|
Vietnam The Model Soldier
At a fundamental level, the "red-expert" debate concerned
Vietnam's military ethos, the basic qualities and virtues of the
model soldier. The prototypical, or composite, PAVN soldier in
the 1970s and 1980s was twenty-three years old, had been born and
raised in a village, was a member of the ban co class
(poor for many generations), was unmarried, and had less than
five years' formal education. His rural, agrarian background was
the dominant influence in his thinking. He was one of five
children and had lived his pre-army life in an extended family
that included several generations of his immediate family as well
as collateral relatives. He tended to resent outsiders as well as
city people. His limited schooling made it difficult for him to
cope with certain aspects of army life, for example, technical
duties. He was raised as a nominal Buddhist but had always been
subject to many direct and indirect Confucianist and Taoist
influences. He was uninformed about the outside world, even other
parts of Vietnam. He firmly believed in the importance and
collective strength of the ho or extended family, and
seldom questioned its demands on him, an attitude that served him
well in his military career.
At the age of nine, the model future soldier joined the Ho
Chi Minh Young Pioneers and spent much time involved in its
activities. At sixteen, if he impressed his elders as being
worthy, or if his family had influence, he became one of four
youths (on an average) in his village to join the Ho Chi Minh
Communist Youth League, participation in which led more or less
automatically to admittance to the party as an adult. At twenty
or twenty-one he was drafted, received two months' basic
training, and was assigned to a unit. He did not particularly
want to enter the army, nor did his parents wish it. However, he
was obedient and accepted discipline easily. He had faith that
PAVN and the state would treat him in a generally fair manner,
which chiefly meant to him that they would assist him or his
family if he was disabled or killed in battle. He was
nonmaterialistic, got along easily on the bare necessities of
life, and regarded simplicity as a great virtue--a fortunate
coincidence as he received little material reward; his pay per
month averaged the price of a dozen bottles of beer. Despite
extensive indoctrination by the party, the soldier was not
politically conscious. Much of what he knew about politics
consisted of slogans he had been obliged to memorize, the
meanings of which he only dimly comprehended. Beyond his brief
basic training he received little military training, but, if he
was illiterate, he was taught to read. He was a
survival-oriented, tough, disciplined combat fighter, who
persevered with stubborn determination, often against hopeless
odds. He could be stubbornly hostile, even rebellious on
occasion, without regard to consequences. He knew little about
strategy or tactics, but believed that warfare consisted largely
of careful planning, meticulous preparation, and then sustained,
intensive mass attack.
The party's contribution to this ethos of the model
Vietnamese soldier was ideological. To his innate virtues of
courage, tenacity, boldness, and cleverness, the party sought to
add a commitment to revolutionary ideals. The party thus
stimulated an ongoing debate, encompassing sociological,
philosophical, psychological, and technological arguments over
the fundamental relationship of ideology to technology in modern
warfare, an understanding of which was the key to understanding
the mind of the Vietnamese soldier. Over the years, the party
debate pitted the revolutionary model, that is, the peasant
soldier--perhaps ill-equipped but nevertheless infused with
revolutionary zeal--against the expert model, the superbly
trained but ideologically neutral military technician. The
revolutionary model always dominated the debate and found many
allies , some transient and some permanent, both inside and
outside PAVN. Supporting the expert model, on the other hand, was
a small, shifting collection of technologically minded military
professionals and civilians. In late 1987, the "experts" in
PAVN's general officer corps remained outnumbered, but they had
gained the support of a powerful ally--the Soviet military
advisers in Vietnam. In reality, the debate between preserving
the revolutionary character of PAVN and building a thoroughly
modern professional armed force was overtaken by the imperatives
of military technology, and the issue became obsolete.
Finally, there were the PAVN-party vested-interest conflicts,
in which what was best for the party was not always interpreted
as best for PAVN. Subjects of conflict included party and state
security controls over PAVN personnel, party use of the military
for economic and other nonmilitary tasks, party use of political
criteria in selecting generals and senior staff officers who
planned grand strategy or directed major military campaigns in
the field, the role of the paramilitary, officer-enlisted
relations and command authority of the militia within PAVN, and
intermilitary and military-civilian relations.
Data as of December 1987
|
