Philippines is a military pawn, not an ally of imperialist US -- CPP

Philippines is a military pawn, not an ally of imperialist US -- CPP

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) today blasted the military alliance between the United States government and the Philippine state as nothing but “a big myth”.
“The reality is that for the past 60 years of semicolonial rule, US imperialism has only used the Philippines as a pawn in its military interventionism, wars of aggression, and power projection in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond."
The CPP issued this statement a day after the visit of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the Philippines to mark the 60th anniversary of the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT). In a ceremony aboard the USS Fitzgerald, Clinton and Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario signed "The Manila Declaration" where the US and Philippine governments reaffirmed the MDT and their supposed commitment to "address regional and global challenges, including maritime security and threats to security such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, terrorism and transnational crime."
"Filled with rhetoric on 'equality' and 'cooperation', the Manila Declaration is nothing but a reaffirmation of the long-standing unequal military, political and economic relations between the Philippines and the US, between a semicolony and an imperialist power," pointed out the CPP.
"The fact that the declaration was signed aboard an American naval shipped docked in Philippine waters in outright contempt of Philippine sovereignty is symbolic of the MDT as a document of prevailing neocolonial relations between the puppet Philippine government and its imperialist master."
"There is nothing mutual in the Mutual Defense Treaty," said the CPP. "The MDT has never been anything to the Filipino people but a tool for the US to bind the Philippines to the geo-political strategic interests of the US."
"On several occasion in the past, the MDT has been used by the US to compel the Philippine government to fight the US wars of aggression, overriding the diplomatic and political interests of the Philippines," said the CPP. The CPP pointed out that under the MDT, Filipino troops were sent to fight in the US war of intervention against Korea in the 1950s and against Vietnam during the late 1960s. The Philippines has also been used by the US as a base and launching pad for its wars of intervention against Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan.
"As long as the Philippines is bound to the MDT, it can never claim to be neutral and independent," said the CPP. "With the MDT, the Philippines is bound to the foreign policy decisions of the US imperialists. It makes the Philippine government an enemy of the enemies of the US. It can only be friends with governments friendly to its US master."
"Between an imperialist power and a puppet state, there can never be anything mutual unless the master says so," said the CPP.
The CPP reiterated the long-standing clamor of the Filipino people for the immediate abrogation of the Mutual Defense Treaty. "Amid the US' intensified efforts to worm its way into the Asia-Pacific region, it is imperative and urgent for the Filipino people to push more vigorously for the repeal of the MDT."
"The US imperialist government is using the specter of Chinese expansionism to provoke a dispute over the Spratly islands and use this as a pretext for increasing its naval presence in the South China Sea," said the CPP. "The US wants to project its military power and ensure its dominance in the Asian sealanes with the intent of forcing open and further penetrating the vast consumer market of China and the rest of the Asian countries."