We hardly know about Võ Nguyên Giáp (25 August 1911- 4 October 2013), the Vietnamese military general who fought wars to victories against Japan, France, South Vietnam, the United States and China. His encirclement of General Henri Eugène Navarre’s French forces in Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 is a classic example of strategy par excellence. The Battle of Điện Biên Phủ is also called the First Indo China War. The fall of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 had significant political consequences. It ended the French colonial rule in Indochina. It divided Vietnam into North and South Vietnam. It was also responsible for the escalation of the Cold War into the Vietnam War.

Then came in 1968 the Tet Offensive. Though a military defeat for the North Vietnamese Army, the offensive succeeded in orchestrating a psychological defeat for the United States. It contributed to a decline in public support for the War at home in America. The US troops left Vietnam in 1973 under irreparable humiliation having recorded in history the first ever ideological defeat in the hands of well trained and motivated military component of the North Vietnamese communist party. In two years from 1973, North Vietnam’s military ran through and occupied South Vietnam. In 1975, Vietnam was unified by the Communist north. Today, Vietnam is South-east Asia’s one of the fastest growing economies.

In hindsight, it can be concluded that Vietnam could not have been an independent country without the military victories, and the influence of the western imperialism in authoritative control over Indo-China would have putatively continued till today. Vietnam War was not only significant for Vietnam, it was also the benefactor of independence to Cambodia and Laos. 

The wars against the colonial masters in Indo-China began in 1946 and ended in 1975 with the unification of Vietnam. For thirty years, there were twists and turns in the negotiating table between the colonists and the colonized. It was only resolved when the colonial masters’ “political will to power” was broken, and their mental patience was fated to an end by the superior military strategy of a politically disadvantaged people.

Around the same time in 1971 when North Vietnam was at the height of combat with the United States, Bengalis were fighting a war against Pakistan. It was a total war in which the whole of the nation was involved. Like Vietnam, there was a military component to the overall political structure organized to defeat the Pakistan occupying forces. The Mukti Bahini divided into sectors named S-Force, Z-Force and K-Force after their commanders, Majors Shafiullah, Zia and Khaled, were supported by the local Bengalis to continue fight against a professional army.

3 December 1971, the Indian military joined the Mukti Bahini, and on 16 December, Pakistan army accepted defeat by surrendering its troops to the joint India-Mukti Bahini force. SAM Manekshaw was the Indian Army chief during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, and the first Indian officer to be promoted to the rank of Field Marshal for his strategic planning. Based on his planning, the Indian Army launched several training camps for the Mukti Bahini. Regular Bengali troops and 75,000 guerrillas were trained and equipped with arms and ammunition to fight on and play an unforgettable role in the liberation of Bangladesh.

The most exemplary phenomenon was the creation of Bangladesh Air Force in the midst of the war. A unit named KILO FLIGHT was formed with old surviving one DHC-3 Otter, one DC-3 Dakota and one Alouette III helicopter. They operated from Agartala, India. The Otter flew 12 and the Alouette 77 sorties between December 4 and 16, 1971; 40 of them were combat missions. The utility of air power was brought to bear on the ground from the sky above against the enemy.

In hindsight, a historian may claim the birth of Bangladesh to a military victory, and he will not be wrong. The history of Bangladesh will be incomplete without the proper reckoning of the military history of its liberation war.

‘War is an instrument of politics’. This intuitive reflection by Carl von Clausewitz has become an axiom achieving the status of an a priori truth. The objectives of war are linked to the political goals. The philosophy of war sees history in its political manifestation.

Hegel interpreted European history of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in terms of Napoleonic wars. He admired Napoleon, and his vision of Napoleonic heroism saw in the Emperor’s character an image of the liberator of the world from chaos. His famous passage is often quoted embellishing the pride of human destiny couched in Napoleon’s military victories through Europe in her darkest hour. Hegel saw from afar Napoleon riding his horse past the streets of Jena with his head turned to one side in view of his troops as though epitomizing the gallant figure of a majestic ruler. The picture stuck into the mind of the great philosopher. He wrote to his friend Niethammer, “I saw the Emperor—-this soul of the world—-go out from the city to survey his reign; it is a truly wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it.” Napoleon’s domination of the world Hegel saw as a redemption from the hell of a leaderless steering of the nations.

Napoleon’s battles were not merely aimed at tactical objectives, they were focused on achieving strategic goals. His military power was not limited to operational triumphalism but extended its vision deep into the longing of general populace. Any military victory which does not consider the aspiration of common people but regales on its superficial joys of adventurism is fated to lose its utilitarian significance. The defining characteristic of the Napoleonic wars was that he brought conflict to the needs of common people. His doctrine of levee en masse was a natural consequence of that goal taking advantage of the fruits of industrial revolution. 

He brought war to the lives of civilian population, and thus rendered its nature a timeless paradigm in giving the uniformed military a task to protect the nation by combining the resources of civilian power. This paradigm shift saw its fully mature evidence in the two world wars replacing the idea of “army’s war” by “people’s war”. In the 21st century, war is, no longer, a militaristic episteme but a political principle fought between peoples who are indissoluble part of the civilian population. Military power has transformed into a non-negotiable political asset of the people, and its preservation is essentially a civilian act.

Warfare is a very specialized branch of knowledge. It requires skills formed by years of training and education. It is a competence-based application of sciences in the field of professional trades. Warfare is both a science and an art. The scientific component of the military power has to compete with time, and changes brought in the ever-moving, fast-paced scientific and technological innovations. The art component of the military power has to intuit the challenges of emerging proliferation of science, and modernize methods to a system of critical thinking. So many battles have been won but wars lost because of the lack of understanding of a dynamic relationship between the science and the art of military power in its service to the national goal.

Military in its pure professional form contains many traditions. Its traditions are the landmark of its identifying features. Some of them are good and some of them are not so good. But what is significant is that its good traditions are the virtues that each member in the society outside the military profession espouses, and the ‘not-so-good’ ones each despises. The paradox appears when the virtues of the military are spurned by its members as vices, and vices are adopted as virtues. It is then the societal image of the military character runs contra to the traditional portrait of military institution.

The most significant tradition of the military as a collective power is its integrity. The concept of integrity is wide, expansive and nebulous, yet its meaning is profound and amenable to the sensation of human intelligence. Military is the only profession where its members are trained to die at the command of their leaders. This honour code has bestowed upon the profession an inevitable equipoise of character. The spartan nature of such character provides it with the essence of espirit de corps. Loyalty to the leader is transformed into loyalty to the nation composed of societal components. Military cannot afford to be partisan whereby its moral integrity is rendered doubtful and its institutional stature meaningless.

With civilianization of the society, there is a general trend to believe that the cast of military image is, no longer, shedding light upon the anarchic events of a brittle society. This is the case with many countries with weak political fabric, and the military there assumes the nasty adjective of ‘poodle-of-the politicians’. The utility of the military power as a tool of national security is lost. But the principle of the utility of the military asserts that the politicians no longer should be the proprietor of a military force that enhances the grandeur and pomposity of a nation, but its utility be a provisioner of social security and national defence. Nonetheless, for all the differences between being the ‘politicians’ poodles’, and the nation’s ‘guardsmen’, there ensues a parallel movement of military’s institutional culture away from its performance over the past that deserves historically more significance for its role towards the society.

In the 1980s, Barry Buzan et al developed a new framework of security analysis. According to them, national security composed of five elements: military security, societal security, economic security, environmental security and political security. In every element of security problematique, we find that there is contextual involvement of the military power. Military security is tasked to provide the nation with a credible deterrence. Societal security indoctrinates the military into the ethos of a secular culture. Economic security chastises military strategists to spend their pie of national exchequer with care and accountability. Environmental security teaches the military that every bit of land its forces use is preserved from environmental degradation. Political security infuses the military leaders to remain apolitical in their allegiance to the civilian population. A true professional military is an abstraction but one which is built upon the standards of its tradition whose philosophical features are timeless since the time Socrates understood the meaning of this institution in profound manner.

The genesis of Bangladesh military took place in the difficult times of our liberation struggle. That struggle was neither short-lived nor a protracted one, but it was unequivocally bloody and traumatic. 50 years after independence, the country is still fighting with what kind of political nature will blend symmetrically with its cultural spirit.

Military has defined roles and tasks which is manifested in its work. But to produce efficient work, one needs smooth and polished tools. In military, the tools are the officers and men, whilst resources provide them with necessary means for their work. Men need training whilst officers need education. Education enables officers to reflect on their intellectual merit and accordingly transduce it to the training of their men. Skills developed through training, and intellect formed of education have far-reaching effects on the society that the military performs as a profession. Protecting the sovereignty of the country is as moral a duty as protecting the sovereign life of a civilian when it is in danger due to domestic politics.

The July 2024 revolution in Bangladesh clearly demonstrated the limits to which the military can be used in the interests of the politicians. Its utility power did not rest in preserving the political parties at the cost of human bloodshed. This has transpired as a big lesson for future politics of Bangladesh, and the place of military in the national life. Military is a fine institution whose assets must not be squandered.