The defense diplomacy, together with the Party’s, State’s and people-to-people’s diplomacy has actively addressed adversities and hardships to fulfill assigned missions, and gained remarkable achievements, proving its role in the national construction and defense cause, particularly in Dien Bien Phu Victory in 1954, Great Victory in Spring 1975, and so on.
Indeed, the defense external affairs have contributed in various ways and achieved significant results, which have been honored by the Party, State and military at various levels.
Many collectives have been awarded the title “Hero of the People's Armed Forces” for their contribution to protecting the Fatherland in "an early manner and from afar.”
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Vietnam's Frigate 016 - Quang Trung and a delegation of the Vietnam People's Navy arrive at the Indian city of Visakhapatnam to attend the multilateral naval exercise MILAN 2022. |
In recent years, the defense relation service has actively contributed to safeguarding the Fatherland in “an early manner and from afar” by diversifying and multilateralizing the country’s foreign relations amid the world’s complicated developments.
The Vietnam People’s Army has conducted joint patrols at sea, held border defense friendship exchanges with militaries of neighboring countries such as China, Laos, and Cambodia.
These activities have proved the activeness and creativeness of the Vietnam People’s Army in maintaining and developing relationship with neighboring countries.
In addition, the promotion of bilateral cooperation with militaries of other countries also helps enhance mutual understanding, share experience in mastering weapons and technical equipment, thereby proactively building an increasingly modern military.
In multilateral cooperation forums, including the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM), the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the achievements that the service has achieved are also very respectable and should be commended.
All personnel of the whole-military's defense relations service have creatively applied resolutions of the National Party Congress and the Party congresses at all levels in the right direction and for the right purposes.
However, looking directly at the truth and from different angles, we still see that officials at all levels need to try harder to complete their tasks.
The 13th National Party Congress and the 11th Military Party Congress set higher requirements for the foreign affairs in general and the defense relations service in particular.
Amid the complicated developments of the global situation, the Party Central Committee, the Central Military Commission and the Ministry of National Defense required the defense relations service to strive to better their task performance as well as forecast and evaluate all situations precisely.
The sector should regularly enhance professionalism for its personnel while assigning concrete missions and functions to each individuals and groups.
In addition, the sector should build good personnel in terms of morality and capability, who are always willing to undertake and fulfill assigned tasks.
The sector also needs to review their activities to learn from experience at each level about contents and methods to implement defense relations tasks.
With absolute trust in the Party’s leadership and sincere respect, I hope that the staff working in the service will continue to grow and complete their assigned missions better, meeting the expectations of the whole Party, people, and military!
Written by Lieutenant General Pham Thanh Lan, former Director of the Department of Foreign Relations
Translated by Trung Thanh