4. FROM SMALL AND WEAK TO BIG AND STRONG

We must recognize the balance of forces between us and the enemy. This is the first requirement in waging either an entire war or a campaign or a single battle. As matters now stand, we are small and weak while the enemy is big and strong. There is no doubt that he is extremely superior to us militarily in such specific terms as number of troops, formations, equipment, technique, training, foreign assistance and supplies in general. It will take a protracted period of time for us to change this balance of forces in our favor. Thus, protractedness is a basic characteristic of our people's war.

The enemy armed forces have four major services; namely, constabulary, army, air force and navy with a total force of at least 100,000 troops at present. Under the fascist dictatorship, enemy troop strength has been increased by at least 40,000 both by an actual increase in regular forces and by the prolongation of military service by twenty-year-old trainees from six months to one year-and-a-half. Enemy strength is also beefed up by the "civilian home defense force" (another name for the "barrio self-defense unit"). The fascist dictator has announced that by the middle part of 1975 the total strength of the reactionary armed forces will go up to 250,000 after the integration of the local police forces under the Philippine Constabulary.

The strength of our full-fledged guerrilla forces is a far cry from the regular military strength of the enemy. The typical center of gravity for our guerrilla forces is of mere platoon size. Around it gravitate armed propaganda squads and full-fledged guerrilla squads. So far, it is in Northeast Luzon where we have reached the company level of formation with some sufficient strength and performed company-size operations. Now, even here the level of armed activity is reduced to that of platoons and squads. However, the reduction of strength here as a result of relentless enemy campaigns is more than compensated by the growth of the New People's Army on a nationwide scale. Of course, if we were to include part-time guerrilla and militia units, we would be able to cite a higher figure for our military strength but then these as a body of armed men are small and weak in comparison to the enemy's own irregulars, the "civilian home defense forces," which are far better armed.

We cannot properly evaluate our accomplishment in the military field without giving due consideration to certain objective conditions. The subjective forces of the revolution, especially the Party and the people's army, started from scratch. The Party was rebuilt from scratch on December 26, 1968; moreover, it had to face the attacks not only of the barefaced enemy but also the vicious Lava revisionist remnants of the old merger Party. The New People's Army was also built from scratch on March 29, 1969; moreover, it had to face not only the reactionary armed forces but also the Lava revisionists and the Taruc-Sumulong gang.

Not a single rifle was carried over to the full-time guerrillas of the New People's Army from either the anti-Japanese resistance of the Hukbalahap in World War II or from the civil war that followed it. The Lava revisionist renegades had thrown away every gun gained from the previous armed struggle as a result of Jose and Jesus Lava's "Left" opportunist errors and then Jesus Lava's Right opportunist errors. The New People's Army had to start with a few rifles and handguns seized mainly from the Taruc-Sumulong gangster clique to arm nine undersized squads of about seven fighters each.

Since it was founded, the New People's Army has had to wage a people's war under conditions where there is neither a global war among the imperialist powers nor an open war among the reactionaries. From the outset, the people's army has had to contend with a highly unified armed forces. It deserves the highest commendation for having preserved itself and still having made some expansion and consolidation in the face of strong enemy military task forces, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in 1971 and presently, the martial rule of a fascist dictatorship. Even now when the bulk of the enemy strength is concentrated in Southwestern Mindanao against the Bangsa Moro Army, the enemy still manages to maintain in each region a task force and in each province constabulary and integrated police forces that are hundreds of times in armed strength against ours.

It remains a gross disadvantage and weakness for the New People's Army to have so few rifles and small concentrable forces to face an enemy who launches campaigns of "encirclement and suppression" by deploying so many units no smaller than a half-company for outpost work and oversized platoons, rallying to a full regular company or even a full battalion, for seeking encounters with us within an area of encirclement. Under such circumstances, it is quite difficult for us to maintain the initiative and carry out the policy of annihilation in battles. The opportunity to wipe out an enemy squad or platoon does not often present itself. The enemy even goes so far as to force the evacuation of the entire population by perpetrating massacres, looting, bombardment and arson. Deprived of mass support within a given area, our small guerrilla forces have to shift elsewhere in the main.

At the moment, the only way to amplify our armed strength and fighting effectiveness is to give full play to the popular support that we enjoy. The bolos, spears, crossbows, traps and other indigenous weapons which the masses can easily avail themselves of have to be combined with homemade explosives and the few rifles in our hands. By seriously implementing the policy of luring the enemy and advancing in waves on a favorable terrain both strategically and tactically, we can most effectively put to use the combination of rifles and indigenous weapons and we can at certain times use only the latter, if these are the only ones available. There are even occasions when by some strategem we can disarm "home defense" forces, local police forces and small enemy units without firing a single shot. By taking the initiative fully into our hands, we can repeatedly induce the enemy to bring himself to our well-laid ambush or send his superior strength somewhere so that we can attack his weak force elsewhere. On each occasion we make sure of seizing the enemy's military equipment.

Especially because of our smallness and weakness, there are two opposite dangers that we have to avoid and counteract. One is trying to cover an area that is actually wider than we can sufficiently cover. This usually involves overdispersing our guerrilla squads. The other is concentrating on so small an area that at one whiff of the enemy we do not know where to shift. Guerrilla forces in relation to regular mobile forces operate according to the principle of dispersal. But since all that we have are small guerrilla forces, with absolutely no regular mobile forces yet to serve as main force on any occasion, then we have to have some relative concentration and some relative dispersal according to the scale of our present guerrilla warfare. We have to have main guerrilla units as well as secondary guerrilla units, guerrilla bases as well as guerrilla zones.

Depending on the circumstances, we have to dispose our limited forces in accordance with definite tasks, in a correct direction and within a definite radius. Our action takes the form of either concentration, shifting or dispersion. We concentrate to attack the enemy, mainly in the form of ambushes and raids on small enemy units that we can wipe out. We disperse to conduct propaganda and organizational work or to "disappear" before the enemy. We shift to circle or retreat to gain time and seek favorable circumstances for attack. Our guerrilla warfare is characterized by flexibility or timely shifting from one mode of action to another and by fluidity or frequent shifting of ground. We must grasp and give full play to this characteristic to maintain the initiative against the enemy.

Our experience has shown that our superiority over the enemy lies in our fighting a just war, a war for the people's democratic interests. We could not have lasted for so long with so small and weak an armed force were it not for the correct ideological and political line that the Communist Party of the Philippines has carried since its reestablishment. The enemy is bogged down in an ever-deepening political and economic crisis and does not cease to perpetrate self-defeating abuses and arouse the people to rebel. Under the absolute leadership of the Party, the New People's Army is confident of winning victory because wherever it is and goes it proves to be politically superior to the enemy because it has a flexible strategy and tactics based on concrete conditions that it comprehends. The Party is still organizationally small and weak like the New People's Army but it is bound to grow into a big and strong force so long as it perseveres in its correct ideological and political line.

As matters now stand on a nationwide scale or even on the scale of every region, the New People's Army has no alternative but to be on the strategic defensive in opposition to the strategic offensive of an overweening enemy. But the content of our strategic defensive is the series of tactical offensives that we are capable of undertaking and winning. By winning battles of quick decision, we are bound to accumulate the strength to win bigger battles and campaigns to be able to move up to a higher stage of the war. To graduate from guerrilla warfare to regular mobile warfare as the main form of our warfare, we have to exert a great deal of effort over a long period of time. We are still very much at the rudimentary and early substage of the strategic defensive.

We may state that in the long process of its growing from small and weak to big and strong, our people's army will have to undergo certain stages and substages. Having in mind a probable course of development whereby our forces are inferior now and will consequently become equal and finally superior to the enemy, we can tentatively define three strategic stages that our people's army will have to undergo.

It is now undergoing the first stage, the strategic defensive. Consequently, it shall undergo the second stage, the strategic stalemate, when our strength shall be more or less on an equal footing with the enemy's and our tug-of-war with the enemy over strategic towns, cities and larger areas shall become conspicuous. Finally, it shall undergo the third stage, the strategic offensive, when the enemy shall have been profoundly weakened and completely isolated and shall have been forced to go on the strategic defensive, a complete reversal of his position at the stage of our strategic defensive.

The future of the New People's Army is bright, though it has to go through a long and tortuous road. On the other hand, the future of the reactionary armed forces is dark. A mercenary and parasitic military in the service of U.S. imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism has no future, except failure and doom. The most powerful weapon is in the hands of the people's army. That is the people's support. We cannot wage a revolutionary war without it.

The New People's Army fights for the people's democratic interests with self-abnegating and highly conscious iron discipline and with wise and well-informed courage. Our Red commanders and fighters fight without fear of sacrifice and death because they are fighting in the broad interest of the people and not in the narrow interest of the imperialists or any individual or clique among the reactionaries. At the level of strategy, our Red commanders and fighters hate and are contemptuous of the enemy. But at the tactical level, they take serious and meticulous consideration of him so as to defeat every plot and maneuver that he is capable of.