On June 15, Vietnamese Defense Minister Phan Van Giang held a meeting to summarize 5 years of the Youth Creative Award in the Army and presented the 25th award. General Giang said that Vietnam must determine to build a revolutionary, disciplined, elite, and modern army from 2025 instead of 2030.
Why is Giang rushing to affirm this now, while the plan was to do it by 2030?
Perhaps the war between Israel and Iran has shown how disadvantaged Iran’s army is. Iran has long been considered a military power in the region, sponsoring many terrorist groups throughout the Middle East and is also a country developing nuclear weapons. It seems that Iran is an equal opponent to Israel. However, when confronting each other, Iran is no different from a deer in front of a fierce tiger’s claws. Iran is completely at a disadvantage against Israel in every aspect.
For a long time, Vietnam’s communist army has mainly purchased Russian weapons. The war in Ukraine has shown the weakness of Russian weapons, and the war between Israel and Iran is a confirmation. Countries that possess Russian weapons are almost at a disadvantage against the modern weapons of the European and American democratic bloc. That is considered a reason why Giang is afraid.
Giang uttered the above words, which also means that he indirectly admitted that the Vietnamese army is not strong. And how can it be strong when the military apparatus is as corrupt as the civilian agencies?
Nowadays, war is mainly fought with technology, not with outdated weapons and using soldiers’ lives as shields like Russia. Up to now, Israel has not lost a single soldier. They have technological weapons, they have good discipline, they have high intelligence in the military and more importantly, their war machine is not corrupt and rotten like Vietnam. Therefore, building an elite army is just a pipe dream of Minister Giang and the Communist Party.
Tran Thai Hung-Thoibao.de
