After dealing with the Vietnamese people’s weaknesses in equipment and technique and in economic potential, the author points out the decisive factors of their ultimate victory:
1--The first factor is the party’s correct revolutionary line. This line is the condensed expression of the clever and creative combination of Marxist-Leninist general principles with the concrete practice of our revolution. This is the line of the people’s national democratic revolution progressing to socialism in a former semifeudal colony. Our party’s line once was tested in our people’s long and heroic revolutionary struggle and led our revolution from victory to victory. In the light of this line, the Vietnamese nation was the first colony to rise up and defeat the mighty army of an imperialist power--French imperialism--to liberate itself. The north of our country is also the first state to take the path of socialism in southeast Asia. Today our nation has the honor to be in the forefront of the fight against the chieftain of the imperialists--U.S. imperialism.
The above-mentioned correct line is also the line of revolutionary armed struggle of a small country which rises up and defeats an enemy many times stronger than itself. This is the line of people’s war developed to a high degree with a creative and diverse content unknown in the annals of the national liberation struggle. A correct revolutionary line is the surest guarantee for our people’s ultimate victory in their just struggle against the American imperialists for national salvation.
2--The second factor is the unity of all the people against the U.S. imperialists for national salvation; North and South are of the one mind in their determination to defeat the American aggressors and their lackeys, ready to make every sacrifice rather than lose their independence and be enslaved. This iron will reflects our entire people’s tradition of indomitable resistance against foreign aggression. It has united our people, millions like one, resolute to fight to defend our country and secure independence, democracy, unity, and peace.
Our compatriots in the south have closed their ranks in the fire of the revolutionary struggle, fought throughout 20 long years, overcome countless difficulties, and braved a cruel enemy with a firm resolve to march forward, to fight, and to win. Today our people in the south have the national liberation front, a broad-based organization possessed of a correct line and a program and enjoying high prestige at home and abroad.
Out compatriots in the south, starting from spikeboards and mantis guns, have built up big and heroic liberation armed forces comprising three kinds of army, having a high combativeness as well as a skillful strategy and tactics, versed both in guerrilla warfare and large-unit actions, and credited with the wiping out of ever bigger units of both the puppet and American troops. The heroic liberation armed forces have developed everywhere and have been conducting ever more powerful operations on all battlefields of the south from the Ben Hai River to Ca Mau Cape, from the western plateaus to the delta countryside, and even in the vicinity of the big towns. At present the southern (?liberated) zone includes the major part of the population and territory of the south. The front’s policies are gradually being applied there, a new life under an independent and democratic regime is being built, and in fact the liberated zone has become the image of tomorrow’s entirely liberated south.
Meanwhile, the people in the north of our country are steadily progressing to socialism with an ardent love for the fatherland and for socialism and with an unprecedented political and spiritual identity of mind. The north is not only a source of inspiration but also a firm rear for the struggle against the U.S. imperialists for national salvation of our entire people, endowed with an excellent political system and strong economic and national defense potential. This is a favorable condition which did not exist in our former resistance against the French imperialists.
Since the American imperialists extended their war of destruction to the north, our army and people there have stood up, fought resolutely, and inflicted initial defeats upon the enemy’s war of destruction. In response to the call of the party Central Committee, the government, and president Ho Chi Minh, our people in the north have launched a movement against the U.S. imperialists for national salvation to carry out production while fighting, fight heroically in defense of the north, give wholehearted and all-out support to the liberation revolution in the south, and make a substantial contribution to the common victory of the whole nation.
The Vietnamese nation has always had a tradition or unity and unbending resistance against foreign aggression, but if we look back to its several thousand-year-old history as well as to the revolutionary struggle of the past years, we shall realize that never have the entire people united so firmly and broadly as today, never has the will to fight off aggression and defend the country been promoted to such a degree as today.
3--The third factor is the invincible people’s war and the experience to lead this Struggle. If one can say that at present in military affairs, apart from the great invention of atomic weapons, there is a greater invention, people’s war, one can safely say that the Vietnamese people have contributed to the devising and the efficient wielding of such an invincible weapon. People’s war in our country has developed in the historical, political, and social conditions of Vietnam and achieved a very high standard with an extremely varied content.
People’s war in our country has developed according to the general laws of revolutionary war but also to the specific laws of the Vietnamese society and battlefield. Therefore, it is a nationwide and all-sided revolutionary war and at the same time a revolutionary war in a small nation, on a small territory, inhabited by a small population, having an underdeveloped economy relying on the strength of an entire people united in the struggle, which will finally worst an enemy originally many times stronger than itself.
People’s war in Vietnam in general is a revolutionary armed struggle developing on the basis of the masses’ political upsurge. Hence the revolutionary masses boundless strength has pervaded the revolutionary armed forces and given them an extraordinary capacity to fight and to win. Moreover, the outstanding characteristic of the people’s war in our country at the present stage is that, in the midst of the fighting, armed struggle and political struggle are very closely coordinated, mutually assisting, and interacting. Therefore the slogan “Mobilize the entire people, arm the entire people, and fight on all fronts” has become a most lively and heroic reality. Armed struggle in South Vietnam has budded forth from the political upsurge; and in guerrilla warfare or in limited regular warfare the operations of the armed forces have always been carried out in accordance with a principle--which is closest coordination with the political struggle—formerly in the scattered insurrections in the countryside as later on in the movement to destroy strategic hamlets, formerly in the uprising of millions of peasants in Nam Bo (South Vietnam proper) as recently in that of millions of peasants in south central Vietnam. (sentence as received)
Armed struggle in the south has another characteristic: in guerrilla warfare or in regular warfare, revolutionary armed struggle is fully capable of solving the question of getting the better of an enemy equipped with up-to-date weapons, as in the U.S. Army. In the south, not only can the regular army, but also the regional army and the militia and guerrillas wipe out American and puppet troops and foil their most modern tactics. This is a new development of the revolutionary military art, the main content of which is to rely mostly on man, on his patriotism and revolutionary spirit, to bring into full play all weapons and techniques available to defeat an enemy with highly modern weapons and equipment.
People’s war in the north at present is also developing in the process of the heroic fight against the U.S. imperialists’ war of destruction, in the movement among the army and people to down American planes and to turn our north into a vast battleground to counter and foil the enemy airstrikes and inflict heavy losses upon the U.S. imperialists’ modern air force. They may attack more fiercely but they cannot by any means cut off our main communication lines, stop our people’s productive activities, and still less shake their determination to oppose the American imperialists, save the country, defend the north, and give unqualified Assistance to the south.
People’s war in Vietnam is not only the product of our people’s resolute and indomitable revolutionary struggle, but also that of the revolutionary struggle of the world’s people in our times. People’s war has led our nation to splendid victories in the resistance war against French colonialism, and has brought our people great successes both in the south and in the north these last years. Even if the U.S. imperialists beef up their expeditionary corps to hundreds of thousands, the great people’s war of the Vietnamese nation will certainly outdo the aggressive war of the American imperialists.
4--The fourth factor is the warm sympathy and wholehearted support given us by the people of the brother socialist countries and the progressive people the world over, including the American people. Our people’s struggle against the U.S. imperialists for national salvation aims not only at liberating a half of our country still enslaved but also at defending the socialist north. This great struggle is the frontline of progressive mankind against American imperialism. It is making a great contribution to the world peoples’ revolutionary struggle for peace, national independence, democracy, and socialism. That is precisely why the brother socialist countries have given their unreserved support to the stand and line of struggle against the American imperialists for national salvation of our government and the NFLSV and lent an all-out assistance to our people to defeat the U.S. imperialist aggressors. The working class and toiling people of the capitalist countries and the people of the newly independent countries also side with us and give us their sympathy and support.
At all great international conferences and recently at the Tricontinental Conference held in Havana, warm feelings and powerful encouraging words have been expressed for the Vietnamese people’s fighting and stern (two-line passage indistinct) launched by the American people against the Johnson administration’s aggression against Vietnam, is drawing ever broader strata, taking on bold forms such as self-immolation, burning of draft cards, holding up of the transport of troops to Vietnam . . . . This movement is spreading everywhere on an unprecedented scale. Never in the history of their revolutionary struggle have our people enjoyed such widespread and strong sympathy and support from abroad as today.
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