Manila is attempting to trigger an incident with China as a pretext for US imperialism

By Rasti Delizo & Federico Fuentes

Published date 9 February, 2026

Rasti Delizo is a global affairs analyst, veteran Filipino socialist activist and former vice-president of the Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino (BMP, Solidarity of Filipino Workers).

In the final instalment of this three-part series, Delizo talks to Federico Fuentes from LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal about Manila's attempts to trigger incidents that could create a pretext for US imperialist intervention against China, and what a left foreign policy for the region might could like.

Part I, which looks at the factors underpinning US-China tensions and the dangers posed for the Asia-Pacific region can be read here. Part II, which looks at the impacts of US-China tensions on Philippine politics and the left, can be read here.

Southeast Asian left parties released a statement in June 2022 that raised the need to “promote and advance progressive regional peace initiatives as building blocks toward a common security policy to foster a more peaceful and cooperative global order, especially for the Asia-Pacific region.” What kind of peace initiatives do you think could help in this regard?

I completely agree with the ten demands in the June 2022 joint statement. My analysis and views regarding peace and security for the Asia-Indo-Pacific region aligns with the document’s progressive content. If implemented immediately, the statement’s set of measures can — and will — only better “promote and advance progressive regional peace initiatives as building blocks toward a common security policy” for the peoples of this area.

This standpoint of the Southeast Asian left affirms a comprehensive conceptual approach. In practice, it reflects the internationalist solidarity of regional socialist forces advancing a revolutionary proletarian anti-imperialist line. Moreover, this class-based foreign policy agenda aims “to help foster a peacefully cooperative global environment forward” through a progressive and common security policy framework for the area.

The Southeast Asian left’s peace and security policy package encompasses an extensive scope of much-needed steps for the region. These initiatives are indispensable for an urgent deescalation of the Asia-Indo-Pacific’s political-security tensions. Furthermore, any future shift toward achieving them can equally constitute the basis for a fresh, people-centred political-security architecture, bearing lesser endemic pressures and strains upon the area’s states.

Added progressive initiatives should always be welcomed to enhance the region’s aspirations for peace. But, for now, I believe the policy options laid out in the joint statement are sufficient to spark a crucial revamp of the area’s strategic balance of power.

A start to this process would similarly trigger a more radical change in the region’s correlation of class forces. Therefore, such a dynamic re-divisioning of the region’s geopolitical equation can prospectively favour its colossal populace — the Asia-Indo-Pacific’s systemically exploited and oppressed working-class masses.

How do you envision a common regional security policy that prioritises the needs of small nations over great powers?

Identifying and adopting a viable response to this question could become a tectonic solution to the Asia-Indo-Pacific’s long-standing search for regional amity, concord and harmony.

A popularly acceptable resolution to this area’s peace and security dilemma, especially one that underpins a progressive conclusion for the wellbeing of the region’s working-class majority, is of utmost interest to global humanity. However, given the nature of your inquiry’s complexity, my attempt at a reply can only take a broad strokes approach.

Crafting a conceptual regional security framework for specific geographical realms — areas that feature many nation-states with varied levels of development — can be arrived at via a multifaceted and synergised way. As such, this unifying approach needs a synthesis of certain fundamental dimensions of security.

More importantly, the essential content of these melded security concepts must manifest a rational degree of positive attributes intrinsic to them. Only by advancing a progressively constructive security concept throughout the broader Asia-Indo-Pacific can its environmental equilibrium become stabilised and more sustainable for longer term social developmental purposes.

Accordingly, the key principles that characterise the associated concepts of common security and cooperative security can better be applied and synthesised as the basis for my answer. The central theses of these two security frameworks — which are relatively progressive and democratic — are not only related and complementary; the focal points of their respective doctrines can readily be synergised into a more coherent whole. They bear a striking theoretical contrast to the separate doctrine of collective defence.

While the first two regional security concepts are more socially oriented and people-centric in focus, the latter is very much a state-centred dogma that adheres to justifications for the creation and preservation of military-based alliances and arrangements. Collective defence is traditionally favoured by imperialist great powers as it upholds a more militarist posture.

An example of a collective defence alliance is the US imperialist-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). A political-security project that is uber aggressive and provocation-prone, such as NATO, is certainly not what the Asia-Indo-Pacific region needs— now and for the future.

Arising from a synthesis of the common and cooperative security frameworks, a new conceptualised and areawide security policy can be envisioned. To enhance the rationale of this foreign policy mode, its general framework must incorporate the Southeast Asian left’s policy demands.

Moreover, as a unified regional security concept, its principled aims and objectives should be popularised and operationalised throughout the Asia-Indo-Pacific region. To attain this regional security policy’s progressive agenda in the long run, an intensifying sequence of anti-imperialist advocacies through mass campaign struggles must be launched. These integrated and coordinated activities can best be executed via a coalition of revolutionary left-led parties and mass organisations from across the region.

Furthermore, to efficiently foster this set of radical norms and democratic procedures for such a newly integrated regional security concept, it must be allowed to function within a broadly arranged decision-making process. This collective leadership mechanism should not be strictly state-led. Democratic and collective form of regional security governance should guarantee that it is at once substantively people-centred and people-directed. 

Through practice and across time, this multi-dimensional course of action could further snowball into a more comprehensive areawide security framework. As such, this unique regional security approach may also help to amplify its principles going forward.

Because its scope is more socially oriented and less militarist in nature, this regional security track can leverage a relatively wider political clout to help prioritise the socioeconomic interests of peripheral states, over that of the conventional political-security agendas of the imperialist core’s great powers. This, however, can only be done to a certain degree.

Nonetheless, if any limited gains are achieved, they should be welcomed as qualitatively dynamic accomplishments for the international working-class movement. Any such gains have to be firmly built upon, and even enhanced, as part of a strategic left project for the Asia-Indo-Pacific area.

Lastly, if ever this envisaged and alternative regional security policy framework becomes more widely acceptable and known, then perhaps we could simply describe it as a panoramic security concept.

Just as Ukraine is the key flashpoint in US-Russia relations, Taiwan is a key flashpoint in US-China tensions. How are these two situations (Ukraine and Taiwan) generally viewed in the Philippines?

The great majority of Filipinos, especially the ordinary poor working masses, are not avidly concerned with foreign policy issues in regular times. It is safe to assume this same mindset is shared by most people around the capitalist world.

This is particularly so, given that those who are systemically exploited and oppressed on a daily basis (particularly within the global periphery), largely focus on survival priorities. Monitoring and comprehending the constantly shifting dynamics of world affairs is chiefly alien to them.

Yet, when facing pivotal circumstances, citizens of any state will take a reasoned view if repercussions from their own country’s foreign policy might affect their daily lives. Moreover, most people’s thoughts on international affairs will turn at least harshly vocal if their respective government’s policy stances further provoke and exacerbate global wars and/or regional hostilities, which could negatively impact their own countries.

The popular masses decisively act during historically critical moments, even as they constantly struggle in other ways for real social change in non-revolutionary times. The widest layers of the proletarian class will resist if existing — or highly probable — inter-state wars (and even neighbouring intra-state conflicts) might threaten the stability of their immediate environs and endanger their future wellbeing. World history has shown this to be the case on numerous occasions.

Additionally, space and time factors play crucial roles in shaping the foreign policy consciousness of the working-class masses. For example, the relative distance from a war zone (or a possible one) heightens or diminishes a person’s sense of vulnerability; the likelihood of a conflict breaking out sooner or later amplifies or downplays a peoples’ perception of self-alertness and vigilance. Furthermore, the results of these varying attitudes are dependent upon the state of a country’s economy, which underlie sociopolitical conditions.

Therefore, the pending national questions of Ukraine and Taiwan — as regional conflicts and flashpoints — are viewed and appreciated quite differently by the Filipino public. Their levels of concern toward these two international political issues can be measured relatively, and will change as the nature of these near-analogous situations transform over time.

Nevertheless, almost all Filipinos found themselves stunned by Russia’s militarist aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022. They shared — and understandably so — a basically negative response, similar to most people throughout the world. This stems from the fact that Russian imperialism’s invasion of Europe’s second largest country, which ignited this region’s most significant war since 1945, caused a worldwide fallout.

The aftermath of this (still ongoing) European conflict prompted upheavals across various spheres of life. It sparked inflationary pressures, a surge in food prices, spikes in oil and gas rates, disruptions of global supply chains, disturbances in post-pandemic recovery measures, a deterioration of sovereign credit markets, powerful shifts in the international balance of power and national correlation of class forces, the destabilisation of national governments, the further militarisation of numerous states, and many other socioeconomic, political and security predicaments. These wide-ranging aftershocks triggered dire consequences for the global community, including in the Philippines.

All these adverse outcomes caused the Philippines’ own economic rehabilitation efforts to slow down. This downward trend — further aggravated by domestic economic and political troubles — has continued up to the current period. But as the country’s turmoil exacerbates their basic daily problems, the devastating effects of the war in Ukraine are now receding from the mindsets of the Filipino masses.

This steady erosion of the Filipino people’s mindfulness of a “faraway war” stands at variance with their earlier open display. Just days and weeks into Russia’s imperialist aggression, some layers of Philippine society displayed their internationalist solidarity with Ukrainians in public and private spaces.

Amid this conflict, the Philippine state has consistently voted in favour of United Nations resolutions endorsing Ukraine’s diplomatic orientation and narratives. For almost four years, Manila has upheld its pro-Kyiv voting pattern. But even as a majority of Philippine society still accepts their national government’s support for Ukraine’s “sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity”, Manila’s diplomatic stance cannot hide its real foreign policy direction.

This is because the Philippine national leadership’s pro-capitalist global outlook is viewed through the lens of US imperialism’s systemic agenda of worldwide exploitation, oppression and repression. Hence, the Philippines practices double standards, with matching hypocritical demeanours, in its diplomatic conduct of external relations.

Manila’s longstanding foreign policy focus has been supportive advocacy for Washington’s forever jingoist global offensives. This is witnessed in how the Philippines continues to march in lockstep behind the US’s geostrategy targeting the Asia-Indo-Pacific region. For nearly 15 years, US imperialism’s primary economic-diplomatic-military thrusts toward this region have been aimed at thwarting China’s rapid ascension to great power-status.

Via its “Pivot to Asia” foreign policy line — as a strategic geopolitical shift since late 2011 — US imperialism’s operating geostrategy has vigourously attempted to degrade Chinese imperialism’s brisk emergence as a “peer competitor” state. A primary strategic factor underlying the friction-prone US-China relationship is their opposing policies concerning the future political status of the island of Taiwan.

What has the official reaction of the Philippines been to its troubled regional security environment? Manila has exclusively decided to pursue a de facto foreign policy that can be described as one of “strategic folly wrapped in a grand delusion.” This militarised external policy pathway follows a foolishly bellicose logic.

Philippine foreign policy entertains the idea of having this archipelagic Southeast Asian state becoming part of ground-zero in any potential shooting war between the contending imperialist powers — by acting as a US-controlled tripwire-state for the region. 

This is not only because the Philippines is situated just south of Taiwan — the former’s northernmost island in Batanes Province (Mavulis Island) is located about 150 kilometres away from the tip of the latter’s southernmost administrative unit (Pingtung County) — but because the Philippines’ irrational foreign policy framework is largely driven by a blend of subjectivist sentimental factors, objective materialist realities and a basic lack of prudence and circumspection in strategic planning.

Indeed, a type of strategic folly characterises Philippine foreign policy today. Its main track strives to preserve the country’s national interests. This urgency relates to clear and present threats to its territorial sovereignty. These external challenges primarily radiate from Chinese state power floating on the Philippines’ adjacent maritime domain (facing the country’s western zone).

It is, thus, on this national question, centred upon the intensifying territorial dispute between Manila and Beijing over specific parts of the Southeast Asian Sea (also known as the South China Sea), that a great many Filipinos are for now feeling a sense of nationalism. And still, there are innumerable other Filipinos who somehow feel anxious, if not perturbed, about this accelerating external policy challenge.

Manila aims to address broader shocks emanating from the spiralling contestation between the US and China in and around the Southeast Asian Sea. To achieve its confrontational foreign policy objectives, Manila’s external relations framework aligns itself with Washington.

In consequence, Manila approves of this international conflict-dyad between the two imperialist great powers while unquestioningly conforming with its perilous effects. The Philippines does so by not asserting a positively amicable, non-aligned and independent foreign policy standpoint. Should Manila pursue this directional foreign policy framework — along the lines of a panoramic security concept — it could ensure better conditions for attaining much-wider regional harmony and stability.

For now, Philippine foreign policy rests upon a strategy of delusion. It is primarily based on “hope” — a subjective notion that is not a real strategy at all. In a dangerously delusional way, Manila hopes that its bilateral defence alliance with Washington will permanently hold. The Philippines’ strategic calculus is that a steadily declining US power can still provide it with security guarantees, no matter what happens in a profoundly changing world and regardless of the rise of other imperialist great powers pursuing their own anti-US strategic agenda.

In operational terms, the Philippines maintains an integral set of five bilateral defence pacts and agreements with the US. These military-related instruments are all anchored upon the 1951 Republic of the Philippines-United States Mutual Defence Treaty (RP-US MDT).

This comprehensive security-focused blueprint guarantees a network of nine US-controlled military bases on Philippine soil, together with all-year-round access to Philippine territorial space for US troops, aircraft, naval vessels and weapons. Additionally, US imperialism has made sure that Philippine military forces operate directly under Washington’s overall command and control.

As such, the entire Philippine state apparatus has become just another component nation-state plugged into US imperialism’s growing web of worldwide security alliances. An increasing number of bilateral, trilateral, quadrilateral, etc collective defence arrangements are now spread all across the Asia-Indo-Pacific area — and still growing in number and mix.

These Washington-led regional security alliances — which comprise the area-based allies for its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) — are designed to sustain US imperialism’s monopoly of military might throughout this region. As regional mechanisms of imperialist hegemonic suppression, the direct role of US-controlled regional security alliances is to politically and militarily counterbalance China. 

This is largely to deny Beijing any possibility of gaining its own monopoly of military force within the Asia-Indo-Pacific area to secure China’s rapidly expanding spheres of influence and dominance (which are premised on Chinese imperialism’s own devices of exploitative capital accumulation operating across this zone).

Likewise, to greatly enhance the US’s geostrategic offensive within Southeast Asia, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) adopted its own ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific (AOIP) policy framework in 2019. Since the ASEAN-US Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was signed in 2022, AOIP now acts to guide ASEAN's regional security and geopolitical posturing.

The Philippines has just become the ASEAN Chair for 2026 and is set to host next year’s twin ASEAN summits in the Philippines. This means that Manila can be expected to steer the regional association’s forthcoming political-security agenda in its favour (at least for the next twelve months).

Should this be the case, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) — the regional body’s dialogue platform, which tackles multilateral security issues and concerns — could be deployed as an ASEAN-centred foreign policy instrument (under the sway of Manila’s year-long chairship) to amplify US imperialism’s long-term strategic machinations in Southeast Asia. Simultaneous to this anticipated pro-Washington manoeuvre, the ARF process could be manipulated to disadvantage and sideline China’s diplomatic agenda and interests within this multilateral platform.

Therefore, the following are some major facets that mould Philippine foreign policy today:

1. Manila endures in its total allegiance to Washington’s global agendas, geopolitical initiatives and geostrategic thrusts;
2. The Philippines continues to breach certain diplomatic commitments toward China, instead of upholding Manila’s One China Policy of 1975;
3. Because most Filipinos hold a lingering fondness for anything American and/or related to the US, this induces them to overlook US imperialism’s structural exploitations and oppressions inside the Philippines (the presence of US military bases and troops);
4. A notable rise in anti-China sentiments among Filipinos is creating an emotionally charged socio-political atmosphere, which generates reactionary forms of national-chauvinism inside Philippine society;
5. With rising tensions between China and Taiwan, together with a surge of maritime-based incidents involving China and the Philippines in the Southeast Asian Sea, many Filipinos are developing a certain degree of national sympathy for the people living in Taiwan — reinforcing an already existing anti-China attitude within Filipino society; and
6. As a capitalist nation-state in the periphery of the imperialist world system, the Philippines — led by its capitalist ruling-class oligarchs and elites — remains deluded and enamoured by the double standard-principles foisted upon the capitalist “rules-based international order” by the imperialist great powers lying in the core; thus, they wrongly believe that their country’s territorial sovereignty will always be protected by the rulings of the international liberal-democratic regime (regardless of momentous changes occurring across the global system that undermine the same international order).

These major foreign policy determinants shape Philippine foreign policy. Manila’s external relations framework remains unabashedly pro-Washington while scornfully anti-Beijing. But because of its generally disdainful attitude toward China, the Philippines has seemingly ignored a basic consideration when fashioning its foreign policy vis-à-vis Sino-American competition in Southeast Asia.

Strategic and foreign policy planners did not contemplate how their Chinese counterparts — especially the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) Central Military Commission — would respond to the establishment of a system of nine US military bases inside the Philippines. From China’s own military strategy perspective, these US military “sites” (the term used in RP-US bilateral defence documents), based within a Southeast Asian state that is located just south of Taiwan (a lingering rebel province in the CPC’s mindset), pose a clear and present danger to Beijing.

Thus, a contradiction exists in this regional security equation. The majority of Filipinos see no problem with this US military scheme inside their country — and even accept public explanations from senior Filipino officials and diplomats that this setup “has no offensive military purpose at all.” The Chinese, on the other hand, perceive this US imperialist design as an “existential threat”.

In this specific strategic dialectic, what stands out is what the Chinese think about the pre-positioning of US military forces and weapons (in the Philippines). Beijing’s realist strategic thinking, and its contrasting foreign policy calculus, bears more magnitude than what the Filipinos believe the purpose of these US military bases are. China perceives the joint-Philippines-US military activities as unwarranted acts of provocation directed.

This situation is comparable to Cuba in mid-late October 1962 and Ukraine in mid-late February 2022. These historically consequential moments both bore questions concerning national threat perceptions. At the time, the US perceived an immediate existential threat coming from Soviet missiles based in Cuba. Similarly, Russia perceived a clear existential threat from NATO’s eastward expansionism via Ukraine’s then-anticipated membership.

In the Cuban case, the US reacted militarily toward the Soviet Union’s provocative interference within the Western Hemisphere — US imperialism’s immediate regional sphere of interest — on the basis of Washington’s Monroe Doctrine. In the Ukraine case, Russian imperialism reacted militarily toward joint-US-NATO provocative interference within Eastern Europe — Russian imperialism’s primary regional sphere of interest — on the basis of Moscow’s foreign policy doctrine, which declares the need to secure its “Post-Soviet Space”, or Russia’s so-called “Near Abroad”.

Then again, the Filipino ruling elites do not bother to ponder such strategic dilemmas imperilling the Philippines. Instead, they just fall back to a national default position: “Hey, let’s just call the Americans again for help!” Most Filipino oligarchs feel that they have the means to easily flee the Philippines once a hot war erupts within its sovereign space.

Nevertheless, it is clear that the capitalist Philippine state is already undertaking risky plans in the service of imperialist great power designs. Manila is now attempting to trigger incidents that could create a pretext for US imperialism to provide direct military support to the Philippines under the rubric of the RP-US MDT.

However, such a hoped-for scenario by Manila may yet result in a limited war between the Philippines and China. In such a situation, Washington may hesitate to provide a full security guarantee to protect chunks of Philippine territorial space from falling under Beijing’s de facto control.

This plausible future scenario has a materialist underpinning. As the US’s conventional powers continue to wane, the imperialist world system itself is also experiencing a diffusion of power — both within the imperialist core and away from it. These systemic shifts pose direct challenges to US imperialism.

This can be seen in Washington’s oft-repeated promises of “ironclad” support for Ukraine now crumbling and melting away. Washington is compelled to take steps to accommodate Moscow’s core strategic interests in Eastern Europe. This evolving regional situation potentially leaves Kyiv with a much-reduced national territorial space, with the eastern oblasts of Ukraine falling under Russia’s de facto control.

What stance has the socialist left taken towards the war in Ukraine and the Taiwan question?

The latter issue is directly related to the deepening and worsening US–China inter-imperialist competition. This international great power-contention is currently destabilising key regions in the Eastern Hemisphere, especially with its accentuating “Maritime Great Game in the Southeast Asian Sea.” The Philippines is greatly impacted by these geopolitical aftershocks, as it is an archipelagic state in Maritime Southeast Asia.

By the country’s main revolutionary socialist forces and their political standpoints concerning the unravelling world situation, I am referring to the revolutionary left blocs around the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the Partido ng Manggagawang Pilipino (PMP, Party of the Filipino Workers). These two underground vanguard parties lead distinct political revolutionary working-class blocs, with their allies. However, they share a foreign policy framework that is grounded upon the conceptual principles of “anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism.”

Ever since its “reestablishment” in December 1968, the CPP has opposed all types of imperialist aggression. Guided by the “universal theory of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism”, the CPP outlined its stance on the war in Ukraine just four days after Russia’s invasion. The CPP’s line is observed by the forces of the National Democratic (ND) movement, especially the legal ND mass organisations affiliated with Bayan (Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, New Patriotic Alliance) and the Makabayan coalition (Patriotic Coalition of the People).

In relation to Europe’s modern-day armed conflict, the ND movement asserts a consistent standpoint. The following points define its position:

1. The current war in Ukraine is a result of “rising inter-imperialist contradictions and armed conflict”;
2. US imperialism aims to redivide the world by diminishing Russian imperialism’s spheres of influence in Eastern Europe;
3. Even though Russian imperialism has its own hegemonic aims toward Ukraine, with a strategic agenda of “re-installing a client-state in Ukraine”, its aggression was mainly provoked by US imperialism and NATO;
4. The CPP calls on all sides to immediately “resolve the conflict through peaceful negotiations”; and
5. The CPP calls on the people of Ukraine to “resist Russian aggression, oppose US and NATO intervention and fight for their country’s neutrality in the face of rising conflicts among the hegemonic powers.”

Likewise, regarding US-China tensions and its impacts on the Philippine, the CPP maintains the following position:

1. The CPP condemns the “US-Marcos regime” for heightening tensions with China by “its incessant war-mongering”;
2. Instigated by US imperialism, the “US-Marcos regime” is “setting up the stage” (through provocations) to eventually engage China with military force (with Washington’s backing);
3. The CPP views China as an “imperialist bully” that has become “increasingly aggressive and obsessive in defending its interests” and “has trampled on Philippine economic and maritime rights in the West Philippine Sea”;
4. Both China and the Philippines must abide by the principles of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC);
5. The Filipino people must “demand an immediate deescalation of tensions in the West Philippine Sea, and for the governments of China and the Philippines to actively engage in dialogue”;
6. The CPP condemns the Marcos regime for “pursuing war as an instrument of national policy”, and calls on the Filipino people to “resist the Marcos regime’s policies that serve the geopolitical strategy of US imperialism to heighten tensions in the West Philippine Sea and South China Sea”; and
7. The CPP demands the “dismantling of all US military bases and removal of all US weapons in the Philippines.”

The PMP also advances revolutionary proletarian struggles for socialism in the Philippines. As a clandestine Marxist-Leninist party, the PMP is part of the international Communist movement and a class fighter in the world proletarian revolution.

Several other revolutionary left mass organisations, such as BMP (Bukluran ng Manggagawang Pilipino, Solidarity of Filipino Workers), SANLAKAS [progressive anti-imperialist democratic coalition] and PLM (Partido Lakas ng Masa, Party of the Labouring Masses), similarly promote the ideological-political principles of the revolutionary socialist movement.

Comprising an autonomous revolutionary socialist bloc, these left organisations actively wage militant revolutionary mass struggles throughout the Philippines. They are not only struggling to achieve a socialist revolution in this Southeast Asian state — they are equally committed to help advance the world socialist revolution. Fortified by the precepts of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism, this independently empowered revolutionary socialist bloc avers its own foreign policy framework.

In response to the war in Ukraine, the PLM expressed the bloc’s general line 24 hours after Russian imperialism’s invasion of its western neighbouring state. The following reflect the revolutionary socialist bloc’s principled stance regarding the conflict:

1. The PLM position “condemns Russia’s invasion, while also calling for an end to NATO expansionism and its withdrawal from the region”;
2. NATO’s “continued expansion” following Germany’s reunification in 1990 is the “underlying cause of the conflict and reflects the post-Cold War US ambition to create a unipolar world order”;
3. PLM calls for an “immediate stop to the bombings, withdrawal of troops by all powers from the frontline and the region, and a solution based on demilitarisation and negotiations”;
4. The Philippine government “should not support the US in its attempts to create a global aggressive alliance against Russia”;
5. Because a potential nuclear war remains a global threat to the “entire planet”, Russian military forces “should immediately withdraw from Ukraine, and US troops should withdraw from countries bordering Ukraine and Russia”; and
6. The United Nations “should call on all parties to stop the aggression and intervention in Ukraine and should initiate a peace process to resolve the conflict.”

Finally, the ensuing premises characterise this same revolutionary left bloc’s position on the Sino-American confrontation in the Southeast Asia:

1. Together, both the Taiwan Strait and the Southeast Asian Sea form one of the world’s two “trouble spots today”;
2. Taiwan is “increasingly becoming a key piece in the US’s militarisation plans for the region”;
3. The Marcos regime must “cease acting as a puppet for US imperialism’s agenda in the Asia-Pacific region”;
4. Territorial disputes across the Southeast Asian Sea must be negotiated diplomatically “through multilateral engagements” involving the ASEAN and China”;
5. Manila must “end all unequal military treaties with the US that render the Philippines as a mere proxy state”;
6. China must respect the sovereign territorial rights of the Philippines “so as not to play into the trap of US imperialism to trigger a proxy war in the region”;
7. The PLM “recognises Taiwan’s national sovereignty” while opposing the plans of US imperialism “to use the unresolved status of Taiwan to pursue its war aims with China”; and
8. PLM “asserts the need for a long-term solution in the form of establishing a Shared Regional Area of Essential Commons (SRAEC) in the Southeast Asian Sea to ensure peaceful coexistence founded on mutual respect of territorial sovereignty of the ASEAN countries.”

Hence, the general line on global affairs of the two leading revolutionary left currents in the Philippines is essentially the same. These dual revolutionary left blocs promote the principles of anti-imperialist proletarian internationalism through their respective foreign policy framings.

Manila’s most critical external policy agenda applies to a national threat perception emitting from the country’s turbulent regional security environment. At the centre of this international dilemma — a growing conflation of both the Taiwan impasse and the Southeast Asian Sea enigma — is the relentless US-China inter-imperialist competition.

This endangers not only the region’s equilibrium and its development. It imperils the future of Southeast Asia’s exploited and oppressed social majority — its working-class masses. Because of this, Philippine-based revolutionary Left/socialist forces campaign for this principal call: Neither Washington nor Beijing! All US imperialist troops and bases out of the Asia-Pacific now! Resist Chinese social-imperialism’s expansionist designs! Struggle onward for an Asia of Socialist republics!