$800 million to increase the number of available telephones. The country now has one phone per 100 people, almost 10 times as many as in 1993. Direct dialing is now easy, although the costs remain quite high. A shortage of phone lines has led to a surge in the use of mobile telephones and pagers in urban areas, such as Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. NATIONAL SECURITY 14Armed ForcesVietnams military force is the largest in Southeast Asia and third largest force inthe world after China and Russia. Its total estimated strength is over 5 million personnel: army, 1.2 million ( with thirty-eight regular infantry divisions); navy, 15,000; air force, 20,000; Regional Force, 500,000; Militia-Self Defense Force, 1.2 million; Armed Youth Assault Force, 1.5 million; and the Tactical Rear Force, 500,000. This makes Vietnam an adversary not to under-estimate, especially considering the number of combat seasoned veterans from the Vietnam, Cambodia and China Wars.The Military's Place in SocietyThe Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAVN) exerts a great deal of complicated direct and indirect influence both on party and government policy-making and on everyday non- military life. It is so well integrated into the social system that there is no precise point at which it can be said that the military ends and the civilian world begins. PAVN is expected to be all things to the people and special things to the party. It must both lead the people and serve them. It must be loyal both to the political line and to the military line, even when these conflict. It must act as the vanguard of the party yet be scrupulously subservient to it. The chief obligation of the average citizen to PAVN is military service, which is universal and compulsory. This duty long predates the advent of communism to Vietnam. Conscription in traditional Vietnam was carried out in a manner similar to the requisitioning of corvee labor. Village councils were required to supply conscripts acco...
