The U.S. is Using the Philippines to Wage War On China
As the U.S. empire places missiles in the Philippine archipelago within striking distance of the Chinese mainland, it is more important than ever to avoid conflict.
Things are heating up in the South China Sea as the U.S. gears up for war against China.
This is horrendously bad for reasons that should be excruciatingly obvious: China is a nuclear power, and, like Russia, WILL resort to the nuclear option if it feels its very existence is in imminent danger of being wiped out by the U.S. and its vassals.
The United States is using the Philippines, as it did the Kurds, as it’s doing to Ukraine, and as it is doing to Taiwan, in order to press its geopolitical agenda. This isn’t an exaggeration. Since Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. was elected in 2022, U.S. dictator Joe Biden and his neocon regime handlers have been aggressively courting the son of the former dictator of the Philippines in an effort to repair relations that had, under the regime of Rodrigo Duterte, deteriorated. “America needs Manila squarely in its camp as tensions with China rise in the Asia-Pacific.”1
As well, the U.S. empire has long relied on Filipinos as a source of cheap labor, both in the archipelago and as foreign workers within the United States, in industries ranging from agriculture to medicine, and starting in 1901, in the U.S. Navy despite Filipinos not having citizenship.2 This was, of course, after the U.S. had stolen the Philippines first from Spain during the Spanish-American War and then from its people when they attempted to resist U.S. conquest.3 When Duterte was elected in 2016, he initially sought a policy of independence from the United States, but ultimately shifted the geopolitical orbit of the Philippines back around Washington, D.C.4 In April this year, he lashed out at the U.S., blaming it for rising tensions between China and the Philippines and calling for removal of U.S. missiles and bases.56 You can watch a video here explaining his position:
Now, I’m no fan of Duterte, and the extent to which he seriously tried to move the Philippines to a more independent geopolitical position is debatable, but the fact is that it is entirely pragmatic not to antagonize China—because it’s a much larger nation both geographically and in terms of population, and therefore far more powerful militarily given its technological advances in recent decades. Simply put, it’s like antagonizing a Rotweiller: it’ll tear you to pieces if it senses you intruding on its territory or trying to harm it. So why do it?
At the end of the day, the U.S. is a dying empire trying through any and all means deemed necessary to prevent its uncontested dominance of the planet from coming to an end. It uses, abuses, and discards vassal states like Ukraine7 and stateless ethnic groups such as the Kurds8 for its own imperial purposes, without regard for the consequences to those used and discarded entities once their usefulness has ended. The Marcos crime family doesn’t care about the Philippines or the people therein. They’re set for life and even if driven from power, will enjoy cozy retirement in the U.S. But the Philippines, if placed into direct military confrontation with China, will be destroyed.
Poppy Mcpherson, Karen Lema, and Devjyot Ghoshal, “How the U.S. Courted the Philippines to Thwart China,” Reuters, November 29, 2023, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/us-china-philippines-marcos/.
Tanya Monthey, “Differing from ‘Us’ in Religion, Customs, and Laws: The Philippines, Labor Migration, and United States Empire,” May 5, 2023, https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/d0f31364-8950-4c08-92f0-513b6b68e337/content.
Lyle Goulbourne, “How America Stole the Philippines,” www.andrews.edu, October 27, 2021, https://www.andrews.edu/life/student-movement/issues/2021-10-27/ideas-how-america-stole-the-philippines.html.
Derek Grossman, “Duterte’s Dalliance with China Is Over,” Foreign Policy, November 2, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/11/02/duterte-china-philippines-united-states-defense-military-geopolitics/.
Rodrigo Duterte, “Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte: America Is Pushing Us to Find a Quarrel with China, Start...,” MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute, 2024), https://www.memri.org/tv/former-philippine-president-duterte-america-pushing-us-to-find-quarrel-with-china-war.
Andreo Calonzo, “Ex-Philippine Leader Duterte Rails against Marcos and U.S. In Chinese Media,” TIME, April 12, 2024, https://time.com/6966214/rodrigo-duterte-philipipines-south-china-sea-us-marcos/.
Eric Zuesse, “How and Why the U.S. Government Perpetrated the 2014 Coup in Ukraine,” Counter Currents, April 6, 2018, https://countercurrents.org/2018/06/how-and-why-the-u-s-government-perpetrated-the-2014-coup-in-ukraine/.
Jon Schwarz, “The U.S. Is Now Betraying the Kurds for the Eighth Time,” The Intercept, October 7, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/10/07/kurds-syria-turkey-trump-betrayal/.