Forces hostile to the Vietnamese revolution have been trying to promote the so-called peaceful evolution in a bid to undermine the socialist regime, with one of their ploys being the call for “depoliticising the army” which is the core force safeguarding the achievements of proletarian revolution in the country.

Colonel Vu Khanh from the Ministry of National Defence’s Military Strategy Institute, has laid bare the groundless and artificial nature of the “apolitical military” argument in a recent article.

Citing the well-known military theorist Clausewitz (1780-1831) view that “War is the continuation of politics” and the military comes into being to meet the needs of war, which was widely recognised by both capitalist and proletarian military sciences, Colonel Khanh pointed out that this automatically means that no army in the world is “politically neutral” or “stays out of politics”, because any war has it own political goal, reflecting the political stance of the sides, so the participating militaries are all geared to serve the political goals of the war.
Furthermore, the colonel stressed that the military always bears the nature of the ruling class. The military is part of the State and an armed tool of the State to protect the achievements that the ruling political forces have obtained through struggles for power.

The founding and development history of the military in the world showed that the army is a historical social phenomenon and a product of the class struggle, thus bearing the nature of the class which organises, educates, trains and uses it. The army’s fighting goals and ideals are to serve those of the class which organises it. There is no classless, super-class and neutral military.

The world reality showed that the military of any country is an important political force that any ruling State and class try their best to control to protect their political and economic interests. The call for the army to obey only the State but not the Communist Party is, in fact, to change the army’s stand from that of the working class to that of the bourgeoisie class, thus pushing the “self-evolution” and “self-transformation” process in the military and in society towards the overthrowing of the socialist regime without wars.

It is a well-known fact that the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) was born from the masses’ political movements, and founded and trained by the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh to grasp power and protect the revolutionary administration, so it is a reliable political force of the Party and State.

The military is a core force of Vietnam ’s armed forces. It is the army of the people and for the people and is ready to fight and sacrifice itself for the independence and freedom of the fatherland, socialism and the happiness of the people.

During its 70-year history of development, the VPA is always absolutely loyal to the Party, the country and people. This is first of all reflected in the unity of its fighting goals and the Party’s political objectives, which is national independence in close association with socialism.

Colonel Khanh emphasized that fighting the plot of “depoliticising the army” and building a politically strong military are two aspects in building a revolutionary, regular, elite and modern people’s army.

He underlined the need to make each officer, Party member and person aware of the hostile forces’ schemes and plots in deploying the “peace evolution” strategy, including the propaganda on an apolitical military.

V.I. Lenin once said that “no one can destroy us, but our own mistakes. If we cause divisions due to mistakes, everything will collapse”. No matter how many wicked plots hostile forces deploy, they cannot achieve their goal of making the Vietnamese army “stay out of politics” or “politically neutral”, he concluded.-VNA