The National Defence Academy Party Committee and Board of Directors attach great importance to the comprehension and application of the Party’s guidelines, especially the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) on Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in the New Situation, to training and scientific studies. This has been concretised by many effective, synchronous, scientific solutions.

Resolution No. 44-NQ/TW, dated 24 November 2023 of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) on Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in the New Situation is a document which plays an extremely vital role in building and defending the Fatherland. The resolution is a result of the review, inheritance, and leverage of standpoints, thoughts, and experience drawn from previous Party congresses and our people’s rule, “building the country must be closely linked with protecting the country.” The resolution also illustrates the Party’s creative, novel thinking as the well as determination of the entire Party, people, and military to the building and defence of the Fatherland in the new situation. As the centre of training senior cadres of the Party, State, and People’s Army, the National Defence Academy (NDA) has grasped and seriously carried out measures to quickly bring the Resolution into life and timely support training, scientific research, and proposal on issues relating to military, national defence, and protection of the Fatherland.

1. Comprehension and application of the resolution to training are always identified as a key political task and a breakthrough throughout the education and training process by the NDA. In fact, during the training process, the NDA always grasps and applies guidelines of the Party, policies and law of the State, and resolutions and directives of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Ministry of National Defence (MND), especially the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure), to training to achieve good results. The NDA directs its departments, faculties, and cadet management units to concentrate on strategic studies and forecast about international, regional, global situations, most notably strategic competition between great powers that has direct influence on military, national defence, and protection of the Fatherland. They are also requested to thoroughly understand the views, objectives, guiding mottoes, and key solutions of the resolution. This will enable them to work closely with relevant departments of the MND to add new content of the resolution to their training programmes, ensuring unanimity, synchronicity, closeness to reality, and successful implementation of the motto, “The training quality of schools decides the level of combat readiness of units.”

General Secretary To Lam visit the National Defence Academy in 9/2024 (Photo: tapchicongsan.org.vn)

Based on their functions and missions, departments and units of the NDA, the faculties in particular, have actively and proactively grasped and applied the resolution to content of lessons, enhanced competence of cadres and lecturers, and development of lesson plans suitable to each type of learners. The educational content aims to help the cadets to have a deep understanding of key content, new thinking of the Party, novel issues of the resolution, and the comprehensive objectives of the Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland, namely firm protection of independence, sovereignty, unification, and territorial integrity of the Fatherland; defence of the Party, State, people, the cause of reform, industrialisation, and modernisation, national interests, political security, social order and safety, and culture; firm maintenance of political stability and a peaceful environment conducive to the building and development of the countries in the socialist direction. The educational content also facilitates cadets’ thorough grasp of viewpoints on firmly upholding leading role of the Party and improving management effectiveness and efficiency of the State in the cause of safeguarding the Fatherland; on steadfastness in the goal of aligning national independence with socialism and firm maintenance of a stable, peaceful environment for development of the country; on close combination of two strategic tasks, namely building and defence of the Fatherland; on taking the internal strength as the decisive factor, economic development as the central mission, Party building as the core task, culture as the spiritual foundation of the society, strengthening of national defence and security as a regular, crucial mission, and so on. It is necessary to ensure that economic, cultural, social development goes hand in hand with bolstering national defence, security, and diplomacy; the building of the all-people national defence and all-people defence posture must align with the building of the people’s security, people’s security posture, and strong people’s heart and mind posture; power of the great national unity must associate with power of the age; the people’s armed forces must be built in a strong manner, in which the People’s Army is developed in an adept, compact, strong, modern fashion. The NDA seeks to well carry out training programmes on military art and theories about military, national defence, and protection of the Fatherland; emphasises content, methods, and solutions to prevent and defeat any sabotage schemes and operations of hostile forces, to proactively and readily to win wars at all scales and forms, especially the new operational concepts in modern warfare such as operations to confront hybrid warfare, cyber warfare, asymmetric warfare, high-tech warfare, etc., to deal with issues of non-traditional security, civil defence, and so forth. Owing to supplementing new content and knowledge of the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure), the training quality of the NDA is greatly enhanced. The cadets are updated with new, comprehensive, intensive, and close-to-reality knowledge in the cause of building and safeguarding the Fatherland in the new situation.

Implementation of training content and programmes enables learners to ceaselessly enhance their knowledge and methods to conduct research into international, regional, national situation; to be updated with new developments in “partners of cooperation” and “objects of struggle”; have a deep understanding of viewpoints and resolutions of the Party and State, notably the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) and  developments in military art, theory and reality of military mission, national defence, security mission, protection of the Fatherland in the new situation, and so forth. This is very important knowledge which helps graduates to have sufficient spirit, competence, thinking ability, and strategic vision; improve their leadership and command at the operational and strategic levels, their professional skills, and their ability to make recommendations to the Party, State, CMC, and MND on policies and strategies relating to military, national defence, security, and protection of the Fatherland. This also fosters graduates’ competence in applying their knowledge to flexible, creative, effective implementation of military, defence, and security missions as well as assigned tasks at the operational, strategic levels in accordance with the Party’s viewpoints and the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) on Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in the New Situation.

2. Application of the resolution to studies on military science, national defence, security, and defence of the Fatherland. This is one of the most important political tasks of the NDA, which is a leading centre of military science, defence, security studies of the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) and the nation. On clearly perceiving this position, the NDA focuses its efforts on applying core content of the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) on scientific research to meet requirements of training, strategic studies, and making recommendations to the CMC and MND, thus enabling them to advise the Party and States on issues pertaining to military, national defence, security, diplomacy, building of the VPA, and protection of the Fatherland.

The Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland is the national strategy, which guides other specialised strategies such as the National Defence Strategy, Military Strategy, Strategy to Safeguard National Security, Strategy to Protect National Border, etc., in the cause of building and defending the Fatherland. On grasping and applying the spirit of the resolution, the NDA directs increased scientific research and collaboration with ministries, commissions, and branches at the central level, localities, departments of the MND, institutes, and units in the military to recommend new, suitable things in specialised strategies, codes, and degrees pertaining to military, national defence, security, and protection of the Fatherland. It also proactively proposes and actively participates in research programmes and projects at all levels as well as applies perspectives, objectives, guiding principles, and major missions and solutions set out in the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) to the building of the VPA, establishment of the all-people national defence, strengthening of national defence and security, and building and protection of the Fatherland in the new situation. Moreover, the NDA actively applies the resolution to scientific studies and development of teaching materials, contributing to enhanced quality of training operational- and strategic-level cadres at the academy and combat training and readiness of units throughout the military. Outcomes of the scientific research will also be used to make recommendations to the CMC and MND, enabling them to advise the Party and State to work out policies and strategies in the fields of military, national defence, and protection of the Fatherland.

3. Application of the resolution to increased quality of strategic studies and recommendation on issues pertaining to military, national defence, security, and protection of the Fatherland. It is vital to bring into play the leadership of the NDA Party Committee as well as of party committees and commanders of departments, faculties, and cadre management units in enhanced quality of strategic studies and recommendation on issues relating to military, national defence, security, and protection of the Fatherland. There is a need to closely collaborate with commissions, ministries, and branches at the central level, especially the MND, to conduct research into strategic issues in the world, region, and country; research and predict sabotage schemes and operations of hostile forces; study strategies and strategic rivalry between great powers pertaining to military, national defence, security, and protection of the Fatherland; correctly identify “partners of cooperation” and “objects of struggle,” thereby making accurate, timely, effective recommendations to the CMC and MND to advise the Party and State on strategies and measures to lead and direct implementation of tasks and timely, effective response to strategic situations pertaining to military, national defence, security, and protection of the Fatherland in the new situation.

On the basis of the achievements, the academy continues to thoroughly grasp the guiding principles and carry out the Resolution of the 8th Plenum of the Party Central Committee (13th tenure) on the Strategy to Safeguard the Fatherland in the New Situation with high determination, activeness, proactiveness, creativeness, effectiveness, and closeness to the evolving environment, contributing to the building of an increasingly strong academy worthy of it position as the leading centre of training and scientific research in military, national defence, and protection of the Fatherland.

Senior Lieutenant General, Associate Professor, Doctor TRAN VIET KHOA, Member of the Party Central Committee, Member of the Central Military Commission, Director of the National Defence Academy