A journey of glorious feats of arms

A journey of glorious feats of arms (Photo: Ha Pham)

80 years ago, Vietnam Propaganda Liberation Army Team, the forerunner of the VPA, was established at a difficult but extremely crucial time for the Vietnamese revolution. Over the course of 80 years of construction, combat, victory and maturity, that milestone and historic event has enabled our VPA to overcome numerous difficulties, challenges, and sacrifice, unceasingly develop itself, achieve a large number of brilliant feats of arms, and join the entire people in bringing our revolution to countless victories, thus being worthy of a heroic Army of a heroic nation. In the 80-year journey of glorious victories, the VPA has been honoured with the Gold Star Order five times and many other noble rewards by our Party and State; the traditional day of the VPA has been selected as the All-People National Defence Festive Day by the Party Central Committee’s Secretariat since 1989.

Ours is a revolutionary army and will be forever a revolutionary army of the Party, nation, and people. That is an army built on the fundamentals of Marxism - Leninism, being founded, led, educated, and trained by our Party and Uncle Ho. As an army of the people, by the people, and for the people, the VPA always carries the working-class, people-oriented, and profoundly national natures. Immediately after its foundation, with only 34 fledgling cadres and soldiers provided with obsolete weapons and equipment, our VPA won the first two battles of Phai Khat and Na Ngan, proudly opening up its history of “invincibility”. Following the victory of the first two battles, less than one year later, our VPA in cooperation with all people successfully conducted the great August Revolution to seize and bring power to the people, establishing the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as the first worker - peasant State in Southeast Asia, officially pinning our country on the world map.

In the history of our country, national construction has always been closely associated with national protection for the sake of eternal survival and development. Under the leadership of the Party and President Ho Chi Minh, our VPA and people courageously entered an all-people, all-round, protracted, self-reliant resistance war. Only after nearly 10 years of establishment, our VPA together with the people achieved an epoch-making feat of arms, defeating the French aggressors as evidenced by the historic Dien Bien Phu victory (1954) that “resounded across the five continents, shook the globe”, and forced the French to sign the Geneva Accords on ending the war and acknowledging national independence, sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity of the three Indochina countries, namely Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Right after its triumphant victory over the French colonialists, the VPA continued to accompany the people nationwide in the 21-year-long march for national liberation against the US invaders. In the clash with the world’s most powerful and belligerent imperialists with military superiority, under the spirit of “Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom” and the whole nation’s undaunted will, the VPA continued to record remarkable feats of arms in the national history. The “Dien Bien Phu in the Air” victory (1972) forced the US to sign the Paris Accords on ending the war and restoring peace in Vietnam; the 1975 Spring General Offensive and Uprising, with Ho Chi Minh Campaign as its peak, gloriously fulfilled the cause of national liberation and unification, bringing our country to a new era - an era of independence, freedom, and advance towards socialism. Subsequently, the VPA successfully fulfilled the tasks assigned by our Party and people, accomplishing new feats of arms during the wars to defend the Fatherland’s Northern and South-western borders, completing the noble international missions in Laos and Cambodia, helping the Cambodian people escape the Pol Pot genocidal regime. That will be forever an immortal epic in the Vietnamese people’s history of bravely fighting foreign invaders.

Taking a look back at the 80-year journey of the VPA, we realise that few militaries all over the world could achieve such glorious feats of arms like the VPA did, and that there are hardly any militaries which had to continuously confront and defeat the world’s most powerful and professional armies, i.e. the French colonialists and the US imperialists. For that reason, our VPA’s immortal feats of arms are not only the victory of our Vietnamese people and country, but also the victory of the times, progressive humanity, and trend of peace, freedom, and justice all over the world.

“Survival of the fittest” is the law of war. Our victory proves that we are stronger than the enemy. However, more importantly, where is the source of strength and victory of the heroic VPA? First of all, it is the thousand-year-long heroic history of national construction and protection; it is the close-knit bond between the VPA and the people with the former being sheltered, supported, and honoured under the title of “Uncle Ho’s Soldiers” by the latter; notably, it is the result of our Party and President Ho Chi Minh’s education, training, and sound leadership process as a deciding factor. It is the solidarity and shoulder-to-shoulder combat coordination against the common enemies among the three countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia; it is the altruistic assistance in terms of weaponry from socialist countries; at the same time, it is the crystallisation of willpower, faith, and tireless effort of generations of cadres and soldiers over the past 80 years. Among those above-mentioned factors, the Party’s leadership plays an inclusive and pivotal role in our VPA’s glory and historically immortal feats of arms.

Nowadays, the world situation continues to witness rapid, complex, unpredictable changes. There will be potential destabilising factors in the East Sea that could directly threaten our Fatherland’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. There will be not only traditional security challenges, but also non-traditional ones for the country’s independence, stability, and interests.

That situation necessitates the entire Party, people, and Military grasping our Party and State’s lines and policies, enhancing the national great unity bloc, combining the country’s strength with the strength of the times to successfully accomplish the two strategic tasks of Fatherland construction and protection. In the current period, our Party sees socio-economic development and environmental protection as the central task, regarding Party building as the key, taking cultural development as the foundation, considering defence - security consolidation and diplomacy enhancement as the crucial, routine task, with a view to stimulating all resources, potential, and aspirations for devotion and development, bringing the country to a new era - the era of the nation’s rise.

Under the Resolution of the 13^th National Party Congress and the Resolution of the 13^th Party Central Committee’s 8^th Plenum on the Strategy for Fatherland Protection in the New Situation, the VPA should continue to promote its core role in the task of Fatherland protection. First of all, the entire Military should focus on carefully preparing and successfully organising all-level party congresses towards the 14^th National Party Congress, stepping up the building of an adept, compact, strong VPA towards modernity, making itself strong in terms of politics, ideology, morality, organisation, and personnel as the basis for raising its synergy and combat power. At the same time, the VPA should continue to encourage its core role in building robust all-people national defence and postures of all-people national defence and people’s security, especially a firm “posture of people’s hearts and minds” in each area and nationwide. On the one hand, the VPA should continue heightening vigilance, proactively grasping and correctly forecasting situational developments, opportunely, effectively responding to incidents along the border, at sea, on land, in the air, and in cyberspace, preventing the country from falling into strategic passivity. On the other hand, the VPA should closely cooperate with other forces in maintaining internal stability, actively combating wrong and hostile viewpoints, defending the Party’s ideological foundation, performing an exemplary role in the fight against corruption, wastefulness, and negative practices, responsibly taking part in the international community’s operations to contribute to ensuring peace, stability, cooperation, and development on global and regional scales.

In the joyful atmosphere of the series of celebrations of the VPA’s 80^th founding anniversary, taking a look back at the brilliant feats of arms earned by the coordinated efforts of our Military and people, it is fair to confirm that the VPA’s process of construction, combat, victory, and maturity is one of the greatest accomplishments of the Vietnamese revolution under the leadership of our Party and beloved President Ho Chi Minh. In spite of numerous hardships and challenges ahead, with the impressive track record we have accomplished over the 80 years, we strongly believe that the entire Military will unite and join hands to strive for new achievements and feats of arms, contributing to firmly protecting and building the country in the new era.