Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0404/04046.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 26KB | 420 lines

$Unique_ID{COW04046}
$Pretitle{232}
$Title{Vietnam
Chapter 5D.   Administration}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Douglass Pike}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{security
military
pavn
internal
resistance
vietnam
soviet
war
south
hanoi}
$Date{1987}
$Log{Figure 19.*0404601.scf
}
Country:     Vietnam
Book:        Vietnam, A Country Study
Author:      Douglass Pike
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1987

Chapter 5D.   Administration

[See Figure 19.: Military Regions, 1986.]

     PAVN's systems for dealing with administrative, managerial, logistic, and
manpower problems remained rudimentary in 1987. Vietnam's two major military
operations, against Cambodia and China, caused serious administrative
difficulties to surface. Many were traceable to the condition of the
Vietnamese economy, which in the late 1970s and 1980s had declined in
virtually every sector (see Economic Setting, ch. 3). As more than one
observer noted, Vietnam had stayed in the bicycle age while the rest of Asia
had moved into the computer age. PAVN's logistic requirements suffered
accordingly.

     Vietnam's military budget remained a closely guarded secret and was
doubly difficult to estimate because it was largely covered by Soviet military
assistance that reportedly did not need to be repaid. According to a generally
accepted estimate, about 50 percent of the state budget was devoted to
national defense. Soviet military assistance to Vietnam has varied greatly
from year to year depending on PAVN's precise needs. In the mid-1980s, it was
authoritatively estimated to be the equivalent of at least US $350 million per
year.

     Vietnam's manpower resources are relatively extensive. In 1987 its
population was about 62 million, with approximately 6.5 million males of
military-service age and 650,000 reaching draft age each year. Normally, 60
percent of those screened for military duty were found to be physically and
mentally fit for full service. Other restrictions, such as those based on
class, race, religion, and place of origin (i.e., the South), reduced the
manpower pool somewhat. In 1986 PAVN was conscripting at the rate of about
300,000 annually.

     To reassert discipline within PAVN ranks, a system of "military
inspection and control" was instituted that served both judicial and police
functions within PAVN. Under this system, the activities of enlisted men and
officers were monitored to prevent wrongdoing (such as corruption) and to
ensure continued discipline, obedience to orders, and adherence to PAVN
regulations and state laws. This system was backed by a new code of military
justice that regulated personal conduct. For enlisted personnel the code
specified, in ascending order of severity, the following punishments for
misconduct: censure, restriction to camp on days off (denial of shore-leave in
the case of naval personnel), warning, disciplinary detention of from one to
ten days (not applied to female military personnel), assignment to a lesser
position, demotion, discharge, and dismissal from military service. Officers
were not subjected to disciplinary detention as noncommissioned officers and
enlisted men were. The seven punishments for officers (in ascending order of
severity) were censure, warning, assignment to a lesser position, dismissal
from position, reduction in rank, deprivation of officers' insignia, and
dismissal from military service.

     The new regulations also established commendations and a series of
incentive awards. Approximately 100,000 PAVN officers and enlisted men
received medals and other commendations each year. PAVN pay has always been
notoriously low. Although pay was increased in the 1978 overhaul of the armed
forces, it remained below comparable income levels elsewhere in the society
and was constantly undercut by high inflation. Pay was based on rank, length
of service, size of family, and honors and awards received. Seniority pay (1
percent of base pay times years of service), family allowances, a 30-percent
hardship-service bonus for those assigned to Cambodia, and a 10-percent
cost-of-living bonus for those assigned to the South were added to base pay.

     A veteran PAVN soldier who was discharged, retired, or demobilized became
a "revolutionary retiree." In 1987 at least 50 percent and possibly 60 percent
of all adult males in Vietnam had served in the armed forces.

     The veteran in Vietnam has become a figure of increasing importance.
Officially he has been viewed with a mixture of appreciation and obligation,
but privately leaders have worried that the socioeconomic isolation of
veterans could lead to the formation of a vested interest bloc. In general,
veterans have been treated well by the society and have been provided with
social welfare benefits. Vietnamese women were assigned a major place in the
revolution by VCP cadres quite early. Several of the early PAVN military
cadres were women, including the legendary Ha Thi Que, a military theorist who
adapted Maoist guerrilla war strategy to Vietnam. The principle that women
represent a potent source of support continued to be upheld in the 1980s.
Military service for women was voluntary and was open to those over eighteen
who were members of the VCP or party youth organizations. Estimates of the
number of women in PAVN ranged from 5 to 15 percent of the 2.9- million-member
force. Most held technical or administrative assignments, although, in earlier
years, combat assignments in guerrilla units were common and command
assignments were not unknown. For instance, the third-ranking general officer
in the PLAF during the war in the South was a woman. There were no confirmed
reports of women in PAVN engaged in combat duty in Cambodia, although it is
possible that some were there; and there was no general conscription program
for women, although they were encouraged to volunteer and the VCP asserted
that it was their duty to do so.

Foreign Military Relations

     In the 1950s and 1960s, the primary influence on PAVN was Chinese (see
Foreign Relations, ch. 4). Early military thinking, organization, and strategy
drew heavily on the Chinese, and particularly the Maoist, example, although
Hanoi later officially denied Chinese influence and military assistance.

     PAVN's dependence on the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s for
weaponry, military hardware, and technical training assured the Soviets an
influential role, if not always a dominant one, in the Vietnamese military's
activity and development. At the end of the Second Indochina War, the Soviet
Union was supplying about 75 percent of North Vietnam's military hardware
(China about 15 percent and Eastern Europe about 10 percent). Without Soviet
assistance, Vietnam would have been unable to defend itself against China in
1979. By the 1980s, the estimate was that the Soviets provided 97 percent of
such equipment and that the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Poland,
and Czechoslovakia together supplied the remaining 3 percent (see Appendix A,
table 9). Military aid to PAVN in 1987 was almost exclusively Soviet in
origin. In the mid-1980s, the Soviets contributed some 15,000 military
advisers and military aid estimated to range from US $1.3 to US $1.7 billion
annually.

     The Soviet Union's relations with PAVN allowed Moscow to establish a
military presence on the Indochina Peninsula. Access to the naval and air
facilities at Cam Ranh Bay and Da Nang provided transit facilities for the
Soviet Pacific Fleet and boosted Soviet intelligence-collecting efforts. The
effect was to augment Moscow's military strength and facilitate global
deployment of its forces.

     The value of the relationship for Vietnam was logistic, not geopolitical.
Hanoi had no arms factories, although it could make explosives and small
armaments such as bullets, shells, and hand grenades. Sophisticated weaponry
and equipment, mandatory for modern war, however, had to be imported.

     The kind of Soviet military aid provided in the postwar years varied. In
the f