The patriotic and peace-loving Filipino people, together with the American people, must condemn and reject the US government’s plan to provide the Philippines with $500 million in annual military aid for the next five years, in order to dump and preposition US war matériel in the Philippines.

This huge amount of US foreign military financing forms part of its war-mongering and war preparations against China, which is raising military tensions in the West Philippine Sea and the Asian region.

The planned US military aid will completely transform the Philippine military into an auxiliary force of the US military, that will be trained and tasked to handle US-provided weapons, to achieve US military objectives in its campaign to encircle and provoke China.

The increase in US military aid will also exacerbate the human rights situation in the Philippines amid Marcos’ order to intensify counterinsurgency operations. It will provide the AFP with more lethal and brutal force to carry out its campaign of political repression against the Filipino people.

At the instigation of US military advisers, the AFP has been spending billions of pesos to buy jet fighters, helicopters, bombs, missiles and rockets that have rained terror among the people in the countryside.

With the planned $2.5 billion military funding, American public money will again be used to bankroll the military-industrial complex. After having made large amounts of profits from US involvement in the war in Ukraine and support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, American arms manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing are drooling to pocket even more money from US war provocations in the Asia-Pacific.