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Joseph Estrada is in a mad scramble to prove himself a rabid puppet of US imperialism. He is leaving no stone unturned to secure the ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the latest military treaty between the US and Philippine governments which flagrantly assaults the country�s sovereignty and territorial integrity. US Ambassador Thomas Hubbard and Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Domingo Siazon signed the VFA on February 10, 1998 before the close of Gen. Fidel Ramos� administration. Though already signed, the Philippine Senate has to ratify the VFA for the treaty to take effect in the country. The puppet Ramos regime attempted to have it approved immediately by the Senate but retreated in the face of intense criticism from various sectors of society. The US is waging an all-out campaign to prevent a repeat of the VFA�s rejection. Senators and other officials of the Estrada administration have been summoned to the US Embassy to obtain their support for the treaty. One after the other, ranking US state and defense officials such as State Secretary Madeleine Albright, US Pacific Command Adm. Joseph Pruehr and Defense Secretary William Cohen have visited the Philippines. The US has promised military aid for the AFP�s �modernization� if the treaty is approved. Accordingly, the puppet Estrada regime has repeatedly given its assurance that the VFA will be approved, with the Senate�s ratification a mere formality. A More Pernicious Treaty The VFA legalizes anew the US military forces� unbridled use of Philippine territory after the Senate rejected, in 1991, the Treaty of Friendship, Security and Cooperation which attempted to maintain the presence of US military bases. It dovetails the ACSA (Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement), which has been secretly adopted and put into effect by the US and Philippine governments since 1992. The ACSA allows US military ships and aircraft to have access to Philippine seaports and airports. The VFA is far more pernicious than the rejected military bases treaty. It allows US military troops, ships, aircraft and other equipment to enter or leave at will from any part of the country without inspection by Philippine government authorities and exempts them from paying taxes or tariffs. In effect, any part of the Philippines may be utilized as a US war base. US military officials enjoy the exclusive right to inspect their own ships and planes. The Philippine government does not have the right to determine the presence of nuclear weapons on these vessels, thus negating the reactionary state�s own constitutional provision prohibiting the presence of nuclear arms (temporarily or otherwise) inside Philippine territory. US troops in the Philippines will also be granted extraterritorial powers. The Philippine government would have no real jurisdiction over US troops who may commit crimes in the country. A mere certification from a US military official that a soldier committed a crime �while on duty� exempts the guilty party from any liability under Philippine laws. The US may even request that the accused be tried in their own civilian or military courts. A related issue is the toxic waste left behind by US troops in Clark and Subic, which includes nuclear waste. This matter, which to date has not been resolved, has not been given any attention by the proposed treaty. The agreement does not hold the US government liable nor does it oblige it to pay reparations for any damage or injury suffered by civilians in the course of military operations and other activities covered by the treaty. With the VFA�s effectivity having no time limit, the US can enforce its ominous provisions over an indefinite period. Policy of Intervention The VFA and ACSA serve US imperialism�s forward deployment strategy in Asia and its global strategy of rapid deployment. These strategies ensure the rapid deployment and intervention of US troops whenever the US wages a war of aggression against its perceived enemies. Forward deployment and the maintenance of military bases are used in combination with VFAs and ACSAs in regions where there are �active threats� against the US� strategic interests. They ensure the mobility of large numbers of US troops minus the financial and political costs of maintaining military bases. At present, the US has six security agreements with various countries in the Asia-Pacific: the Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines (August 30, 1951); and security treaties with Japan (September 8, 1951), South Korea (October 1, 1953), Australia (September 1, 1951) and the Marshall islands, Micronesia and Palau (November 4, 1986). It maintains military bases in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. And it has signed VFAs and ACSAs with Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Brunei, South Korea and Japan. There are some 100,000 US troops permanently stationed in South Korea and Japan supported by forces and weapons from the entire US Pacific Command. These forces are primarily trained against North Korea, China and other countries considered as actual or potential enemies of the US or its Asian allies. The US has a long record of using the Asia-Pacific as a staging area for war�from its engagement with coimperialist Japan during the Second World War to its war of aggression against Korea in the �50s and Vietnam in the �60s and �70s. It also keeps close watch over the Indochinese peninsula where US imperialism has so far failed to suppress the struggle of the people of Kampuchea and other countries; countries like India and Pakistan which have lately been building their nuclear capability; and other perceived sources of regional tension such as the unresolved territorial dispute over the Spratly Islands. Another objective is to keep open sea routes through which oil and other products from the Middle East are transported. A continuous supply of oil is of utmost importance to the economy of Japan, a close US ally. Japan also contributes billions of dollars to support US troops and other military requirements of the US in the region. US troops in the Asia-Pacific are used to intervene in and attack areas as far as the Middle East. When the US launched Operation Desert Storm and Desert Shield against Iraq in 1990 and early this year, the US used its military bases in the Asia-Pacific to rapidly deploy war troops to the Middle East. Through existing ACSAs and VFAs with different countries in the region, the US was able to use seaports, airports and other facilities as transit points for its troops, ships and aircraft en route to the Middle East. Securing US imperialism�s economic interests in the region lies at the core of maintaining US military presence in the Asia-Pacific. It is important for the US to maintain �stability� in the Asia-Pacific because the latter is an important destination for US surplus products and excess capital. Since the �90s, the region has served as a market for up to one-third of all US merchandise exports. On a per capita basis, Asians have been importing more goods from the US compared to Europeans. Thus, any threat to the �stability� of the Asia-Pacific is a threat to the economic and political stability of the US. Intervention in the Philippines The US has always maintained military troops in the Philippines for purposes of intervention, to prop up its puppet regime in the country and violently suppress the revolutionary movement. US military forces ensure that the reactionary government and its military and police forces receive ample anti-Communist indoctrination and strategic, logistical, intelligence and moral support, aside from additional military troops to launch counterrevolutionary war against the Filipino people. The US has been crowing that waging joint military exercises of US and Philippine troops is one �advantage� the Philippines would gain from the VFA. The AFP would supposedly have the opportunity to train in the use of modern weapons and other US military equipment. The US wants the Senate to ratify the VFA the soonest so it could push through with the �Balikatan� (a largescale joint military exercise involving land, sea and air forces) this year. The exercise is usually held in the last quarter. So long as the VFA is not approved, the US can only hold small military exercises such as the naval exercise it launched this August near Bataan. The object of such trainings is no other than the enhancement of the fascist AFP�s capability to suppress the people and the revolutionary movement. Military exercises also prepare public opinion for outright armed intervention or actual use by the US of the country�s territory to attack the Philippines� neighboring countries. The US is pushing the VFA in the face of an unprecedented crisis of the world capitalist system and the local ruling system. In an effort to ride the crisis, the US has been enforcing the policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization. These policies, however, have wrought nothing but the untold poverty now afflicting the toiling masses. Protests and the people�s armed resistance are once more on the upsurge because of such intense exploitation and oppression. The reinvigoration of the Party and the revolutionary movement in the Philippines which are reflected in the successful tactical offensives of the New People�s Army and the advance of the legal democratic movement in the cities has been causing greater anxiety to US imperialism. It is now compelling the Estrada regime to enter into such brazenly anti-people and anti-national agreements such as the ACSA and VFA even at the risk of triggering the regime�s further political isolation from the people. The Estrada regime and its imperialist master are mistaken if they believe they could easily secure the Senate�s approval of the VFA. Even now, they face fierce and widespread people�s resistance to the treaty. Aside from the militant and progressive movement, among those opposed to the VFA are conservative but influential groups such as the Catholic Bishops� Conference of the Philippines, the Philippine Muslim Task Force Against US Aggression and various civic organizations. There is a solid basis for establishing a broad united front against the US� schemes of interference, intervention and aggression. 
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