The significance of strategic leadership in successfully managing organizations is considered as the key to success in business as in political and social organizations. Strategy, a term widely used today in management discourses, in its original sense means “leading an army”; hence it is only natural that studying strategic leadership essentially involves studying the leadership qualities of political and historic leaders who succeeded in mobilizing mass and successfully leading them towards realizing their political and social objectives. These lessons, no doubt would be beneficial to business organizations, as it proves beneficial in understanding the success factors of political organizations. The paper attempts to study and analyze the ideologies and strategies as well as the leadership styles adopted by Ho Chi Minh, the founding leader of Vietnamese communist party, who successfully led the Vietnamese society to independence from colonial forces.

Ho Chi Minh – The Vietnamese Communist Leader
Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese communist leader who regained Vietnam from the clutches of the French and Japanese colonialists is well known for his leading role in the war between North and South Vietnam, commonly known as the Vietnam War (1954-1975), and also as the perpetual spiritual leader of the modern Vietnamese Communist regime. His active and prominent role in Vietnamese freedom struggle is apparent from the time Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces, leading to the end of World War II, until the establishment of the united Democratic Republic of Vietnam, called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. An analysis of Ho Chi Minh’s leadership confirms Peters and Waterman assertion that leaders are not born, but effective leaders emerge as organizations form and face new challenges and problems in the course of achieving their objectives. [Peters and Waterman, 1982]
The public attention turned to Ho Chi Minh, as a public leader, when he declared the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi on September 2, 1945, following Japan’s surrender to allied forces in August 1945. [Hammer, 1966] The event is considered next in prominence to the 1917 October Revolution in Russia as it marked the beginning of a revolutionary national movement, led by a communist leadership, which succeeded in ousting a colonial government and establishing an independent, national form of political system in Vietnam. However more important is the fact that the Communist ideologies and strategies of Ho Chi Minh’s hierarchical communist party, Vietminh, was markedly different from that of Karl Marx or Lenin, the communist leaders who had tremendously influenced Ho Chi Minh. Vietminh was more about the leader Ho, his ideas and style than about the ideology, the dynamics of which justifies an analysis of his leadership.

Before analyzing Ho’s leadership, it would be worthwhile to understand the molding of his personality character and beliefs, as they were equally important as his strategies in making him a successful peoples’ leader. Ho Chi Minh, named Nguyen Tat Thanh at birth and born in 1890 in the French occupied Vietnam, was inculcated with a nationalist spirit and educated in a French school by his anti-French father, with a view that it would prepare him in his future struggle with the French. Ho settled in Paris in 1917, after his studies and a brief stint of employment, where he extensively learned the Marxist ideologies and formed the French Communist Party in 1920.
Ho visited the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialist Republic) in 1924, where he intensely felt that it was the duty of all communists to return to their own country to: “make contact with the masses to awaken, organize, unite and train them, and lead them to fight for freedom and independence.” [Author Unknown, 2004] However, contemplating the chances of his arrest by French authorities he settled in the Chinese border of Vietnam in late 1924 and started organizing the exiled nationalists into the ‘Vietnam Revolutionary League’.

While the Russian Revolution greatly influenced Ho, he well recognized that the strategies of his contemporary Communist leaders in Russia, Lenin and Stalin, may not be directly applied to Vietnam, as the Vietnamese working class were not organized in Vietnam as in Russia and the peasants were not exposed to exploitation and/or the class struggle [Warby, 1972] This insight led him to base his communist ideologies on nationalism – on the simple and persuasive concepts of freedom, right to self-determination and equality . Trained in the western arts of public speaking and debate, he openly and boldly challenged the colonial authority, which greatly attracted both the peasant and aristocracy in Indochina and France as his movement gained widespread support.

In 1930 Ho Chi Minh assumed leadership of the newly formed Vietnamese Communist Party of Indochina; his powerful anti-colonial discourse receiving widespread reputation and producing immense enthusiasm that only a mass leader is capable of. While French colonial government of Indochina sentenced Ho Chi Minh to death, in absentia, following his emergence as a Vietnamese icon, Ho was actively seeking ways to sustain the reputation and enthusiasm of the Vietnamese populace and gearing it towards achieving his declared objective – the independence of Vietnam and the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

Ho understood that for the Vietnamese, character and moral standing of the leader had equal, if not greater, persuasive influence than speech. [Van, 1964] Working closely with the Vietnamese peasantry and youth, Ho Chi Minh realized that sustaining the respect and support of the Vietnamese society, meant adopting the values and virtues of the society, by the leadership. The Vietnamese deeply valued the virtue of conduct – a conduct equivalent to the quan tu or the ‘superior man.’ Honesty, sincerity, kindness and simple way of life are virtues associated with the conduct of the ‘superior man,’ which were effectively used by Ho to match his rhetoric. Ho chose to live as a peasant himself, wearing a Canadian windcheater and a pair of sandals made from a discarded tire. His way of life was as assurance that he had devoted his life to the service of the people. [Van, 1964] Ever since Ho settled in Indochina, he essentially remained a Vietnamese, a peasant, “a man like one’s ancestors, pure, uncorrupted in a corrupting world, a man of the land and its simplest virtues.” [Halberstam,1986; pg. 15 ] The Vietnamese considered him as “an intransigent and incorruptible revolutionary” as Saint-Just. [Van 1964, pg : 33 ] Though many revolutionary leaders emerged during the period, none of them could impact the Vietnamese youth and peasantry as Ho Chi Minh; who with his bold and critical rhetoric and simple outlook succeeded in impacting Vietnamese, particularly the younger generations, so much that they were ready to give “all their strength, all their devotion to the nation, and if needed, their blood.” [Halberstam,1986; pg. 60] His reputation for honesty and sincerity, helped him gain the respect and confidence of the Vietnamese nation, and contributed greatly to his success.

Ho’s Assumption of Power
Ho Chi Minh’s political role emerged as the French surrendered to the Japanese army in September, 1940 presenting Ho and his fellow nationalists with the opportunity of freeing their country from foreign domination, as a new organization of communist nationalists, Vietminh, was formed. [Lacouture, 1968] Under the military leadership of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Vietminh began a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, receiving weapons and ammunition from the Soviet Union, and also from the United States after the bombing of Pearl Harbour by Japan. Immediately after Japan’s surrender to the Allies on August 14, 1945, Vietminh forces entered Hanoi and took control of Vietnam by firing a few symbolic revolver shots. On September 2, 1945 Ho Chi Minh announced the formation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, proclaiming himself as president of the Provisional Government. Ho Chi Minh, proclamation took place after the abdication of Emperor Bao Dai, which he considered as important event to the common man, as it gave a ‘heavenly’ mandate to the Vietminh’s agenda of driving the French out of Vietnam. This mandate from ‘heaven’ helped Ho and Vietminh in gaining the loyalty of the Vietnamese people.[ Dalloz, 1987, pg :50 ]

However, unknown to the Vietminh, as a part of the ceasefire, Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin had already decided at a summit-meeting at Potsdam that post-war Vietnam would be divided into two, with the northern region under the Chinese rule and the southern region under the British rule. This marked the beginning of a new struggle in Vietminh’s struggle for a united and independent democratic Vietnam. To add to the complexity, France tried to reinstate governmental control over Vietnam after the Second World War, as both Britain and China agreed to leave Vietnam in January 1946. Internal war broke out between the Vietminh as the French government refused to recognize the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as envisioned by Ho Chi Minh. Though the Vietminh, under General Giap, had great difficulty in fighting the militarily advanced French forces, the defeat of Chaing Kai-Shek in China, by the communist army headed by Mao Zedong, provided the Vietminh with a safe operational and training base. [Author Unknown, 2004]

After the defeat of the French colonialists, as a part of bringing about a peaceful solution to the conflicts in Vietnam, the foreign ministers of the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and France met at Geneva in April 1954 and decided on the following:
- Vietnam would be divided at the 17th parallel -- Ho Chi Minh would rule North Vietnam and Ngo Dinh Diem, a strong opponent of communism, would rule South Vietnam
- French troops would withdraw from Vietnam
- The Vietminh would withdraw from South Vietnam;
- The Vietnamese could freely choose to live in the North or the South
- A General Election for the whole of Vietnam would be held before July 1956, under the supervision of an international commission.
[Author Unknown, 2004; Duiker, 1983]

While some members of the Vietminh did not agree to the agreement, primarily due to the fact that it called for a division of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh maintained that it was only a temporary situation and was convinced that in the promised General Election of 1956, the Vietnamese were sure to elect a communist government to rule a re-united Vietnam. However Ngo Diem did not concede to holding elections as promised, and the members of the Vietminh advocated alternative means including violence to achieve their objectives. In this regard it is important to note that many researchers confirm the popularity of the Vietminh and Ho Chi Minh, and the high chances that Ho Chi Minh would be elected to power, had election been conducted as agreed.

Ho Chi Minh finally agreed to supply arms and aid to the opposition forces, the opposition not only including communists but also non-communists groups. Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese nationalist leader, could also inspire and the lead the different armed groups to join together and form a more powerful and effective resistance organization, which was established in December 1960 and known as the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam, NLF in short. The NLF was constituted of many political and religious groups, however, Ho Chi Minh’s influence on the members of NLF, was so great that it was considered as a puppet in the hands of communist leadership of Hanoi. [Author Unknown, 2004]

The strategies and war tactics of the NLF were essentially that of Mao Zedong’s Guerrilla Warfare, Ho being greatly influenced by the Chinese communists. The NLF organized into small guerilla groups called cells and the members knew little about each other -- a strategy adopted so that a guerilla’s capture did little damage to the organization. The NLF members were given strict directives by the leading communist leaders, particularly Ho, to gain the support of the peasants living in the rural areas.
[ Duiker, 1983]

The Southern army was assisted by the United States, and in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson, launched Operation Rolling Thunder to destroy the North Vietnam economy and to stop the communists from helping the guerrilla fighters in the south. Bombing was also directed against territory controlled by the NLF in South Vietnam. Though Ho Chi Minh died in 1969, the second Indochina war (Vietnam War) between the North and South Vietnam, which started in 1954, extended until 1975, and Ho’s ideals of communist nationalism continued to influence the members of the NLF in ultimately defeating the U.S. and capturing South Vietnam in 1975. Ho’s vision of the united democratic republic of Vietnam was established on July 2, 1976, and was called the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, or simply Vietnam. [ Duiker, 1983]

Conclusion
Ho’s influence in shaping the nationhood of communist Vietnam, draws greatly from his persuasive influence on the common man – an influence made possible by successfully linking communism with the rhetoric of democracy and also sustaining the respect of the common Vietnamese by embracing the character of ‘quan tu’ and gaining the ‘mandate of heaven,’ thereby featuring a cultural heritage that could immediately strike a chord and strongly influence the common man to carry out the Vietnamese Communist agenda. [Van, 1964;Halberstam, 1986 ]
Ho Chi Minh had all the qualities necessary in a leader, and his sternness, resolve, determination and whole-hearted devotion to the cause of the Revolution were an inspiration to all who served under him and to the nation as a whole. [Van, 1964; pg: x] While his powerful discourses and simple personae made instant yet lasting impact on the Vietnamese, the strategies and tactics adopted by his leadership also proved flawless in fighting against the world’s super powers including France, Japan and the United States. Ho Chi Minh, the eternal spiritual leader of the Vietnamese communist movement, continues to impact the Vietnamese society in surviving as a single nation, ever since the establishment of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.