States have to rely on military force as their ultima ratio, but how does the state ensure the loyalty of the ‘ultimate arbiter of power’? The overwhelming answer in the literature is civilian control of the military. Yet Vietnam’s solution is different. Organized as a Leninist state, it keeps its armed forces loyal through political control. Unlike civilian control, which implies a zero-sum game between the state and its military, political control is a reciprocal mechanism based on the mutual embeddedness of the armed forces in the Communist Party and of the Party in the armed forces. This architecture characterizes the relationship between Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party (VCP) and its armed forces, which include the military and the police.

The mutual embeddedness of the state and its military manifests itself in a host of organizational devices such as the institution of the political commissar in every military unit, the mechanisms of political–ideological work in the military and the representation of the military in key policy making bodies, giving rise to both the politicization of the military and the involvement of the military in policy making. These aspects have evolved significantly and yet, mutual embeddedness has remained constant throughout the history of Communist Vietnam. This constant – political control of the military through mutual embeddedness of the military and the ruling party – is probably the architectural kernel of the Leninist state.

With these main arguments, this chapter will outline the architecture of civil–military relations in Vietnam and trace the evolution of its constituents since the country was reunified in 1975. After a brief discussion of the origins of civil–military relations in Communist Vietnam, I will examine how the state controls the military and how the military influences politics. Finally, I will address the evolution of the military’s missions and the military’s attitude toward modernization and democratization.

Origins

The military in today’s Vietnam – the Vietnam People’s Army (VPA) – traces its roots to the armed teams that operated under the guidance of the Communist Party in the struggle against French colonialism and Japanese occupation during World War Two (Ministry of National Defence, 2019, p 72).