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Vietnam Strategic Thinking
The central factor in Hanoi's strategic thinking, applicable
to both external and internal threats, is the VCP's concept of
dau tranh (struggle). Briefly stated, dau tranh
strategy is the sustained application of total military and
nonmilitary force over long periods of time in pursuit of an
objective. Its chief characteristic is its conceptual breadth,
for it is of greater scope than ordinary warfare and requires the
total mobilization of a society's resources and psychic energies.
The strategy, it is held, is unique to Vietnam because of its
close association with the sources of Vietnamese national
security strengths. Since the mid-1970s, journals published in
Hanoi on military theory have defined these strengths as the
heritage of unity and patriotism, the supportive collectivist
state system, the technologically and "spiritually" developed
armed forces, a superior strategy (the dau tranh
strategy), the undeviating justice of Vietnam's cause, and the
support of the world's "progressive forces." The leadership's
faith in these strengths emboldens it to take an implacable
approach to world affairs and to treat external activities, such
as diplomacy, like quasi-military campaigns.
The aim of the dau tranh concept is to put warfare
into a new conceptual framework. Its essence is the idea of
people not merely as combatants or supporters but as weapons of
war to be designed, forged, and hurled into battle--hence the
term people's war. All people, even children, are regarded
as instruments of dau tranh. Operationally the strategy
has two arms or pincers--armed dau tranh and political
dau tranh. The two always work together to close on and
crush the enemy. Political dau tranh is not politics but a
mobilizing and motivating program operating in a gray area
between war and politics. Specifically, it consists of three
van (action) programs: the all-important dich van
(action among the enemy) includes activities directed against the
foreign enemy in his home country, the dan van (action
among the people) includes activities conducted in a liberated
area, and the binh van (action among the military)
includes nonmilitary activities against the enemy's military
forces. Of the three, the dich van program is particularly
novel because it seeks to shape outside perception and, beyond
this, to persuade outsiders not only that the Vietnamese will be
successful in their struggle but that they deserve to be.
Strategically, it seeks to undercut the enemy's war effort at
home and its diplomacy worldwide. Tactically, it attempts to
limit the enemy's military response by inhibiting the full use of
his military potential.
Dau tranh strategy defines the enemy
narrowly--imperialists, militarists, landlords--but does not tar
all in the enemy camp. Some are considered merely to have been
misled, while others are regarded as foreign patriots who
nevertheless support Hanoi's cause. In this way, dau tranh
not only changes the definition of a combatant but also revises
the rules of warfare. It asserts that the final test need not be
military, and that the decisive action may take place away from
the battlefield.
The strategy requires the support of tremendous
organizational resources as it seeks always to realize the ideal
of total mobilization and motivation. It also requires meticulous
attention to the mundane details of war and politics, such as
logistics and administration.
The great utility of dau tranh strategy, as evidenced
by forty years of use against the French, the Americans, and the
Chinese, is two-fold: it can cloud the enemy's perceptions and it
can nullify his power. In the judgment of the Vietnamese
leadership, it has proved to be highly effective in confounding
the enemy's strategic response because it engenders misperception
in the enemy camp. Vietnam's leaders have said that the nature of
the Second Indochina War was never seen clearly either by the
South Vietnamese or by the Americans. Dau tranh strategy,
in effect, dictates the enemy's counterstrategy, even to the
extent of forcing him to fight under unfavorable conditions. In
circumscribing the enemy's military response by altering his
perception of the war, dau tranh's guiding principle is
that military force must always be politically clothed. Every
battle must be cast in terms of a political act. When this is not
possible--as in a purely tactical engagement, such as that with
United States forces at Khe Sanh in early 1968--the attack must
be made to seem a military action for a political purpose
(see The Second Indochina War
, ch. 1). Theoretically, violence or
military action defined or perceived as political becomes more
acceptable to all parties, participant and onlooker alike.
After the Second Indochina War, the dau tranh concept
served the Vietnamese less well. It was employed, more by
accident than by design, against the invading Chinese during the
brief border war in 1979 and worked fairly well. It did not prove
workable in Cambodia, however, and was for the most part
abandoned there. Interestingly, many of its techniques were
borrowed by the Cambodian resistance forces and used against the
Vietnamese-supported Khmer People's Revolutionary Armed Forces
(KPRAF), as well as against PAVN forces in Cambodia. Vietnam's
experience in Cambodia inspired Hanoi to scrutinize the strategy
more closely in order to assess its application to future needs.
However, the strategy's past success weighed heavily in the
assessment, and Vietnamese leaders in 1987 continued to place
confidence in its viability.
PAVN generals, in 1987, were in the process of evaluating
Vietnam's position in the world and reviewing the nature of its
future strategic requirements. Vietnamese publications on the
subject in the 1980s stressed continuity in strategic thinking
and the need to treat the future as a logical extension of the
past. The twin pillars with which the strategic planners sought
to serve future national interests were, first, to exploit
Vietnam's innate skill in strategic defense and, second, to
capitalize on the party's ability to anchor the strategic process
successfully in the people.
Four major themes could be discerned in Hanoi's strategic
thinking in the mid-1980s. The first was the recognition that
PAVN must be prepared to fight both limited, small-scale,
orthodox wars and protracted, guerrilla wars. As a practical
matter, renewed attention was given to preparing for warfare in
mountainous terrain (Vietnam is 40 percent mountainous and 75
percent forested--see
Geography
, ch. 2).
The second theme was an increasing emphasis on military
technology. This resulted from PAVN's experience with the United
States military machine in the Second Indochina War and with the
war in Cambodia, as well as from the influence of Soviet military
advisers.
The third theme was a return to orthodox dau tranh
strategy. This occurred partly as a result of the successes
scored by Pol Pot's Cambodian guerrillas and partly as a result
of the success of PAVN paramilitary forces against the invading
Chinese. The counterinsurgency effort in Cambodia, for example,
was regarded as simply a limited, small-scale, high-technology
war. Another war against China, according to Vietnamese
definitions, would require (as, indeed, the previous one had
required) a mixture of orthodox limited-war strategy and elements
of dau tranh strategy. The PAVN high command, in
opposition to earlier practice, appeared increasingly to believe
that high-technology warfare in the mountains was possible.
The fourth theme was the acknowledgment that the strategy in
Cambodia and the strategy designed for use against China depended
on continued support from the Soviet Union. In order to meet
Vietnam's future external security needs, Hanoi's leadership
probably will be led to conclude that it must eventually develop
a new or revised strategic concept that is not overly dependent
on past strategies or simple alliance with the Soviet Union. At
the end of 1987, however, the leaders in PAVN and the Political
Bureau appeared to have undiminished faith in the efficacy of
their past doctrines and in the connection with Moscow. As long
as they remained in power, a markedly new Vietnamese strategic
approach to national security seemed unlikely.
Data as of December 1987
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