The South Vietnamese People Will Win – Võ Nguyên Giáp

The South Vietnamese People Will Win ¹

Võ Nguyên Giáp ²

Preface

Ten years ago, on July 20, 1954, following the great victory of our army and people on the Dien Bien Phu battlefield, the Geneva agreements were signed, restoring peace in Indochina, on the basis of respect for the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of our country, Vietnam, and of two friendly countries, Cambodia and Laos.

As laid down in the agreements, free general elections would be held throughout Vietnam two years after the armistice for the peaceful reunification of our country. To create every favorable condition for this work, the belligerent armies were provisionally regrouped respectively north and south of the seventeenth parallel, and the administration of each zone undertook to ensure all democratic liberties for the people, and at the same time determined not to accept weapons and military personnel from any country nor to join any military alliance.

Ten years have elapsed since the Geneva agreements were signed. During these ten years our people have successfully carried out socialist revolution and construction in the completely liberated North. However, throughout these ten years, the United States imperialists and their henchmen have done their utmost to sabotage the Geneva agreements and have unleashed a war to invade and sell out the South of our country. Thus, after fighting valiantly for ten years, making a great contribution to the victory of the first sacred resistance, our fourteen million southern compatriots had again to rise up and wage a second sacred resistance against the United States imperialists and their stooges, for independence, democracy, peace, neutrality, for the implementation of the Geneva agreements, and then for the reunification of the fatherland.

I

The Geneva agreements. a great victory for our people, the fruit of ten years of long and hard resistance, of nearly one hundred years of national liberation struggle. This victory has safeguarded the gains of the August revolution in the North of our country. It has helped the Vietnamese revolution in the North to attain the socialist stage and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam to become the first socialist country in Southeast Asia.

For French and American imperialism, the Geneva agreements. were a most pitiful setback. They have put an end to the domination of the French colonialists in Indochina. They have foiled the scheme of the United States imperialists to prolong and extend the war and turn the Indochinese countries into new United States colonies and military bases. They were the bitterest defeat of the United States imperialists in Southeast Asia after their disaster in the Chinese mainland and in Korea.

While the Indochinese countries scored a great victory in their valiant and hard resistance and the French Expeditionary Corps faced grave danger, United States imperialism made strenuous efforts to salvage the situation, but in the end it, together with its defeated ally, was forced to sit for negotiation to end the war. This no surprise to us, and historical facts have given added proof that even when negotiating to reach an agreement, United States imperialism already schemed to sabotage it with a view to impairing the victories of the Indochinese peoples and restricting its defeats to the utmost.

No sooner had the ink of the signatures on the Geneva agreements dried than the United States imperialists set up the aggressive South-Asia military bloc and brazenly put South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos under its protection. They schemed to consolidate further their strategic position in Southeast Asia while using this new aggressive bloc as a tool to carry on their war policy and curb the development of the national liberation movement. At utter variance with the provisions of the Geneva agreements, they plotted to continue their aggressive policy under the form of neo-colonialism with view to turning South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos into their new-type colonies and military bases. This dark and perfidious. scheme came out clearly in the statements of the United States government that the security of the United States was decided along the seventeenth parallel and the Vietnam-Laos border.

In the new strategic plan of the United States imperialists, South Vietnam holds a position of utmost importance. This is precisely why soon after the armistice the United States stopped all military aid to the French in Indochina, ousted the latter from the South, and rigged up the Ngo Dinh Diem administration so that it would be entirely at its beck and call, hoping to use this subservient clique to suppress our compatriots patriotic struggle in the South, rapidly turn the South into a new-type United States colony and military base, and permanently partition our country.

The United States imperialists have trampled upon all the provisions of the Geneva agreements, overtly introduced weapons, munitions, and war matériel into the South at an accelerated tempo, and increased their military personnel from two hundred at the end of the war to thirty-five hundred in 1961. They have frenziedly stepped up their intervention in every field, feverishly built up a regular and modern army for the puppet administration, and strengthened such other anti-revolutionary armed forces as the civil guard, People’s Militia, police, and public security. They have frantically built up and Giap refers to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), established in the autumn of 1954. extended military bases in the South and have constructed a complete system of strategic roads so big and perfect that they can be used not only to carry out the aggressive war in South Vietnam but also to meet the greater requirements of the U.S. Army in Southeast Asia.

With the help of the United States imperialists and in furtherance of their neo-colonialist policy, the supporters of Ngo Dinh Diem dethroned Bao Dai, a puppet of the French colonialists, illegally founded in the South the so-called Republic of Vietnam, and resorted to oppression and flattery to carry out separatist general elections. Meanwhile, they sealed off the provisional military demarcation line and turned down every proposal to re-establish normal relations and convene a consultative conference with the North.

Despite its signboard of “independence” and “democracy” and its other deceptive policies such as “land reform” and “rehabilitation of the national economy,” since its very inception the Ngo Dinh Diem administration revealed itself as a traitorous clique and came up against powerful opposition from all our compatriots in the South. It carried out a fascist dictatorial policy of utmost barbarity, launched hundreds of mopping-up campaigns with its regular army, perpetrated countless crimes, and set up prisons everywhere to jail and torture patriots. It implemented a state policy of “indictment of communists” and “extermination of communists” to repress the former resistance members, the parents of those regrouped in the North, those who stood for independence, freedom, peaceful national reunification, and the implementation of the Geneva agreements. It exterminated Buddhist, Cao Dai, and Hoa Hao believers, ³ and even terrorized those who had closely cooperated with it once they did not submit unconditionally.

This unilateral war started in 1954 and became most atrocious in 1957-1959 after the United States-Diem clique had provisionally consolidated their administrative and military machine. The Phu Loi massacre ⁴ and the law 10/1959 ⁵ were typical of this most savage policy of terror. With their special military courts, prisons, guillotines, and wartime repressive measures, they hoped to drown in blood the patriotic movement of our southern compatriots in a short period, consolidate their selfish privileges and interests, and realize their dream of “pacifying the South, filling up the Ben Hai River and marching to the North.”

However, far from yielding the expected results, the United States-Diem policy of war and terrorism roused high indignation among all strata of our compatriots in the South. Our fellow countrymen held aloft the banner of peace, independence, reunification, democracy, and waged a persistent and valiant political struggle against the enemy, relying on the just cause and legality of the Geneva agreements.

When the United States-Diem clique treacherously sabotaged the Geneva agreements, everywhere meetings and demonstrations broke out, slogans appeared demanding an end to terror and reprisals, the reestablishment of North-South relations, a consultative conference for general elections, and the peaceful reunification of the country. The political struggle grew all the more powerful when the United States-Diem clique resorted to such machinations to sabotage further independence and national reunification as referendum and separatist general elections. It became fierce and bloody in the waves of struggle against the policy of “indictment of communists,” the mopping-up operations, and the massacres of the population. This unyielding political struggle, often waged in front of the muzzles of enemy guns, succeeded in checking and foiling part of their Machiavellian schemes; it highlighted our compatriots’ indomitable spirit, and frustrated the enemy’s policy of “indictment and extermination of communists” which it has raised to the level of “state policy” in order to divide the southern people, liquidate patriots, and quench the revolutionary movement. With various forms of struggle, relying on arguments, the legality of the Geneva agreements, and the pressure of the masses, our compatriots showed their patriotism and solidarity in struggle, exposed the dictatorial and traitorous Ngo Dinh Diem administration, drove it into ever growing isolation, and pilloried it.

Throughout five years of arduous and fierce political struggle with their bare hands against the violence of the enemy, our southern compatriots experienced countless sufferings and losses, but they carried the day.

Thousands of villages were burned by the enemy, and hundreds of thousands of people were jailed, tortured, and killed in prisons. and concentration camps. But sufferings and losses could not dampen our people’s combativeness and patriotism. On the contrary, through their fierce political struggle, our compatriots were tempered and became aware of the ferocity of the United States-Diem clique—and of its irremediable fundamental weakness—for it is the enemy of the people and of the fatherland, for it represents violence and injustice.

Through their fierce political struggle, our compatriots clearly realized that to overthrow the enemy, attain the fundamental aspirations of the broad masses of the people, there was no other way than to wage a revolutionary struggle. Far from quenching our compatriots’ revolutionary spirit, United States-Diem guns, bullets, prisons, reeducation centers, and fascist laws exacerbated it all the more. For five years on end, the United States-Diem clique waged a real war against the people, but the latter’s revolutionary spirit held out and in many vast areas the revolutionary forces were still kept intact.

The end of 1959 and beginning of 1960 marked a new development in the southern revolutionary movement. The persistent political struggle in the past years now bolstered by an armed struggle for self-defense, grew all the more powerful and sweeping. The revolutionary mettle of the masses in the Mekong Delta as well as in the immense Western Highlands, rose an overflowing tide. The enemy’s grip was broken over vast areas. In some places the enemy grassroots administration was broken up and the cruel devils isolated or punished; in some, the prosperity zones were destroyed and nearly 80 percent of their inhabitants were liberated. The political situation of the United States-Diem administration underwent a serious and endless crisis. In face of the people’s new revolutionary high tide, they realized that their scheme to “pacify” the South rapidly and use it as a base to attack the North was obviously a fiasco; they had to devote all their efforts to deal with the new developments of the movement.

The United States imperialists openly stepped up their armed intervention in the South of our country. In May 1961 the bilateral military agreement between United States Vice President Johnson and Ngo Dinh Diem was signed; then came into being the Staley-Taylor plan ⁶ and the setting-up of the U.S. Military Command in Saigon under Gen. Paul Harkins. ⁷ The United States imperialists and their henchmen decided to launch an “undeclared war” in the South, to use this area a testing ground for their so-called “special war” aimed at repressing the national liberation movement.

In brief, the plan of this “special war,” the Staley-Taylor plan, envisaged three stages: first to “pacify” the South and establish a network of spy—commando centers in the North; then to rehabilitate the economy and increase the puppet military forces in the South while stepping up sabotage work in the North; lastly to develop the southern economy and to attack the North.

To carry out the first stage (regarded as most important), they worked out a series of new measures, including the increase of the army’s effectiveness, the improvement of equipment, and the raising of the fighting capacities of the puppet armed forces as well as the enforcement of the “state policy” of “strategic hamlets” aimed at gradually concentrating and controlling the bulk of the population. The United States imperialists stepped up their multiform aid to the Ngo Dinh Diem administration; first of all, the military aid. They reckoned that within eighteen months, namely, by the end of 1962, the super increased reactionary military forces would certainly smash the per people’s political and military revolutionary forces: meanwhile, most of the fourteen millions of our compatriots in the South would be herded into “strategic hamlets,” kept under close watch, and severed from all connections with the guerrilla groups; the whole of South Vietnam would then be “pacified”; their first stage would be brought to completion.

At the outset, the enemy’s perfidious scheme did cause new difficulties for our compatriots in the South. However, inspired with an unshakable determination to struggle and with a dogged will to overthrow the enemy of the nation, our compatriots have carried on their valiant struggle in order to frustrate the United States imperialists’ new plan of armed intervention. To oppose the United States-Diem “special war” the southern people have launched a sweeping and powerful guerrilla war, an all-out and protracted people’s resistance. At the beginning, our compatriots in the South had only their bare hands, while the enemy had a marked superiority in material forces. Our people in the South had to put up an extremely hard and fierce struggle, opposing justice to aggression, weakness to strength, heroism to modern weapons. Capturing enemy weapons to equip themselves, our army and people in the South have overcome all difficulties and trials, developed their forces rapidly, scored success after success, and will win ever greater victories.

The United States-Diem clique regarded military measures as most efficient to crush our armed forces and political bases. Throughout 1962 and 1963 our army and people inflicted upon them many military setbacks. Unable to bring out the expected results, the “helicopter tactics,” modern weapons, chemical poisons, and the like, could not even save their initiators from bitter failures. Most of the raids upon the villages, big and small, were repelled or smashed. The southern army and people annihilated many enemy posts, stormed many enemy garrisons, and attacked reinforcements or convoys on road and on water. Early in 1963 the resounding Ap Bac victory of the Liberation Army and My Tho guerrillas highlighted our fighters’ boundless heroism and inspired the patriotic armed forces in the South to win battles and destroy the enemy. According to the figures released by the Liberation News Agency, in three years of guerrilla warfare (1961-1963) our southern army and people destroyed and put out of action more than 250,000 enemy troops, among them nearly 1,500 Americans, shot down and damaged hundreds of enemy planes, captured over 30,000 weapons of all kinds.

The stated policy of strategic hamlets is the backbone of the “special war”; the United States-Diem clique pinned all their hopes on this policy and mustered manpower and wealth to enforce it at any cost. They reckoned that in short time they could build seventeen thousand “strategic hamlets,” turning the South into a huge system of prisons. However, at the very start, their plan met with our compatriots’ fierce opposition. The herding of people was not as easy as they expected; the tempo of building “strategic hamlets” was slowed down as time passed. A number of “strategic hamlets” were destroyed either immediately after their establishment or so many times that the enemy could not consolidate them. Others, once destroyed, were turned into fighting villages, solid strongholds for guerrilla warfare. No more than six or seven thousand hamlets were set up, according to the statistics of the Ngo Dinh Diem administration.

Together and in coordination with the military struggle and destruction of “strategic hamlets,” there developed a sweeping and powerful political struggle involving all strata of the people. Many a time the political force of the masses crushed enemy mopping-up operations and successfully protected our compatriots’ lives and property. It is this same force that destroyed the rural administration block by block, liberated many vast areas in the countryside, and called upon tens of thousands of enemy troops and officials to cross over to the people’s side. In 1962-1963 alone, more than fifty million. individual participations in political struggles under various forms and sizes were recorded. The seething struggle during the second half of 1963 put up by Buddhist believers, youths, students, intellectuals, and laboring people in the towns, big and small, especially in Hue and Saigon-Cholon, plunged the United States-Diem clique into an ever-deepening crisis.

After two years of large-scale “special war,” the United States imperialists and their henchmen faced many difficulties and setbacks. both in the military and political fields. The time limit of eighteen months having elapsed, their strategy of rapid “pacification” of the South once again floundered. The Staley-Taylor plan turned out to be a fiasco in the face of the boundless heroism of our army and people in the South.

Owing to the repeated defeats of the “special war,” the internal contradictions between the United States imperialists and their henchmen grew so sharp that late in 1963 and early in 1964, the United States imperialists had to stage two coups d’état aimed at swapping horses midstream and salvaging the situation. Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu were overthrown and assassinated; soon after that, the Duong Van Minh clique was also replaced by new henchmen.

Throughout nine years, the Diem-Nhu brothers efficiently served the United States imperialists, sold out their country and their com patriots, and were praised by the Americans as the “number one anti-communist fighters” in Southeast Asia and as “great men” of the “free world.” Now, forced to overthrow Diem-Nhu and ready to kill their faithful servants, the United States imperialists admitted the shameful failure of their new-type colony, the fiasco of their so-called “special war.” The pitiful collapse of Diem-Nhu led to consternation in the ranks of the puppet administration and army, rousing bewilderment and weariness among them. It could not solve the ever-sharper contradictions between the United States imperialists and their henchmen and instead rendered them more acute and complicated. It could not bolster the sagging morale of the puppet troops and officials, shattering it instead.

Late in 1963 and particularly early in 1964, our people in the South made the best use of the enemy’s weak points and difficulties, stepped up their activities in every field, and scored great victories. According to the preliminary statistics of the Liberation News Agency, in the first six months of this year the southern army and people fought nearly 14,000 battles; razed to the ground 400 enemy posts; smashed and forced the enemy to withdraw from over 550 other posts; annihilated and captured 42,000 enemy troops, among them more than 500 Americans; put out of action nearly 30,000 of them; seized 5,000 weapons of all kinds, as well as millions of bullets and hand grenades; and shot down 170 planes of various types, damaging over Highlands to the Fifth Zone coastal areas rose up an and demolished nearly 2,000 “strategic hamlets,” extending the liberated zone in many regions. The above figures prove the southern resistance is entering a new stage, and the balance of forces is continuously tipping in our favor.

Of course, in face of this situation, with their extremely reactionary and cruel nature, the United States imperialists did not admit themselves beaten but frenziedly stepped up their aggressive war. Now they have to envisage a protracted war in the South. They have worked out a new strategic plan, the Johnson-McNamara plan, aimed at “pacifying” the South during 1964-1965. This new plan does not basically differ from the bankrupt Staley-Taylor plan. What is new is that the United States imperialists make greater efforts to increase their war means in the hope of securing better results for their special war. The puppet armed forces are increased to 350,000 regular troops, apart from 200,000 civil guards and reactionary fighting youths; the number of United States advisers and servicemen now reaches 25,000; aircraft of all types amounts to over 700; all other weapons are also increased. The military aid for 1964 goes up from $500 to $625 million. This is a fairly great war effort by the United States imperialists aimed at salvaging the desperate situation of the puppet army, mustering forces to “pacify” the areas controlled by the guerrillas according to plan, first of all again to tighten their grip on the eight provinces in the Mekong Delta and a number of regions in south Central Vietnam.

To carry out this plan, the United States imperialists sent. General Taylor, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, as ambassador to the South. This appointment of Taylor shows that the United States imperialists are most obdurate and cling to their “big-stick foreign policy” which has met with failure these past ten years in the South. Taylor is the very man who advocated the theory of “special war” which has been tested for the first time in the South and which has obviously gone bankrupt. Taylor is also the exponent of the theory of pacification of the South within eighteen months; however, twice eighteen months have elapsed, and this plan has not yet been initially carried out and has been replaced by a new one. The appointment of Taylor to South Vietnam reminds us of that of such top French generals as De Tassigny and Navarre to Indochina every time the French Expeditionary Corps was in serious difficulty. Our compatriots in the South and the heroic southern liberation troops, though having to fight a protracted and hard war, will certainly reserve for Taylor or any United States aggressive general the fate our people reserved for the former defeated French generals.

II

Throughout the French rule, South Vietnamese society, like the rest of our country, was a colonial and semi-feudal one. After the successful August revolution, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, made its appearance. With the reconquest by the French colonialists’ troops, part of our country bore the character of a people’s democracy while part of it remained a colonial and semi-feudal country. Our entire people’s great resistance war ended with the historic Dien Bien Phu victory. On the basis of the Geneva agreements, and owing to the United States imperialists’ intervention in South Vietnam, our country has been temporarily divided into two zones with differing politico-social systems. The North, completely liberated, has been successfully building socialism; the South, becoming a new-type United States colony, has borne the character of a colonial and semi-feudal society. After ten years of revolutionary struggle, new changes. in line with the upward trend of history have taken place. Today, part of South Vietnam remains colonial and semi-feudal, while part of it, namely, the ever-enlarged free zone, bears a new character: there, our compatriots enjoy independence, democracy, and freedom.

The very nature of such a society has shown that at present in South Vietnam there exist two fundamental contradictions: one between our southern people and the aggressive imperialists, first of all the United States imperialists and their henchmen; the other is the contradiction between the southern people, first of all the peasants, and feudal landlordism. These contradictions have defined: (1) the character of the revolution in the South which is a national democratic revolution; (2) its strategic task which is the overthrow of imperialism, the completion of national independence in combination with the overthrow of feudal landlordism, and the completion of people’s democracy.

Owing to the collusion between United States imperialism and the local reactionary forces, South Vietnamese society contains a basic contradiction, between our southern people on the one hand and aggressive imperialism and its lackeys representative of the most reactionary pro-American feudal landlords and comprador bourgeois on the other. This main contradiction defines the concrete object and immediate task of the revolution in South Vietnam, as well as the organization of forces for the completion of this revolutionary task.

Soon after the restoration of peace in Indochina, the object of the revolution in South Vietnam began to change. American imperialism had kicked out defeated French colonialism, seized South Vietnam, and established the pro-American Ngo Dinh Diem administration. United States imperialism has neither established a ruling machinery nor utilized occupation troops in the South as French old colonialism did; but through interventionist policies and military and economic aid, it has controlled the South in all fields. Neo-colonialism, which is being practiced by American imperialism in South Vietnam, is a product of imperialism in modern times. Owing to the growing influence of the world socialist system and to the national liberation movement which is storming in many countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the imperialists can no longer rule over their colonies with old methods; the native reactionary forces also are frightened and anxious for their privileges. Neo-colonialism is precisely the collusion and compromise between foreign imperialists and a section of native comprador bourgeois and reactionary feudal landlords to maintain the colonial rule under new forms and methods, while checking and opposing the movement of the broad masses.

Neo-colonialism is by nature a concentrated expression of the basic tendency of capitalism: the enslavement of weak and small nations, the search for and struggle over markets and raw materials, and the utter oppression and exploitation of the people of these nations. Its main practice is reliance on violence. It differs from old colonialism in the fact that it carries out its policy of enslavement and uses violence not directly, but indirectly through the medium of a puppet administration and an army vested with sham independence and democracy, and in the form of “aid” or “alliance” in all respects. Neo-colonialism masks its aggressive and exploiting nature in many cloaks; therefore, it is all the more cunning and wicked and easily induces the people to relax their vigilance. In the South, after the defeat of French imperialism, old colonialism was completely doomed and was buried together with the images of its cruel or crafty governors general and high commissioners and its ruthless expeditionary corps against the will of United States imperialism which, unable to revive that decaying corpse, is compelled to act under the cloak of neo-colonialism.

Neo-colonialism relies on its quislings as a tool to carry out its policy. Its strength is drawn partly from the vast economic and military possibilities-which are many of the metropolis, but which, on the other hand, are directly determined by whether or not the native reactionary forces are strong economically and politically. In South Vietnam, the United States-sponsored puppet administration was set up at a time when our people were gaining successes and imperialism meeting with failure. Therefore, right from its inception, it lacked vitality and was fraught with the inherent causes of inner contradictions, crises, and wars. Its social basis is next to nil: feudalism, landlordism, and comprador bourgeoisie, which had not been very strong under the French rule, were weakened and differentiated during years resistance war. After the restoration of peace, they were again divided due to the opposing viewpoints between the United States and France. On the other hand, the revolutionary people have reached a very high degree of political consciousness and are strongly united.

In these conditions, the United States-backed puppet administration cannot stand firm on its feet without closely clinging to its bosses and making themselves docile lackeys at the beck and call of United States imperialism in all affairs, big or small. In face of the people’s revolutionary high tide, it is compelled to embark rapidly dictatorship and fascism, feverishly carrying out the United States policy of military intensification and war preparation. For its own existence, it is forced to declare bluntly its opposition to the Geneva agreements and the cherished aspirations of our people: peace, independence, democracy, and national reunification. That is why, despite the United States-Diem slogans of “overthrowing colonial ism,” “boycotting feudalism,” and “extermination of communists,” and despite their boastful claim of liquidating social evils or carrying out a number of demagogic reforms, the large masses of people have immediately made out behind the mended cloak the real face of the international gendarme, which is the face of United States imperialism and that of the Ngo family, which for many generations have served as running dogs, and the people are all the more resolute in their struggle against them. For many years, the United States-backed puppet administration has had to resort to a policy of violence in order to repress the movement, using privileges and interests as lures to create a new generation of traitors; it has had to strive put under its close control the army, the police, and the administration at various levels in an attempt to enlarge its social bases. But the rising tide of the ever sweeping and powerful struggle of our people, coupled with the coup d’état overthrowing the rule of the Ngo family, has inflicted heavy losses upon United States imperialism; ranks of its quislings cannot be consolidated, let alone enlarged.

The policy of United States imperialism and its henchmen is one of invasion and betrayal of South Vietnam. In consequence, both the unilateral war they started in 1954 and the “special war” they have kindled recently are only aimed at repressing the people’s revolutionary movement, dominating and enslaving South Vietnam, and transforming it into a United States neo-colony and military base. This is clearly an unjust war, an aggressive war. Therefore, in consideration of its political goal and nature, the war carried out by United States imperialism and its henchmen is by no means different from the aggressive war kindled by French colonialism in former times to enslave our people.

In the United States imperialists’ strategy of “flexible response,” “special war” ranks third, coming after world nuclear war and limited war. Considering that the balance of world forces is tipping unfavorably for them, and the immediate difficulties met in the kindling of a large-scale war, the United States imperialists hope to win successes in “limited war” with conventional weapons, especially in the “special wars” aimed at repressing the liberation movement of the weak and small nations. The United States brass have made a thoroughgoing study of the characteristics of this kind of war, the aim of which, in their opinion, is to oppose guerrilla war, that is, the people’s war. Therefore, special warfare takes place within the limits. of a country with no fixed frontline and rare mobilization of large units; on the other hand, there must be an all-around combination of military, political, psychological, and economic activities. The fore going features regarding the limit, scale, or real characteristics of special war by no means change its nature: special war is aggressive war.

United States imperialism, the sworn enemy of the southern people and of our entire nation, possessed of a capitalist economy with most developed modern industry, is the most barbarous imperialist chieftain, the main force of war and aggression, the bulwark of the world counter-revolutionary forces. Economically and militarily, it is a strong enemy.

Compared with French imperialism in former times, it has greater possibilities in all respects—in money and in modern weapons which are stockpiled in great quantities. But the assessment we make of the enemy forces must be factual. We must view them not only on the basis of the balance of world forces in general but also within the limit of a given area, within the real limit of the southern part of our country. Today in the world, the United States military and economic forces are still strong, but, compared with the revolutionary forces which are developing throughout the world, they are in a weaker position than before. Moreover, United States imperialism is being attacked on all sides and has to scatter its forces in many places.

It suffered heavy defeats in China, Korea, and Cuba, is being beaten in Laos and South Vietnam, and is meeting with difficulties. in many other places.

Today in South Vietnam the United States imperialists and their lackeys ever more isolated politically. Militarily speaking, their army is superior to ours in effectiveness, modern weapons, and mobility. All their temporarily strong points must be studied carefully, especially when solving questions regarding operations and campaigns. However, it is certain that all these strong points cannot make up for their most basic weak points in morale and politics, which are inherent in an enemy of the people, in a counter-revolutionary army. But in the South of our country, these weak points are all the more serious owing to the weakness of the southern reactionary forces and to the peculiar form of the aggressive war which is taking place there.

Whether in the unilateral war in former times or in the “special war” at present, the United States imperialists and their lackeys have been conducting an unjust war, that of aggressors and traitors trampling underfoot the most elementary rights of our people and the dearest aspirations of our nation. Therefore, they are meeting with the fierce resistance of our fourteen million southern compatriots. They are fighting a whole nation.
In this “special war,” their military forces are mainly the puppet army. But the absolute majority of their men, being sons of the toiling people, cannot find it in their hearts to go on serving as cannon fodder to defend the interests of the enemy. In the face of the fierce struggle and successes the people and Liberation Army, a hatred for war will certainly develop among the reactionary troops. An ever-growing number of soldiers, stirred by patriotism, will certainly turn their guns against the enemy and side with the people. Moreover, owing to the weakening of the social basis of the reactionary forces as a result of their inner contradictions, which have grown acute and intricate, the enemy has less and less basis for consolidating his army and administration; the morale of the officials in the puppet administration and of the men among the puppet army is flagging markedly with every passing day.
To consolidate the reactionary army, the United States imperialists bring in more advisers, military personnel, and even several task forces. The introduction of greater United States military forces into South Vietnam is immediately effective in controlling the reactionary military forces of their henchmen more closely. But we must clearly realize that, for the United States, the introduction of more military forces into South Vietnam is politically a most passive action. The increase of American military forces will diminish the “special” character of the war. The new face of colonialism has become more ineffective. Our people’s hatred will increase and the contradiction between the United States advisers and the puppet officers and men will be sharpened, not to mention the weakness of the G.I’s in a war against the guerrillas in a tropical battlefield such as South Vietnam. Even the United States brass has to recognize that these weak points have greatly curtailed the effectiveness of their activities.

The South, like the rest of Vietnam, was a colonial and semi-feudal country with an extremely backward economy which was, moreover, ruined by war for many years. After the restoration of peace, it had not yet had time to bring its production to normal when it again fell victim to another aggressive war. Our southern people have had to endure privations and misery caused by a war dragging on for decades. With the successful August revolution, the people’s power was established. This power was afterward maintained and consolidated in the free zones, guerrilla zones, and guerrilla bases throughout the years of nationwide resistance; however, implementing the Geneva agreements, our power gradually gave place to that of the reactionaries, henchmen of the United States imperialists.

For the same reason our people’s armed forces in South Vietnam, which had matured in the Fifth Zone ⁸ and Mekong Delta battlefields during the years of resistance against the French, regrouped to the North, provisionally leaving behind their beloved native land which they had protected at the cost of their blood, while, for their part, tens of thousands of enemy troops withdrew from the Bac Bo Delta. Not only did our guerrilla bases and guerrilla zones cease to exist, but even our immense free zones were temporarily put under the control of the opponents. Availing themselves of these conditions, the United States imperialists and the Ngo Dinh Diem administration started a unilateral war to extinguish the patriotic movement with a view to transforming South Vietnam into an American new-type colony and military base. They pinned their hope on our ruined economy and on the very difficult conditions created by the absence of a people’s power and army to protect them. And they thought that our southern people had no other way than letting themselves be subjugated by their bayonets and guillotines.

But our southern compatriots are really a heroic people. They are possessed of an invincible potential power and a political strength which the United States imperialists and their quislings are incapable of understanding. They have coped with a people having a very high revolutionary spirit and very great political superiority. Revolutionary theory is translated into invincible strength once it has gripped the masses. In a revolutionary war, the people’s political superiority will be translated into a material force capable of turning the tables on the enemy, overcoming all difficulties and hardships to defeat in the end an enemy who at first was several times stronger. The southern people are indeed outstanding sons of the Vietnamese people, a people having the tradition of struggling to the bitter end against foreign invasion, “rather to sacrifice their lives than be enslaved.” Our southern people made the Nam Ky and Ba To insurrections; ⁹ in the historic days of August, they rose up to take the revolution to victory and establish the people’s power; they enjoyed the political and economic rights brought to them by the revolution; and they fought heroically, making an important contribution to the victory of the great resistance war of the nation. After a long revolutionary struggle, the southern people reached a high political and organizational level, gaining many experiences from their political and their armed struggles. For this reason, in the face of a most barbarous enemy, the revolutionary movement in the South has been maintained and developed every day.

The southern people, armed with a revolutionary spirit and the experiences gained in their revolutionary struggle, are, moreover, encouraged by the strength of a just cause and closely sealed into very strong and firm bloc by lofty revolutionary goals: national independence, land to the tillers, basic freedoms, peace, and national re-unification. After a national democratic revolutionary struggle fraught with sacrifice and hardships, and a great patriotic resistance war, the lofty national democratic ideals broadly disseminated by the Party since 1930 have taken deep root into the heart and mind of the masses of people. We cannot give up fighting so long as we have not wrested back independence, land, and the basic rights to life. The national resistance war ended successfully, the Geneva agreements. recognized Vietnam’s sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity; the battle cannot come an end so long as these clauses of the agreements are not implemented. The southern people are determined to hold firm the national and democratic banner and raise it aloft till victory.

In the former resistance years, President Ho Chi Minh used to say: “Unity, unity, and broad unity; victory, victory, and great victory.” The southern people clearly realize that unity is strength, unity is the main factor of victory. Though the enemy is materially strong, he is constantly divided by inner contradictions, while the southern people on the contrary enjoy a tradition of broad unity established throughout the first sacred resistance war. In the first years following the restoration of peace, the struggle was fraught with difficulties and hardships, and the southern patriots, though at times severed from one another organizationally, were closely bound to one another morally. The love for one’s own fellow countrymen, the national pride and solidarity, and the pursuit of common revolutionary goals are sources of strength encouraging our compatriots firmly to maintain and actively to broaden unity. If the South Vietnam National Liberation Front has grown rapidly and enjoyed such a great prestige among the people, it is mainly due to the experiences gained in the past, to the traditions of national unity, and to the development and application of these experiences to the new historical conditions.

Moreover, the southern people are encouraged to organize themselves along a correct political line and in adequate forms of struggle. For this reason, however atrocious the enemy, and however difficult and dangerous the conditions of struggle may be, the political and armed forces of the people are growing stronger and stronger. The process of revolutionary struggle of the southern people is a development from political struggle to armed struggle, with both of them then being combined with each other and enhancing each other. The southern people have developed their political superiority to a high degree, having worked out a correct principle and a great many forms of struggle. Politically and militarily speaking, the revolutionary struggle in the South has been developing to a fairly high degree thanks to the creative spirit of the masses; it has, therefore, been able to thwart many dangerous policies and maneuvers of the enemy, frustrate his modern strategy, and achieve greater and greater successes.

The revolutionary war waged by our compatriots in the South has been carried on when half of our country is liberated and advancing to socialism. The North is a hope and an encouragement for the southern people, especially in the years when the enemy carries out most atrocious terrorization and repression. The liberated North is the pride of the entire Vietnamese people, a firm and strong base of the struggle for national reunification. Our southern compatriots feel that their northern fellow countrymen are always close by their side in the struggle against a common enemy, which enhances their confidence and strengthens their determination to overcome all difficulties on their advance to victory.

Over the past years, our southern people have been struggling against a most barbarous enemy. The most reactionary and inhuman nature of the United States imperialists and their puppet administration have wrought havoc with our southern people who become all the more aware of the real face of the enemy of the nation and nurture an ever-deeper hatred for him. In war the fighting spirit and hatred are a huge force. This explains why the United States jet helicopters, amphibious cars, ultrarapid submachine guns, flamethrowers, automatic mines, noxious chemicals, unsinkable landing craft, and other modern weapons cannot save the puppet army from repeated failures.

On the contrary, the southern liberation forces are armed only with rudimentary weapons, but their very high fighting spirit have helped them score success after success.

At present, the revolutionary war in the South is still facing many difficulties and hardships. However, with their heroic fighting spirit, our southern compatriots and Liberation Army have scored great successes and created stable factors of strategic significance. The people’s political forces and revolutionary armed forces have grown stronger and stronger, the liberated area wider. Our southern people are turning the table on the enemy, and the successful development of the liberation war in South Vietnam has eloquently testified that in a revolutionary struggle and in war, the decisive factor is, in the last analysis, man and political lines, and that the decisive strength is that of the masses of people.

III

As has been said above, during the last ten years in South Vietnam, the revolutionary struggle of our people has shifted from the political form to the form of political and armed struggle and has now become a national liberation war waged by the entire people against the “special war” unleashed by the United States imperialists and their lackeys.

Basing ourselves on the characteristics stated in Section II, we can draw the conclusion that: the war for liberation waged by the South Vietnamese people at present is a nationwide, all-sided, self-supporting, long-term, and arduous war which in the end will certainly be victorious. Besides this fundamental political content, similar to that of the former patriotic war against the French colonialists and American interventionists, the present war for liberation of our people in the South has its own peculiarities in that our enemy is not the old colonialism of the French imperialists but the neo-colonialism of the United States imperialists; our southern compatriots have now made great progress in ideology and organization; the international situation is more favorable; and also the form of warfare used by the enemy is the aggressive war of a special type, not a classical one.

It is clear that this is a war waged by the entire people. For the sake of safeguarding the vital interests of the nation, in face of the danger that their country will be subjugated, their homes destroyed, their lives threatened, and their property trampled underfoot, fourteen million of our compatriots in the South, regardless of age, sex, nationality, creed, and political affiliation, are resolved not to be enslaved and have risen together against the United States imperialists and their henchmen.

The war has been waged by the entire people because the political goals of the war for liberation are just and very lofty, the South Vietnam National Liberation Front has a correct political line which can mobilize and organize the entire people. The platform of the Front “To struggle for peace, neutrality, independence, and democracy and for the future reunification of the country—has reflected the primary and urgent requirements and the most profound aspirations of the South Vietnamese people. It has satisfied the immediate revolutionary task created by the social condition of South Vietnam.

The United States imperialists have done their best to practice neo-colonialism, to set up the “Republic of Vietnam” having its “independence” and “sovereignty,” because they want to overshadow the fundamental contradictions between our people and the aggressive imperialists and to create conditions for the maintenance of the puppet administration, which hides behind the false images of nation and sovereignty to deceive the masses and win them over. However, the Ngo Dinh Diem administration, owing to the conditions which originated it and to the policies it was compelled to follow from its inception, did not succeed in its deceit and laid bare its face of traitor to the country.

In face of the perfidious scheme of neo-colonialism and the puppet administration, we must raise all the higher the banner of national independence. That is why the slogan “National independence and the urgent clauses for national salvation” put forth by the South Vietnam National Liberation Front has been able to rally broadly all patriotic and democratic forces in a united front against the imperialists and their stooges on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance. Not only the grassroots worker-peasant masses but all the sections of petty bourgeois intelligentsia, the national bourgeoisie, and patriotic personalities have risen as one man against the common enemy under the banner of national independence. The minority people in the South have set a shining example of indomitable spirit. Most of the religious sects also approve of the Front’s platform; even the pro-French elements and the large majority of Catholic refugees from the North have today sympathized with the Front and taken part, to a certain degree, in the struggle for national salvation.

In a revolution to liberate a colonial or semi-colonial and semi-feudal country the anti-imperialist question cannot be taken apart from the anti-feudal question, nor can the national revolution be separated from the democratic revolution, because the substance and content of the national question is the peasant question; without putting forth the democratic question, without rousing the great peasant masses, it is quite impossible to consolidate and strengthen the National United Front and to set up a solid worker-peasant alliance. which can serve as a basis to powerfully develop other patriotic forces.

In the specific condition of South Vietnamese society, the democratic problem plays a particularly important role because, with its false agrarian reform policy, the United States imperialists-sponsored puppet administration has done its utmost to grab the land allotted to the peasants during the war of resistance against the French; what this administration called agrarian reform was actually the distribution of a small acreage of land to its faithful lackeys. It is precisely for this reason that the South Vietnam National Liberation Front has raised the slogan: “To carry out land rent reduction and then to solve the land problem for the peasants. that the tillers will have land to till.” During the last ten years, the peasants in the South have received in distribution more than 3.5 million acres of land, or nearly three times over the acreage of land allotted during the former resistance war. Most of these lands belonged to the imperialists and reactionary big landlords who had followed the enemy. This distribution of land to the peasants bears a paramount significance because the people’s war is a revolutionary war waged by the masses of which the peasants make up over 90 percent. As the peasants in the South have by tradition an indomitable fighting spirit, the fact that they have now received vital interests from the revolution is for them a stimulus and they can organize themselves into a mighty force to wage a long resistance war.

In South Vietnam, not only has the puppet administration grabbed the land of the peasants, but it has daily violated the lives and property of the people, it has sprayed toxic chemicals to destroy the crop and it has coerced the inhabitants into leaving their homes and villages to be herded into “strategic hamlets.” In the town, the economic policy which depends on the United States imperialists has caused the bankruptcy of the native manufacturers and traders and a serious unemployment among the toiling people. That is why the democratic slogan has also another meaning, which is to improve the people’s livelihood and to demand the implementation of an independent economic policy.

Democracy has, furthermore, a political meaning of paramount importance, which is to demand the carrying-out of democratic liberties. in opposition to the fascist dictatorial regime. The United States imperialists usually boast that the administrations under their sway have pursued a policy of “freedom,” that they have also written down “democratic liberties” in their constitutions. However, in practice, from the very beginning these administrations have become fascist dictatorial powers. That is why the slogans “To institute a broad and progressive democratic regime, to guarantee democratic liberties demanding the implementation of Article 14-C of the Geneva agreements, ¹⁰ to oppose discrimination against former resistance members,” and so on, have responded to the urgent requirements of all strata of the population and have effectively urged the broad masses of people to rise against the enemy.

At present our country is temporarily partitioned into two zones, each having a different social regime. The revolutionary task ahead of the South Vietnamese people is to overthrow the United States imperialists and their henchmen and to win independence and democracy. The great majority of grassroots masses have realized not only the necessity of carrying out this task, they have also aspired to take the revolution to new height. Meanwhile, the national bourgeoisie and a section of the middle classes on the one hand oppose United States imperialism out of nationalism and, on the other, want to defend the interests of their own classes. In order to rally the largest majority of people, the Front has laid down appropriate home and foreign policies; internally it advocates the promotion of national industry and trade and development of the national economy: externally it advocates a diplomatic policy of peace and neutrality. The word, “neutrality” has a great echo among the upper classes in South Vietnam and a widespread repercussion among the officers, soldiers, and civil servants of the enemy’s administration; it has received the greatest approval and support from abroad. It is necessary to stress the requirement for peace and the step taken to reunify the country because genuine peace is the aspiration of everyone in the South, the more so since it has experienced twenty years of continual warfare, and because reunification is the profound aspiration of every Vietnamese, Vietnam has ever been one and indivisible.

Because the goal of its struggle is just and conforms to the fundamental aspirations of the people, and is mentioned in its platform, it can be said that at present the South Vietnam National Liberation Front is able to rally the overwhelming majority of fourteen million people of the South, to mobilize, organize, and lead our compatriots there in the war for national liberation and salvation. It is obvious. that this war, which bears a national character as well as a class character, is mainly a war for national salvation against the United States aggressive imperialists and their myrmidons. This is a people’s war in a new historic condition in South Vietnam.

The liberation war waged by the South Vietnamese people is an all-out war.

In this “special war” the enemy fights us mainly by military means, but he also lays stress on political activities, the “cong van du activities,” ¹¹ in order to win over the people and eagerly to penetrate into South Vietnam through economic and cultural media, and the like. The liberation war waged by our people over there covers many fields: military, political, economic, and cultural.

1. Our people cherish peace by tradition. In the early days of the successful August revolution, when the Democratic Republic of Vietnam had just been set up, we did our best to win peace by signing the preliminary agreement with the French government. But historical facts have shown that while we loved peace, the imperialists and colonialists did their utmost to kindle war. In the end, to defend the vital interests of our country, all our people have risen up, using armed violence and revolutionary struggle against counter-revolutionary violence, against the aggressive war of the French colonialists propped up by the United States imperialists. And we have carried the day.

In 1954, after the signing of the Geneva agreements, from North to South, all our people longed for peace; they made every effort to maintain and consolidate it and fought against all acts sabotaging the Geneva agreements in the South. While the United States imperialists and the puppet administration used counter-revolutionary violence to terrorize and massacre them, our people have put up a most valiant political struggle against the enemy for many years. In fact, this struggle has testified once again that to the counter-revolutionary violence of the enemy, our people must definitely oppose revolutionary violence.

At the price of their hard-won experiences, our compatriots in the South realized that the fundamental trend of imperialism and its lackeys is violence and war; that is why the most correct path to be followed by the peoples to liberate themselves is revolutionary violence and revolutionary war. This path conforms strictly to the ethics and the fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism on class struggle, on the state, and on the revolution. Only by revolutionary violence can the masses defeat aggressive imperialism and its lackeys and overthrow the reactionary administration to take power. When the United States imperialists stepped up armed intervention in the South, the revolutionary struggle waged by our people turned into a widespread people’s war, which has won greater and greater successes with every passing day.

The experiences gained in the revolutionary struggle put up by all our people during the last decades and by our southern compatriots over the past ten years have proved that revolutionary violence and revolutionary war is the correct path followed by the peoples who want to rise up and smash the domination of the colonialist imperialists and their lackeys; in specific conditions they are the real possibilities for these peoples to liberate themselves.

2. Revolutionary violence takes many forms: political violence, armed violence, and armed violence combined with political violence. Basing ourselves on our absolute superiority in the political field, and on the policy of the enemy who uses military as well as political means to quell the revolution, our southern compatriots are now using political violence combined with armed violence against the enemy. They have known how to take advantage of and to develop the valuable experiences gained by all our people in the revolutionary struggles they have waged up to the present time. These various forms of violence have led our people to brilliant victories. We have also known how to apply creatively the experiences gained in the recent revolutionary struggles in the world such as in Cuba and Algeria, where great successes have been achieved as the result of a skillful coordination between armed struggle and political struggle. It can be said that one of the striking particularities of the revolutionary war in the South, of the comprehensive character of this war, is that it is developing simultaneously in two forms-political struggle and armed struggle—in a long period.

Political struggle plays a very fundamental role because our basic strength and the enemy’s basic weakness lie in the political field, because the enemy schemes to deceive the people by political means, because the South Vietnamese people are by tradition indomitable in political struggle and have a very high political and organizational spirit. Once the people have a high revolutionary spirit, they are always a huge force, play a decisive role, and are a deciding factor of the revolutionary struggle. However, particularly in the present era, the toiling worker-peasant masses and progressive people of the world have made big strides on the road of revolutionary struggle; particularly in the South our people have been tempered for decades in political and armed struggles; while the administration and army serving the United States imperialists are very weak in the political field, our people have ample possibilities of developing extensively their political strength and of exploiting the great shortcomings of the enemy in order to secure victory for us.

Armed struggle is a high form of revolutionary struggle; it is playing a very fundamental and important role. Only with the support of armed struggle can the masses bring into play their political authority. As the enemy is using counter-revolutionary war against the people, to overthrow his domination it is absolutely necessary for the people to annihilate and destroy the puppet army. In the specific situation of South Vietnam, armed struggle should closely combine with political struggle; at the same time, it should abide by the laws on warfare and play its role of annihilating as many enemy forces as possible.

3. In the South, from the two major currents of struggle mentioned above, the masses have formed and built up a very mighty political force and an ever-powerful revolutionary armed force.

The political army of the masses includes all ages and sexes and has established bases everywhere-in the lowlands and highlands, in town and country. This army has risen up and smashed to pieces the enemy’s rural administration, destroyed a great number of strategic hamlets, carried out agitation work among the puppet soldiers, and urged tens of thousands of them to go over to the side of the people; it has fought against conscription and corvée, against the spraying of toxic chemicals, repression of religions, arson, and eviction from houses; it has demanded the protection of human lives and property, the improvement of the people’s livelihood, the application of democracy, the punishment of Ngo Dinh Diem’s henchmen, and the expulsion of the United States imperialists from South Vietnam.

This political army has now used a legal form for its struggle, turned what is illegal into legal; it has never threatened by terror and bloodshed; it has advanced barehanded and used a patriotic language to convince the enemy troops. Nobody can forget the scene in which tens of thousands of peasants broke through the cordon of bayonets, rushed into town, and stirred the streets with shouts of hatred and indignation. Nobody can forget the picture of a mountain girl who threw herself in front of an enemy bulldozer which was destroying her village to build a strategic road; the image of a South Vietnamese girl who, with her body, prevented an enemy cannon from shelling her village.

While workers, pupils, and students have played a worthwhile role in the political struggle in the towns, the women peasants were constantly on the front rank of the struggle in the countryside. When this political army temporarily stops direct struggle, it will engage in the production of foods and weapons, do afforestation work, dig trenches, make spikes, fence their fighting villages, or perform their duty as transporters, scouts, or messengers to help the army-men.

At first, the revolutionary armed forces of South Vietnam were the self-defense units and armed propaganda units which saw the light of day in the fire of the movement of political struggles of the people. Then bigger units appeared with the extensive development of the militia and guerrilla units in the course of the war. At present, the armed forces of the South Vietnamese people have grown very swiftly in strength under three forms which coordinate closely with one another in military operations: the militia and guerrillas, the local troops, and the regular army. Though still young and fighting in very hard and difficult conditions, the South Vietnam Liberation Army has successively defeated the enemy and has now raised the degree of its political consciousness and has increased its equipment, mobility, and fighting strength. In equipment, it mainly relies on the arms and ammunition taken from the enemy and increases its strength in the course of fighting; it is closely linked with the population. Like the Vietnam People’s Army, the brother South Vietnam Liberation Army is not only an army which fights heroically but an army which is remarkable in production and excellent in all its work; it can annihilate great numbers of enemy troops at the front and actively make propaganda among the population; it can successfully carry out agitation work among enemy troops; and it can work painstakingly to fend for itself when supply from outside meets with difficulties.

In the face of an enemy equipped with modern arms, one which has great mobility and equipment for its intelligence service, but a very low morale, the South Vietnam Liberation Army has known how to analyze the strong and weak points of the enemy; it has fought unremittingly and got the upper hand of the enemy; together with the inhabitants, it has destroyed strategic hamlets, victoriously resisted small raids and large-scale raids as well; it has laid ambushes, carried out sudden attacks and annihilated whole companies, even whole regiments, stormed small posts, then bigger posts, and even a whole sub-sector. The Liberation troops have attacked communication lines (roads and waterways) of the enemy, burned oil depots and ammunition dumps, attacked airfields, sunk warships, and killed American advisers in the very center of Saigon. In the recent past, the armed struggle of our people in the South has developed into a quite extensive guerrilla war of a fairly high level. It can be said that at present, guerrilla warfare in the South develops at a quicker tempo than during the resistance against the French and faces more difficult fighting conditions. The Liberation troops have performed a great number of heroic deeds. During the arduous and fierce struggle they have waged, there appeared many examples of immortal sacrifice and great heroism, which continue the glorious tradition of the nation, the revolution, and the former resistance war-Tru Van Tho plugged a loophole with his body; Mai Van cut one of his arms to continue the fighting; Nguyen Viet Khai had three helicopters shot down to his credit; Ly Van So damaged three amphibious cars; a group at Ap Bac got its fame; the Long Trung guerrillas persistently resisted a twenty-nine-day raid, and so forth.

The Liberation Army is now heroically annihilating the United States-sponsored puppet army commanded by American advisers. It made its appearance only a few years ago, yet it is the terror of the enemy who has gradually realized that it is not he who in the future will annihilate us, it is the Liberation Army which will defeat him. The heroic South Vietnam Liberation Army deserves the confidence of our southern compatriots and of the fatherland.

4. After the victories of the political struggle and armed struggle, the liberated areas have been broadened, running from the high plateaus of Central Vietnam to the Mekong Delta. The building of these areas in the political, economic, and cultural fields has become an important task and is all the more important for the liberation war in the South. At present, the liberated areas are separated from one another, some are entangled with the enemy-controlled areas, others reach into out-of-the-way places; they cover the provinces of the densely peopled delta and even draw near big and small towns. The liberated areas are not only firm guerrilla bases but are also built to become shining models of a new life, of a new regime in opposition to the gloomy state and stifling atmosphere of the enemy-controlled areas.

Under the direction of the Front, the people of the liberated areas are obviously masters of the land and are doing their best to manage and build their life along progressive lines. Democratic liberties, freedom of belief, freedom of business, and equality among nationalities are respected and widely implemented. Cultural, social, and educational activities as well as the health services are progressing. A healthy patriotic art and literature of a mass character contributes to the mobilization of the people for the struggle.

Here our compatriots are freed from the plunder and exploitation by the enemy; they are enthusiastically tackling production, improving their method of work, raising their livelihood and at the same the economic, agrarian, and religious policies of the Front, and the time actively pooling their efforts to wage the war of resistance. Here policy dealing with the bourgeois and foreign residents, the policy regarding the puppet soldiers and officers who go over to the side of the people are clearly defined and readjusted.

At present, the liberated areas have played their strategic role in the liberation war and have brought great influence to bear on the inhabitants of the enemy-controlled areas, including the towns. The liberated areas are precisely the first pictures of free and independent South Vietnam in the future; they will certainly be expanded and consolidated and will become the regions in which the future regime of the South will be applied after the victory of the liberation war.

IV

Before the danger of a greater failure, the ruling circles in the United States are striving to retrieve their present situation in South Vietnam.

Political circles and influential personalities in the United States have brought forward many opinions and have devised varied military measures not excluding the political ones. This clearly reflects the American embarrassment and deadlock after ten years of intervention and aggression in the South of our country.

After the signing of the Geneva agreements, with the fame and force that the United States had at that time, all American political and military figures were optimistic, thinking that South Vietnam was an easy prey. At the birth of the Staley-Taylor plan, though they were no more optimistic than they had been five or six years before, a great many people from the aggressive circles in the United States were still confident of the “special war” as a means to pacify South Vietnam within eighteen months. But now, after ten years of successive failures, especially the bitter ones over the past three years, their optimism and confidence have vanished; they begin to squabble with one another-and the squabble is growing hotter—about the cause of their defeat and about the measures to restore the situation. During the discussion, they come to agree on one point: their hope of winning swiftly in South Vietnam is lost, but they are still at variance on how to get out of the present tunnel with no end in view.

Owing to its extremely warlike and reactionary nature, the Johnson government is striving to continue the war and is clinging to its aggressive colonial policy in the South. This is easy to understand, if we examine the strategic position of South Vietnam with regard to the whole of the American warlike scheme in Indochina and Southeast Asia, and the important significance of the first experiment of their “special warfare” in the South aimed at repressing the movement for independence of various peoples. Johnson has many a time spoken of the determination of the United States to stay in South Vietnam at all costs. Therefore, it is quite certain that the United States government will continue to intensify the “special war” it has kindled and will further speed up every military activity, with a view to boosting the morale and bridging the gap between its lackeys who are wavering and who are at variance with one another, and endeavoring to win some victory before finding another solution.

Simultaneously with the pushing forward of the aggressive war in South Vietnam, the United States imperialists will further intensify the provocation and sabotage in North Vietnam, hoping to create more difficulties for our entire people’s struggle for national reunification. The fact that the Americans are obliged to increase these acts at present, at this time when they are deeply bogged down in the South, shows that they are in a bitterly passive situation. It is precisely because they are defeated by the southern people that they must take such adventurous measures. It is certain that in intensifying these acts the United States imperialists can threaten no one, but bring upon themselves further shameful failures and hatred of the entire people from North to South. How can these acts prevent the northern people from giving their unshakable support to their southern compatriots’ patriotic struggle? How can they lessen the latter’s ironlike confidence in and sincere sympathy with the socialist North, the revolutionary base of the whole country?

Owing to their acute crisis in South Vietnam, the United States imperialists have schemed to intensify their armed intervention in the Kingdom of Laos and threaten the neutrality of the Kingdom of Cambodia, with a view to creating tension in Indochina and Southeast Asia. They want to rely upon these provocative acts and this dis play of force to screen their defeats in South Vietnam, and mislead the world opinion which is severely condemning their aggressive war in the South.

To serve these dark warlike schemes, thousands of United States military personnel, United States weapons, ammunition, and war means have recently been introduced into South Vietnam. At the same time, the United States has carried out the transfer of its army and warships to Southeast Asia.

In the face of the United States policy of adding fuel to the fire, and of intensifying the sabotage of peace in Indochina and Southeast Asia, our people in North Vietnam set themselves extremely heavy responsibilities and tasks: to strengthen the defense of socialist North Vietnam, to protect our people’s peaceful and creative labor; to be determined to support our southern people’s patriotic struggle; to push forward the struggle for peaceful reunification of the fatherland; to strengthen the solidarity with and the support to the Laotian and Cambodian peoples in the defense of their independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, and in their struggle against the United States intervention and aggression. This responsibility is very heavy, and this task very high. However, with our thorough revolutionary spirit, profound patriotism, and just international spirit, we will certainly discharge our responsibility before the nation and the world’s people.

The resolution of the Third-Party National Congress ¹² has stressed: ” Vietnam is one, the Vietnamese people is one, our entire people’s will for national reunification is unshakable, the final victory will certainly be ours.” In the light of the resolution, we have clearly realized that North Vietnam is building socialism, that South Vietnam is carrying on the liberation war, and that these two tasks have a close relation with each other and help each other. While carrying on the second sacred resistance war to liberate themselves, our southern compatriots also aim at checking and smashing the United States imperialists’ scheme of aggression against our whole country. Inversely, to build socialism in North Vietnam peacefully, and to strengthen the force of the North in every respect—political, economic, and national defense—is precisely the most decisive task with regard to the development of the whole Vietnamese revolution, and the struggle for national reunification. Over the past ten years, this ideological trend has unceasingly mobilized sixteen million northern people eagerly to work and record brilliant achievements in the building-up of their country; without halting before any sacrifice, fourteen million southern people are heroically fighting to win back and firmly defend every inch of land of Vietnam. North and South Vietnam are under the same roof; the South is the front line; the North is the political and moral support of the fatherland. North Vietnam has the task of building socialism and making it a firm basis for the southern people’s patriotic struggle, and the struggle for national reunification. Today in the North the movement for sworn brotherhood between the northern and southern people, a lively expression of North and South Vietnam kinship, has gained town and country; the successive emulation drives for our southern kith and kin and national reunification, have brought in the highest labor productivity. “Everyone redoubles his efforts to show his gratitude to his southern kith and kin”; this warm appeal from President Ho Chi Minh, the beloved leader of the entire people, is urging every one of us to work.

Facing the United States imperialists’ and their lackeys’ scheme of intensifying provocative and sabotage acts in the North, our people in North Vietnam must strive to strengthen and consolidate national defense, defend security, and further raise their revolutionary vigilance and their hatred for the enemy. We must clearly realize that to build the North and defend it are twin tasks. Each of us in North Vietnam must be aware that the economic building and development of production is the central task; at the same time, he must always pay attention to combining economic building with strengthening national defense, strive to increase the defense work in all respects, be ready to cope with all provocations and sabotages of the enemy, and smash every one of his adventurous acts. All the commandos of the United States imperialists’ lackeys in South Vietnam as well as those of Chiang Kai-shek commanded by the United States recently introduced secretly into North Vietnam, were surrounded and completely annihilated by our army men and people. This shows the high vigilance and sharp readiness for fighting of North Vietnam’s army men and people. We must develop this good to continue dealing heavier blows at the United States imperialists and their flunkeys if they pursue their aggression against socialist North Vietnam.

The armed forces— the People’s Army, the People’s Armed Security Forces, the People’s Militia, and the People’s Self-Defense Units—must clearly realize their heavy responsibility in the present. situation of the country. North Vietnam is building in peace; South Vietnam is carrying on the liberation war. Over the past ten years, though being heavily defeated by the southern people, the United States imperialists do not want to draw useful lessons and are pursuing the aggressive war on half of our country. Before the complete victory tween of our people the extremely hard and complex struggle be our people and the United States imperialists still goes on. Therefore, we must further raise the tradition of determination to fight and to win, be always vigilant and ready for fighting, heighten the spirit to implement the orders, be united and closely act in unison, boldly wipe out the enemy, and be determined successfully to fulfill every military task entrusted by the Party and government. We must further develop the spirit of readiness for fighting of a revolutionary army, firmly hold every weapon and instrument of war, and defend the territorial integrity, airspace, and territorial waters of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. We are certain to point defeat every wicked scheme of the United States imperialists.

Recently, simultaneously with the intensification of provocative and sabotage acts in North Vietnam, the strafing and shelling of the Laotian people’s liberated zone, and the violation of the Cambodian border, the bellicose Americans have still clamored that they will strafe and shell the territory of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and extend the war to the North. We warn the United States imperialists: “Should the United States militarists be rash enough to attack the North; the entire people of the country would stand up as one man to smash to smithereens their aggression and completely defeat them all over the country.” To attack the North is to attack a socialist country; it is certain that the peoples of the brother socialist countries, of Southeast Asia, and the progressive people the world over will wholeheartedly support us.

The July 15, 1964, statement of our government has said that there is only one issue for the United States imperialists in South Vietnam:

The United States government must respect the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Vietnam and refrain from interfering in her internal affairs.
The United States government must put an end to its aggressive war there, in South Vietnam, withdraw all its troops and weapons from and leave the South Vietnamese people to settle their own internal affairs by themselves in accordance with the program of the South Vietnam National Liberation Front.
The peaceful reunification of Vietnam is an internal affair of the Vietnamese people; it will be solved in accordance with the spirit of the political program of the Vietnam Fatherland Front and the program of the South Vietnam National Liberation Front. Except for this, there is no other way out. If the United States. imperialists continue their war of aggression against South Vietnam; they will certainly be defeated by the southern people and will finally be doomed to complete failure. If they rashly extend the war to the North, this would be suicide for them.

The successes recorded during ten years of peaceful construction in North Vietnam are filling each of us with enthusiasm. The socialist building in Vietnam will certainly succeed. The successes of the revolution in South Vietnam during the past ten years are powerfully mobilizing every one of us. The revolutionary work to liberate South Vietnam and peacefully reunify the fatherland will certainly succeed brilliantly. Today no reactionary force in the world can prevent thirty million people of our whole country from carrying out their sacred aspiration—to build a peaceful, unified, independent, democratic, prosperous, and powerful Vietnam.

12 Footnotes

Prepare by Maoism Library from https://archive.org/details/militaryartofpeo0000unse/page/185 ↩
This is an edited condensation of General Giap’s article entitled “The Liberation War of the South Vietnam People Against the US. Imperialists and Their Henchmen Will Certainly Win,” published originally in Nhan Dan on July 19, 1964 (the tenth anniversary of the signing of the Geneva accords). It was published as a pamphlet by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, Hanoi, in 1965. ↩
The Cao Dai religion is a synthesis of many faiths, both traditional and modern, while the Hoa Hao is a reformed Buddhist sect. Each has had as many million adherents in South Vietnam. For decades they have had their own military forces and strong political hold over large regions. Diem’s attack on the sects in the early years of his rule touched off the first armed resistance to his regime. ↩
In his letter of January 26, 1961, to H. E. Ambassador M. Gopala Menon, Chairman of the International Control Commission set up at Geneva, Giap reported the food poisoning of over six thousand detainees in the Phu Loi camp in early 1999. Philippe Devillers (in Honey, ed., North Vietnam Today, p. 37) records the death of some twenty detainees there in December 1959. ↩
Promulgated on May 6, 1959, this statute reshaped the entire judiciary system of South Vietnam, establishing special military courts under the direct authority of the Defense Ministry throughout the country. Rights of defense counsel and appeal were removed. The tribunals could only pass sentences of death (carried out on the spot) or hard labor for life ↩
Economist Eugene Staley and General Maxwell Taylor were influential in establishing the broad contours of policy in the beginning of the Kennedy. administration. Strategy then called for regroupement of the population into “strategic hamlets,” pacification, and economic development. ↩
Head of the U.S. Military Mission to South Vietnam during the Kennedy administration. ↩
The northernmost region of South Vietnam. ↩
1940 and 1945. ↩
Article 14 of the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam states: “Each Party undertakes to refrain from any reprisals or discrimination against persons or organizations on account of their activities during the hostilities and to guarantee their democratic liberties” ↩
Espionage and intelligence activity carried out by local agents. ↩
September 5, 1960. ↩