The two-week war game involving 850 soldiers of the US Marine Corps code named “Kamandag” currently being conducted throughout the Philippines highlights continuing US military intervention in the Philippines and violations of Philippine sovereignty.
The Kamandag war game is inimical to the interests of the Filipino people. The objective of the Kamandag war game is to fortify US military foothold in the Philippines in order to use the country as a base for advancing its geopolitical interests in the Asia-Pacific region and further strengthening its hegemony. The US Kamandag war game aims to further strengthen plans for deployment of its naval forces in the Philippines as a theater of war of the US imperialists. It dovetails with the ongoing plans of the US to construct at least five more military facilities under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) in strategic locations in the Philippines to preposition its missiles and other weapons, vehicles and personnel.
Amid heightening military tensions with China, the Kamandag war game and other military exercises being conducted by the US in the Philippines further drags the country to the brink of a possible conflagration of US-China conflict. The AFP, a puppet army that is armed and funded by the US government, does the bidding of the US military and is being mobilized in the service of US military objectives.
The presence of US military forces in the Philippines is being touted as part of defending Philippine sovereignty against China’s incursions. Contrary to its declared objective, however, increased deployment of US aircraft carriers and other warships, together with its allied military forces from Australia and Japan, has the effect of militarizing the South China Sea.
Increasingly bellicose, China has turned to more aggressive and war-like actions against Philippine armed forces conducting routine operations within Philippine seas with US military coverage. China’s hostile acts have justly outraged the Filipino people. The increasing tense situation is being taken advantaged of by the US to justify its plans of further increasing its presence in the Asia-Pacific region.
Furthermore, the Kamandag war game in the Philippines are being conducted while the US government gives all-out support to the Zionist genocide by the Israel government against the Palestinian people in Gaza. The US has endorsed and enabled the Zionist regime in Israel to drop US-supplied bombs for more than a month now, killing close to 11,000 Palestinians, including 5,000 children. These are the same bombs that the US military supplies to the Armed Forces of the Philippines which the AFP has been dropping on Philippine soil in its widespread state terrorist drive since 2018. By allowing the Kamandag war game to be conducted by the US in the Philippines, Marcos is further making himself complicit in the US-Israel genocide at Gaza.
The Filipino people must vigorously and militantly oppose the Kamandag war game and defend Philippine sovereignty. They must condemn the Marcos regime for allowing the US imperialists to use the country as a US military stronghold that will drag the country into a war against its interests.
They must build the broadest possible united front of Filipino patriotic forces to demand the demilitarization of the South China Sea, the abrogation of the Mutual Defense Treaty, the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the recently signed US-PH Bilateral Security Guidelines and other unequal military treaties, oppose the planned reciprocal access agreement with Japan which would facilitate joint US-Japan military operations in the Philippines, and other urgent demands to resist US imperialist war provocations in order to preempt the outbreak of inter-imperialist wars.
The Filipino people must continue to fight for genuine national and social liberation, overthrow the neocolonial puppet regime and establish a democratic people’s government that will carve a new national destiny that is independent of imperialist domination and oppression.
