ABSTRACT
The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) has been indispensable to the survival and victories of the Vietnamese Communist movement. The PAVN can be said with little exaggeration to have originated in the popular uprising precipitated by the Japanese attack on the French outpost at Lang Son in Bac Son district near the Chinese border in late September 1940. From 1954 to 1975 the principal policy issue for the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) was what balance to strike between development in the North and reunification with the South. Development of the North was a requisite of military modernization, whereas reunification held potential for drawing the PAVN into combat again, either in the South or in defense of the North or both. The most important effect of the Second Indochina War for civil-military relations in the DRV, at least up to 1968, was to revive the esprit, solidarity, and doctrine of the resistance.
