The Vietnamese Military´s Changing Role

Abstract

Since 1987 the Vietnamese leadership has, as part of its programme of reform, been re-evaluating the role of the armed forces and its military strategy. In the first few years of the renovation process, Hanoi moved boldly to reduce the size of its armed forces, slashing the size of its army by half a million or more soldiers, including 100,000 or more officers.1 To compensate for the reduction of its armed forces, the Vietnamese leadership altered its military strategy and placed more emphasis on the need to develop high quality, mobile main force units. Under this new strategy, these main force units were charged with defending key strategic areas and the coun try's borders. The burden of defending the provinces and villages was shifted to the local armed forces and the militia. Under the new scheme, local administrations were expected to play a larger role in national defence and to carry more of the burden of the cost. Emphasis was also placed on building a large reserve force, which could be mobilized in the event of war. While Hanoi continues to pursue this strategy today in building its armed forces, the demise of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union has prompted the leadership to redefine the role of the military in an effort to ensure that the military remains a strong and reliable defender of Vietnam's socialist regime. This process has seen Hanoi move away from a military philosophy that stressed the development of a modern professional army and re-embrace one that defines the army in more political terms. The enhanced political role of the army was formally signalled in Chapter IV of the new Vietnamese constitution adopted by the National Assembly on 15 April 1992. As would be expected, the new constitution declares that the military is duty bound to remain combat ready to defend the national independence, sovereignty, political security, and public order, territorial integrity and unity, and the gains of the revolution ? the formulation used in the country's previous constitution. However, the new constitution also assigns to the military additional tasks that were not enshrined in the previous constitution. In particular, Article 45 of the new charter stipulates that the military is duty-bound to defend the socialist regime, a formulation that suggests that the party hierarchy has begun to take steps to guarantee the military's continued commitment to Vietnam's socialist system. At the same time, Article 44 of the new constitution gives the military a major role in the area of domestic security, depicting the people's armed forces as the backbone of the country's all-people's national defense and public security. While the previous