The Evolution of Guerilla Warfare in Vietnam History Essay

The Evolution of Guerilla Warfare in Vietnam
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Introduction
During the past generations of Asian Communist parties, several major guerrilla conflicts have begun against the Asian Non-Communists, Western-allied, or Western colonies. Vietnam is one of the countries that is greatly involved in guerilla warfare. This led to the Viet Minh Movement from 1946 to 1954 and the Viet Cong Movement in 1959. Guerrilla warfare is a tactic that utilizes information about the landscape to prevent an open battle with the enemy and to unveil raids and surprise attacks, before vanishing back to the scrubs. In the Asian Communist context, it is a coordinated revolutionary strategy where the guerrillas demonstrate a harmonized behavior to promote a revolutionary association against an oppressive social system. Due to the continuously evolving schemes, the movement leaders have struggled to plan new approaches different from their grandfather's revolutionary stratagems (Johnson, 1968). At the outset, guerrilla warfare was significant in winning the war. However, through time, it has changed into mobile warfare instead of a true movement CITATION Gatnd \l 1033 (Gates, n.d.). In line with this, this paper discusses the evolution of guerrilla warfare throughout the decades in Vietnam Wars.
Viet Minh Legacy: The Third Generation Guerrilla Movement
First, we will discuss the results of the Viet Minh Legacy and how the leader used guerilla warfare to shorten the protracted war. The Viet Minh movement was formed by the Indochinese Communists who have been fighting against the French colonialists. Due to this, France resorted to military counterrevolution ad using the pattern of Communist military conquest developing in China at the same time, the Vietnamese movement for diplomatic freedom took the form of a radical colonial war. The Asian Communist revolutionary theorists at the time considered this as a preordained event when the Marxist Law is analyzed (Johnson, 1968).
Viet Minh movement was inspired by Mao’s victory. Thus, the revolutionary leaders envisioned tactics based on the ones formulated by Mao. For instance, in 1949, General Vo Nguyen Giap affirms the victory of the Chinese Revolution that led to the birth of the People’s Republic of China. This prodigious historical event substantially persuaded the Vietnamese groups in formulating their plans on how to liberate the Vietnamese people. General Giap commends Mao by implicating the “people’s war” and the “people’s army.” He operated under the three stages of the Maoist concepts of protracted war and self-reliance. In the end, Giap based the guerrilla warfare on popular support, regardless of its true relevance (Johnson, 1968).
In a live interview with Giap, he stated that:
“What is the people's war? Well, in a word, it's a war fought for the people by the people, whereas guerrilla warfare is simply a combat method. The people's war is more global in concept. It's a synthesized concept. A war which is simultaneously military, economic and political, and is what we in France would call "synthesized." There's guerrilla warfare and there's large-scale tactical warfare, fought by large units CITATION Giand \l 1033 (Giap, n.d.).”
General Giap is the North Vietnamese commander who used the army of the people without placing his shoes in the battle. In other words, he does not have “a real soldier’s mug.” He is also the Minister of National Defense, Vice President of the Government, and a member of the Communist Party behind the Central Committee of Workers. Thus, his opinions, directives, and position are all important in that dictatorship. However, despite not belonging to an international caste of professional soldiers, Giap learned to adopt war as part of his being while maintaining his civilian status. This is probably the reason behind his immense success CITATION New64 \l 1033 (New York Times, 1964).
In the unadulterated Chinese tactics, guerrilla warfare is a strategy that envisions political and military poverty. Prior to the introduction of guerrilla warfare, political operations were launched such as the observance of united front principles like the mass line. This aims to gain the popular support of the structure to be able to sustain a gradually escalating military assaults against the target regime’s forces. This military operations strategy is designed to maintain a threshold that will not exceed the professional armed forces that can effortlessly annihilate the nascent revolutionary army. The Chinese strategy is deemed as tantalizing and agonizing at the same time due to its long-winded organizational preparation and definite implementation (Johnson, 1968).
The Viet Minh revolution augmented the Communistradition of political violence that is widespread in Asia. Still, it reoriented differently from the traditional tactics which involved pure guerrilla warfare (Hanyok, 1995). The following are the shreds of evidence of the alterations in the guerilla movement: First, in 1950, their leaders believed that the arrival of the Chinese Communist forces on the borders of Vietnam is more significant than persistent need to demonstrate a nationalistic image to the indigenous communities. Such that, in November 1945, the Indochinese Communist Party disbanded in retort to the demands of the united front. However, on March 3, 1951, they left the League for the Independence of Vietnam façade to emerge as the Vietnam Lao Dong Workers Party to portray their allegiance to the Socialist bloc. In turn, the Socialist bloc supplied them with tremendous amounts of weapons and technical assistance. Also, the party opted to betray Vietnam by turning the nationalistic struggle into a civil war. Despite the massive support given by the Vietnamese people to the Lao Dong Party in their battle against the French colonists, many of them believed that not all of their people share the same sentiments concerning their nationality. Approximately one million Vietnamese migrated to the south while around 100, 000 went north after 1954. This marks the division of the country and reestablishment of the civil war after almost ten years. Since the Viet Minh revolutionary strategy prioritized its international alliances than its popular infrastructure, the guerrilla strategy becomes separated from that of the Chinese communists (Johnson, 1968).
Second, the Viet Minh army treated the civilians differently. This army still recruited armies of peasants from peasant villages that are oppressed by the French colonists. Likewise, these villages supplied the revolutionary army with intel, brainpower, logistic support, refuge, militia, laborers, and guerrillas. The difference from the original guerrilla ideology was that the Viet Minh revolutionary army was less dependent on their people. Furthermore, the army used terrorism and atrocities as a means of oppression CITATION Stu17 \l 1033 (Stur, 2017). This tactic is unusual and does not belong to the original guerrilla strategy. It is also deemed as counterproductive (Johnson, 1968).
The Vietcong Tactics
The Command Hierarchy and Training of Vietcong
One of the military branches of the National Liberation Front (NLF) is the Vietnamese Communists, also known as the Vietcong. This group was commanded by the Central Office for South Vietnam, situated at the nearby border of Cambodia. Its main force consisted of full-time soldiers who were tasked to commence a large-scale offensive force over a wide area. Its other force consisted of the regional forces which operated full-time but only within their jurisdiction. When necessitated by the situation, small regional units were also deployed to commence a large-scale attack. This is a clever and cunning strategy since the troops can disband abruptly when their forces have been overwhelmed by the enemy. There were also non-soldiers in the Vietcong group. They are mostly teenage recruits who are inspired by idealism or pressured by their elders CITATION PBSnd \l 1033 (PBS.org, n.d.).
One of the teenagers whose village has been liberated at the time, Nguyen Thi Hoa, was interviewed about the struggles that she had encountered during the war. She stated that she served as a courier and a guerrilla fighter, especially at night, and returned to her ordinary life during the day (Thi Hoa, 1981).
At first, the local guerrillas were only provided a basic infantry training. However, when they succeed to join the main force unit, they are allowed to undergo more intense and advanced training. Also, many safe centers are scattered over South Vietnam for the squad, weapons, radio training, and platoon leader. To guarantee that the local guerrillas comprehend their objectives, the training always included political instruction CITATION PBSnd \l 1033 (PBS.org, n.d.).
The troops benefited from the Chinese weaponry as well as from the homemade weapons such as mines and booby traps. However, the primary materials were still provided by the enemy. These came from the d...