Scrap the VFA and all other war treaties

imposed on Manila by Washington!

26 July 2012
SANLAKAS stands firmly united with the Filipino masses in our common democratic struggle to urgently dismantle and remove the main war instruments of US imperialism in the Philippines. A vital political task now is to strike out to negate the four war treaties unjustly imposed upon Manila by Washington D.C.. These treaties of imperialist aggression, which we can dub as the ‘War Four’, must all be repealed at once.

Specifically, we need to immediately repeal the one-sided 1999 PH-US VFA (Visiting Forces Agreement), the 2002 PH-US MLSA (Mutual Logistics Support Agreement) and their mother treaty, the 1951 PH-US MDT (Mutual Defense Treaty). The 2012 PH-Australia SOVFA (Status of Visiting Forces Agreement) is the fourth war instrument that was only recently concurred for ratification by the Philippine Senate last July 24. The latter treaty must also be scrapped as it merely reinforces the US war camp and strengthens Washington’s capacity for a direct military intervention in Asia.

SANLAKAS principally opposes all wars of aggression initiated and led by imperialist powers across the world. We actively resist all of their militarist designs that force dependent and weak countries to actively support the aggressive maneuverings of the imperialist war machine. These schemes and actions are primarily designed and geared by the United States to ensure its global hegemony over the current international system. And that is why our people must now resolutely struggle together to contribute the Philippines’ share in the global collective effort to stop such conflicts from happening in the future.

We unwaveringly oppose these wars of aggression because they not only cause massive deaths and destruction. But more importantly, we are committed to militantly fight all imperialist maneuverings imposed by the global capitalist forces of hegemony because their primary aim is to dominate the world’s weaker states in order to control their rich natural resources by subjugating their poor majority through elite rule. This is why the existing pillars of US military aggression must all be dismantled in order to eventually undermine and destroy American imperialism in the 21st Century.

Our country has long remained under the sway and domination of US imperialism since Manila gained its formal independence from Washington D.C. on July 4, 1946. For over sixty-six years, the Philippine political-economic system has been faithfully ruled by an unbroken chain of Filipino elite factions which have all been loyal to the reactionary American dream-makers in the White House. Thus, our own ruling class elite have strictly made sure that the Philippines will forever be kept inside the American sphere of influence.

In so doing, our country’s national interests have always remained aligned with America’s worldwide geostrategic agenda and interests. This is especially true in relation to the militarist aspect of US foreign policy in furtherance of the global strategic thrusts of the world’s imperialist superpower. And clearly, this has long been the case with Filipino troops operating as imperialist mercenaries in Korea, Vietnam, and in Iraq.

In order for US imperialism to be able to hegemonize the international system and to dominate its capitalist political-economic infrastructure, America needs to fully suppress its main global enemies and other potential sources of worldwide threats. As such, during the first-half of the 1940s, Washington led a global alliance against the Germany-Japan fascist-imperialist axis. After this second inter-imperialist war ended in 1945, the US immediately and without any delay moved forward to counter the former Soviet Union-led socialist bloc at the international level in order to contain and defeat this global threat to American capitalism.

By the end of December 1991, the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) liquidated itself and with it, the Cold War itself. After having waged a forty-five-year-long bipolar Cold War versus Moscow, Washington began to target its next set of post-Cold War and 21st Century global enemies: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) led by the anti-US China-Russia strategic partnership, the anti-imperialist terrorism of the ‘Islamist International’ and the anti-capitalist revolutionary Left bloc of forces in alliance with the ‘Socialism in the 21st Century’-oriented ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the People’s of our America) project. Likewise, both Iran and North Korea, longtime adversaries of the US, continue to maintain close general relations with America’s new global rivals to varying degrees, and certainly to the further chagrin of America.

Thus, in the eyes of Washington today, these 21st Century enemies of US imperialism must all be suppressed as swiftly as possible just like what America did to its earlier rivals in the past century. From the US viewpoint, if it can successfully vanquish its many global threats, then perhaps Washington can continue to secure its leading and superior position in world affairs. And surely for now, this is one chief reason why the US is pivoting its military balance towards Asia as a strategic shift to counter China’s fast-rising dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

To enhance its ‘Pivot to Asia’ foreign policy line, an expected major focus of America’s latest external relations framework in this part of the world will be to escalate and augment its existing military capacities to forcefully challenge China’s power expansion in the long run. To attain an effective level of capability to mobilize, maneuver and project its military forces around the East Asian region to screen out Beijing’s external probes in the area, Washington will certainly rely on its own regional network of bilateral defense arrangements with several countries ringing China’s eastern side. These include Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Australia and the Philippines.

And so today, the present regional security situation concerning the Southeast Asian Sea (SEAS) should already be taken very seriously in the Philippines at the very least. It is not just because of the heightening tensions between the Philippines and China over sections of the SEAS due to their respective national chauvinist positioning. Our people should already understand that there is now a clear and present danger emanating from a far more perilous scenario involving a direct US military intervention and a far wider war that Washington’s involvement could inevitably spark off.

Should this ever happen, then Russia and North Korea could be expected to add their military weight into the conflict on the side of China. This possible scenario is what could eventually trigger a more widespread war that could also potentially see India and the European Union, and even NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), becoming involved in various ways, especially in the Central Asian-West Asian area directly bordering China’s western side. Therefore, we must never allow this to happen at all unless we surely want a new type of world war at this time in history.

The current disputes within the Southeast Asian Sea, involving various claimant states wrangling over territorial ownership of certain zones of the SEAS, is clearly being used by the PNoy Regime to deliberately provoke Beijing. Manila is hopeful that the US will swiftly come to its rescue in a possible military conflict with China. In hoping that Washington would automatically uphold the terms and spirit of the 1951 PH-US MDT, PNoy is now in a mode of nearly constantly sending belligerently provocative signals to Beijing in an alarming manner. This has dangerously been the case since the current diplomatic crisis broke out last April 8 over the Scarborough Shoal area and which, has once again extended over into the Spratly Islands area.

And further adding to the regional tensions is the fact that the ASEAN principally failed to come up with a joint communiqué at the end of its 45th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia last July 13. Some observers have already publicly stated that this colossal failure of Southeast Asia’s premier regional grouping was rooted in China’s covert diplomatic maneuverings aimed at influencing the outcome of the AMM in relation to its aggressive bullying over the SEAS question. But at the same time, the overt diplomatic positioning of the US also created apprehensions within the ASEAN community itself and which obviously added to Beijing’s external pressures even prior to the regional gathering in Cambodia.

If this happens to be the case, then we could expect the SEAS crisis to worsen some more until something breaks—either a hot peace or a cold war. At the very least, however, an unsteady atmosphere of peace would be the norm for as long as US imperialism remains the Achilles’ heel hanging over the SEAS question. Yet in the meantime, America’s Asian-focused military rebalancing act continues to be played out through various states of the ASEAN, especially the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Presently, however, the Philippines and its peoples can no longer afford to wait or to depend on the PNoy Regime to help advance peace for everybody throughout the region. In fact, PNoy’s agenda is a war-provoking endeavor with the full blessings of the White House. And so, any sovereign, independent and internationalist solidarity assertion from the Philippine state is already fully absent from the regional peace equation.

Therefore, an all-out-peace initiative can only come from a Philippine national condition that clearly removes the remaining pillars of US imperialism from the Philippine state arena. And this could only be realized when our people unite and mobilize to act in a national mass campaign to overwhelmingly force the Philippine Senate to finally repeal the pro-imperialist war treaties that continue to tie our country into a potential state of war with our regional neighbors. This Philippine agenda is now a priority national question posed before our people and it must be answered unequivocally and forcefully in favor of a progressive and sustained peace for the Southeast Asian region and beyond.

Therefore, SANLAKAS now calls upon our people, especially the Filipino masses to further uphold, promote and advance our common aspirations for a genuinely free, democratic, socially just and peaceful Philippines. This clearly means a Philippines that does not provoke wars with its regional neighbors.

Furthermore, we can achieve this by actively uniting together in a collective mass fight to topple down, once and for all, the ‘War Four’: MDT-VFA-MLSA-SOVFA. In fact, a Philippines that fully spreads its liberating principles around the world in solidarity with all the exploited and oppressed masses is a country that is worthy of being truly free and independent to determine its own future as a sovereign state in the world community of free nations.

NO TO IMPERIALIST WARS OF AGGRESSION IN ASIA!
SCRAP THE MDT-VFA-MLSA-SOVFA ‘WAR FOUR’!
US TROOPS OUT OF PH AND ASIA NOW!

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