International League of Peoples' Struggles
ILPS-US Statement and Fact Sheet
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle US Country Chapter (ILPS-US) condemns the recent 10-day trip of US Defense Secretary Austin and Secretary of State Blinken to the Pacific as a blatant war provocation and planning session for all-out war. While the visit was presented as one to reinforce “defense ties” between the US and its allies, the meetings held were nothing short of preparations for open conflicts with China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) that would drag the world into a third world war.
The trip involved stops in Japan and the Philippines and will conclude with a meeting in the US with Australian officials. It also included meetings with officials from those countries along with those of South Korea (Republic of Korea – ROK) and India. The meetings involved the counterparts of each country’s Defense and State Departments (so-called “2+2” meetings), the various heads of state, and other meetings such as the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). The results of each meeting foreshadow significantly destructive impacts on the people of each country, the region, and the world at large, and set us on a domino-effect towards long term irreversible danger.
In Japan, a new US-JP Joint Force Headquarters was announced to streamline military operations between the two. New exercises were announced in the southern islands of the Ryukyu Arc, even further south from Okinawa and provocatively close to Taiwan as a show of force against China. The two also talked about collaboration on missile construction. The meetings celebrated trilateral agreements with ROK and the Philippines and talked about increased trilateral cooperation with Australia, while bringing Japan close to NATO. This rapid expansion of military partnerships with Japan exemplifies how the country has truly become the preeminent imperialist power in the region to carry out the US’s strategy, a sign even more clearly seen in the promise to double its defense spending by 2027 and become the third highest military spender after the US and China.
The US met bilaterally with ROK officials in Japan, and the three countries held a meeting of the Japan-Korea-US trilateral alliance (JAKUS). The countries promised even more JAKUS exercises throughout the Korean peninsula and islands, with 200 days worth of exercises already having happened in 2023 alone. It was agreed the next JAKUS meeting would happen within ROK next year. The US and ROK bilaterally celebrated the positioning of US nuclear-armed submarines in ROK over the past year – an act that had not been done for 40 years. They also condemned the DPRK for actions it is taking in its own defense, such as its own missile production and nuclear posture, and declared weapons transfers between DPRK and Russia to be illegal even though it is exactly what the US does with ROK and many other countries it seeks influence with. To this day, 28,500 US troops are stationed in ROK across 62 US military bases.
In the Philippines, the two countries discussed expanding US military operations in the country under the Visiting Forces Agreement, which stipulates that US troops cannot permanently base in the country legally. The meeting overrode this decision by promising an additional $128 million from the US 2025 military budget towards new bases, to be paired with $88.6 million from the Philippines own budget, while $500 million additional funds were promised to be delivered as soon as possible. Talks were had on “modernizing the Philippines’ defense and civilian law enforcement capabilities,” signaling that even the Philippine National Police would be gifted with new weapons. The two sides celebrated increased military exercises and partnerships with Japan and Australia and encouraged the Armed Forces of the Philippines to form a new Cyber Command to more vigorously pursue anyone who opposes it.
The Philippines visit stood out from the others in that major economic deals were also discussed, given the Philippines’ role for the US and other imperialist countries like Japan as a major dumping ground for foreign investment and pool for agricultural exports. The two celebrated the launch of the Luzon Economic Corridor–a development scheme meant to facilitate the extraction of natural resources and transport of semiconductors and agricultural commodities under the guise of infrastructure modernization– using US and Japanese capital under the newly-passed Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) last year. The two discussed nuclear power production following the US-Philippine 123 Agreement and committed to holding a Nuclear Supply Chain Forum in Manila in November 2024. Finally, the Philippines was promised entry into the Mineral Securities Partnership, a US-led bloc meant to ease exports from mineral-producing countries to benefit tech-manufacturing countries with few economic benefits for semi-colonial countries like the Philippines.
Finally, the heads of the Quad met to discuss future operations together. While the alliance referred to itself as a “diplomatic network of four democracies” upholding the “rules-based international order,” its language was one of hostility and not cooperation. Its statement was blatantly anti-China while not giving any examples of how China was violating the “rules-based order” of the region. It called for the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” but only referred to the DPRK and mentioned nothing about the US nuclear submarines still docked in ROK. It condemned Russia’s role in the Ukraine war and the Palestinian resistance for waging its war of liberation against Israeli occupation and aggression (without ever demanding that Israel cease its genocidal attacks), proving how intertwined US global strategy is with the Indo-Pacific. The Quad condemned what it referred to as “terrorism” in India without mentioning the blatant human rights abuses committed by the Indian government’s new fascist counterinsurgency program titled Operation Kagar that continues to massacre activists and struggling rural communities. Finally, the alliance promised further collaboration on scientific advancements, utilizing India as a tech hub for “synthetic biology in promoting biomanufacturing as one of the key technologies driving a new industrial revolution,” an industry used to privatize genetic data and therefore enact more land grabs in agricultural countries like India and the Philippines, among others.
In conclusion, the US meetings by Austin and Blinkin foreshadow a major uptick in military spending and posturing towards China, the DPRK and other US adversaries in a move that could trigger a world war, all for the vain purpose of the US keeping its losing role as primary world superpower. Unique to these meetings compared to past ones was the serious talk about how tactical military commands would play out in a future war, with Japan given autonomous command over its own forces via the Joint Force Headquarters while ROK and Philippine troops would be under the direct command of a US general, signaling the continued colonial relationship the US maintains in its’ “partnerships” with the two countries. Moreover, each government that the US visited has its own alarming list of human rights abuses, signaling that the additional military hardware being given to them will be used against their own people, targeted simply for speaking out against their government’s willful neglect of the people’s needs all to fund militarization and stoke a regional war that will only cause more death and destruction of their homelands.
The increased military spending continues to bleed dry the national budgets of all countries, with the US’s nearly $1 trillion budget being slightly supplemented by $8 billion a year from Japan to maintain the bloated US military bases on its soil and almost $1 billion from ROK. Yet while the people’s resources pay for this massive military buildup, the corporate elite are promised the true fruits of imperialist military readiness in the form of all the economic deals promised that benefit foreign monopolists while immiserating the workers, peasants and urban poor of the countries on the frontlines of US-led war.
ILPS-US calls on its members to reject the military and economic posturing of US imperialism. When the US says it speaks for a “rules-based order” and a “free and open Indo-Pacific,” it is not speaking for us nor for the people of the Indo-Pacific region. It is only speaking for the interests of its ruling class and those of its imperialist and puppet allies. Let us continue to unite with the oppressed and exploited in the US, in the Indo-Pacific, and around the world as we wage our true fight against US imperialism itself!
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