Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent visit to Malacañang is part of US imperialist war designs to portray Marcos Jr. as the new poster boy for its proxy war versus China. The Marcos Jr. media stunt exposes US imperialism’s use of puppet regimes such as the Philippines and Ukraine to advance its geopolitical ambitions. By aligning Marcos Jr. as a parallel of Zelensky, the US is positioning the Philippines as a key player in its broader strategy to counter its imperialist rival–China.
In similar fashion to the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine, where the Zelensky puppet regime is pitted against Russia, the US seeks to use the puppet Marcos Jr. government to foment anti-China sentiments and hoodwink the Filipino people into thinking that the US will protect the Philippines in the event of an all-out war. In reality, the US only seeks war against China to secure its own hegemonic interests in Asia Pacific.
The US plans to invoke the lopsided Mutual Defense Treaty as a pretext to wage an all-out imperialist conflict and open another proxy war front in the region. The recent Balikatan war games, the pre-positioning of its war arsenal in the so-called “Luzon corridor” and the looming US-PH aerial war games are all meant to provoke an armed response from China and lay the justification for Biden’s planned attacks.
To justify its reckless warmongering the US government aims to fabricate the same narrative as a ‘defender of small states’ when in fact it continues to instigate, design and finance wars and in the process commit horrendous war crimes from Palestine, Ukraine to the Philippines.
The recent verdict of the International People’s Tribunal which found the Marcos Jr. and Duterte regimes guilty of war crimes and violations of international humanitarian law underscored the direct role of the US government in the implementation of so-called ‘counterinsurgency’ operations in the Philippines. The atrocities committed by the Marcos and Duterte regimes with the full backing of the US government is akin to the war crimes committed against the peoples of Ukraine, Palestine and other peoples fighting against imperialism and for national and social liberation.
Marcos Jr. on the other hand has consistently served as a willing accomplice by further opening the Philippines via the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement to increased US military presence and intensified operations. His connivance with the US risks dragging millions of Filipino lives into a destructive conflict, manipulated by a foreign power that has historically shown no regard for the sovereignty and well-being of the people in its satellite regimes. The visit of Zelensky, orchestrated by Washington, should be seen for what it is: a step towards the Philippines’ deeper entanglement in a conflict that serves the interests of US imperialism, not of the Filipino people.