceeds from the idea that the Vietnamese revolution is part and parcel of the world revolution and is closely bound up with the revolutionary movement of the world’s peoples. It knows how to turn to account the favourable factors of our time to secure victory for the revolution and the revolutionary war in our country, and at the same time to bring our contribution to the revolutionary cause of the world’s peoples.
The triumph of revolutionary war in our country is essentially due to internal causes: the judicious line of our Party, the sacrifices endured by our armed forces and people on the battlefields, our nation’s political, moral and material capabilities, the immense advantages of human, geographical and climatic factors in a national war fought on our own soil.
And so, fully assuming its responsibilities with regard to the destiny of the nation and resolved to “rely essentially on our own forces”, our Party has creatively applied Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of our country, correctly and independently defined its general line and military line, and mobilized and organized all the forces of our people and our country with a view to winning victory. The Vietnamese people must stand up and carry out the resistance themselves in order to gain national independence and freedom, without waiting for anyone else to do it for their sake. Our people’s tremendous victories are due in the first place and essentially to the heroic struggle, full of self-abnegation and sacrifices, waged by our armed forces and the entire Vietnamese nation.
At the same time, those victories cannot be divorced from the support and help extended to us by the revolutionary peoples of the world. The world revolutionary movement has brought about objective conditions highly favourable to the Vietnamese revolution. Ever since the difficult beginnings of their struggle for national liberation under the banner of the Party, our people have benefited by the support and help, either direct or indirect, of the brother peoples of the socialist countries and the world’s revolutionary peoples, on the political, moral and material planes. The policy of union on the international plane advocated by our Party has brought us the broad and strong help, sympathy and support of our brothers and friends on the five continents.
In our time, the socialist camp has become the determining factor in the development of human society; the struggle for peace, national independence, democracy and socialism is in full swing everywhere in the world. US-led imperialism is assailed everywhere without respite. Our people must and can turn to full account the favourable factors of our time in order to strengthen their positions and increase their forces so as to defeat all aggressors.
International aid must be rendered more effective by the efforts of our people and our Party in the concrete conditions of our country. Therefore, while attaching great importance to this aid, we have always relied essentially on our own forces and combined those two factors in order to bring our struggle to victory.
(1) Political report of the Central Committee of the Viet Nam Workers’ Party at the Third National Congress (September 5, 1960).
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