U.S. IMPERIALISM AND REVOLUTIONARY INTERNATIONALISM
by Jose Maria Sison

(Speech prepared for the 12th World Conference Against A & H Bombs, Japan, July 28 to August 29, 1966.)
 

Exceprts:

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Today, the Philippines remains as an important link in the U.S. imperialist chain. It is the country in Asia whose economy, politics, culture and military are most controlled by U.S. imperialism and yet where there is the most appearance of autonomy.

Thinking in terms of our present conference, we realize how the Philippines has served as a base for U.S. economic, political, cultural and military aggression.

Thinking in terms of the military bases which are more than twenty and which are strategically located all over the Philippine archipelago, you can very well see the gravity of the task of the Filipino people for their own sake and for the cause of the international struggle for freedom and genuine peace.

Against our sovereignty, the U.S. government exercises extra-territorial rights within the large areas of our national territory and its troops enjoy extraterritorial rights extending to every corner.

The system of U.S. military bases in the Philippines has always served as the launching ground for U.S. aggression against neighboring brother peoples, particularly our Vietnamese brothers at the present moment.
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The complete speech:

AS PHILIPPINE DELEGATE, I am happy to extend my people's warmest greetings of friendship and solidarity to the Japanese people and to the various countries participating in this 12th World Conference Against A & H bombs.

I have come with the high hope that we shall be able to share our experiences in the struggle for freedom and truly lasting peace, arrive at the correct methods of struggle and re-enforce our common determination to fight today's chief cause of war and national oppression -- U.S. imperialism.

Let us, therefore, take advantage of the highly representative character of this world conference which embraces six zones: Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, Oceania, and the United States.

The Philippine delegation in this conference is of the view that the struggle for national and social liberation is inseparable from the struggle for a lasting peace. So long as colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism -- spearheaded by U.S. imperialism -- exist and so long as U.S. imperialism exists effecting the subjugation and exploitation of peoples throughout the world, no truly lasting peace can be created by any people without resolute struggle against U.S. imperialism can we achieve genuine peace instead of a capitulationist postponement of struggle or a prolongation of imperialist domination.

U.S. imperialism tries to perpetuate its world-wide system of exploitation by constantly threatening a nuclear war. It is fear of this nuclear blackmail that is precisely desired by U.S. imperialism so as to weaken the resistance and determination of peoples throughout the world.

The answer to U.S. nuclear blackmail is revolutionary struggle.

The power of U.S. imperialism is already over-extended throughout the world. Its foundations are over- strained as may be confirmed by the American delegates here. All that we, the peoples of the world, have to do is to strike at that link of the imperialist chain which falls on each of our own countries. Every link of the U.S. imperialist chain at this stage of world development has become brittle and can easily be broken by the revolutionary struggle of the masses of the people.

The nuclear power of the United States becomes useless if all peoples of the world, including the American people, will engage in revolutionary struggle. The threat of a global nuclear war will become effective and come into reality only if imperialism within their respective sphere of action and thereby fail to scatter the attention of U.S. imperialism from the present world focus of struggle that is Vietnam.

As long as there is no revolutionary opposition to imperialism in North America and Europe and no militant attempts to develop it there, U.S. imperialism will always take the opportunity of concentrating its aggressive forces in Asia and attempt to destroy the world-wide struggle for freedom part by part. In this light, we can see the counter-revolutionary character of modern revisionism, particularly its capitulationism which genuine anti-imperialists readily recognize.

At this stage of world history, no strategy and tactics can be pursued in one part of the world without reference to other parts of the world. There is only one main line and that is: every people of the world must resolutely perform their internationalist duty of striking at the chief cause of war, U.S. imperialism.

After clarifying with you the essential principle that revolutionary struggle is the sure guarantee for world peace and the prevention of nuclear war, I which to appraise you of the degree of imperialist domination in my country and you can easily imagine how much contribution to the world-wide struggle for freedom would be giving by breaking the aggressive power of U.S. imperialism in their own sphere of action.

You are, of course, aware of the fact that the Philippines was conquered by the United States at the beginning of this century. The main purpose of the U.S. then as it still is now was to make use of my country as an advance base for its monopoly- capitalistic expansionist drive towards the whole of Asia, particularly towards China under the aegis of the Open Door policy.

In order to achieve its imperialist purposes, the U.S. government had to murder more than 250,000 Filipinos within the short period of 1899-1902. With or without nuclear weapons, it is in the nature of U.S. imperialism to murder so many of our people, burn down our homes and commit many more brutalities. As in the Vietnam war, there is really no difference in the deadly effects of nuclear weapons and those of the weapons now currently used.

What really mattes is whether U.S. imperialism should be done away with now or given a new lease on life by capitulationism through an inordinate fear of nuclear weapons.

In my country alone, you can very well see the results of flabbiness and capitulationism. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the ilustrado or liberal- bourgeois leadership tried to give class leadership to the masses but it was not really clear about the process of revolution. When the U.S. imperialists came to destroy the Philippine revolution and the Philippine's revolutionary government, these capitulationists in the ranks of the revolutionaries were taken in by the U.S. slogans of "benevolent assimilation," "education for self-government", and "pacification" which actually meant the wide-scale murder of the Filipino people and the destruction of our national democratic values.

These capitulationists have become the active collaborators of the U.S. imperialist in the exploitation of the Filipino people. To continue the unfinished Philippine revolution today, more difficulties and more sacrifices must be made because of previous compromises and capitulation, and betrayals.

Because the first national democratic revolution in Asia and Africa, as the Philippine revolution was, became frontally attacked by U.S. imperialism and sabotaged from inside by capitulationists, with success in both instances, U.S. imperialism succeeded in clearing its path for widespread aggression throughout Asia for more than six decades up to the present.

Today, the Philippines remains as an important link in the U.S. imperialist chain. It is the country in Asia whose economy, politics, culture and military are most controlled by U.S. imperialism and yet where there is the most appearance of autonomy.

Thinking in terms of our present conference, we realize how the Philippines has served as a base for U.S. economic, political, cultural and military aggression.

Thinking in terms of the military bases which are more than twenty and which are strategically located all over the Philippine archipelago, you can very well see the gravity of the task of the Filipino people for their own sake and for the cause of the international struggle for freedom and genuine peace.

Against our sovereignty, the U.S. government exercises extra-territorial rights within the large areas of our national territory and its troops enjoy extraterritorial rights extending to every corner.

The system of U.S. military bases in the Philippines has always served as the launching ground for U.S. aggression against neighboring brother peoples, particularly our Vietnamese brothers at the present moment.

Only this year, the U.S. government has succeeded in forcing the Philippine puppet President and Congress to dispatch 2,000 combat troops to South Vietnam and appropriate P35 million for this year alone at the expense of our people who are badly in need of these funds themselves to alleviate their poverty and suffering. This step taken by our government brings to a new level its involvement in the U.S. war of aggression against the Vietnamese people of both South and North. This step is a shameless act before all freedom-fighting and peace-loving people of the world. This step was taken over the heads of the Filipino people and must be roundly condemned by this conference.

Cherishing our own revolutionary traditions and our national democratic aspirations that still need to be realized, we, the Filipino people, are vigorously opposing the U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. We have experienced and we know that we are still going to experience what the Vietnamese people are now experiencing from U.S. imperialism in their struggle for national liberation.

We are of the view that the United States and its co- aggressors should withdraw immediately from South Vietnam and let the Vietnamese people fulfill their own demands. The attempt of the U.S. government to suppress the national democratic aspirations of the Vietnamese people is basically similar to our own suppression for the last more than six decades.

We are too familiar with the U.S. imperialist siren call for peace and negotiations as a smokescreen to bring its policy of aggression and war to a new and more dangerous level. No amount of whitewashing can remove from our view the blood on the murderous hands of those thrill-killers and pyromaniacs in Washington and Wall Street.

The bombing of the periphery of Hanoi and Haiphong is nothing but an act of desperation, a clear sign of the accelerating collapse of the Saigon puppet government and the failure of the all-out U.S. aggression.

For the first time in the history of Gensuikyo, as I have been informed, the Philippines is represented in its World Conference. We, the Filipino people, take a special interest in this conference because we have hoped that in the light of recent and extremely vigorous American attempts to use Japan as a shield in its aggressive acts and maneuvers, we may be able to derive deeper knowledge and better perspective of the developing situation.

We, the Filipino people, are very much concerned with the consistent re-militarization and nuclearization of Japan. We suffered severely during World War II from the atrocities and depredations of Japanese imperialism. Until now, we have not forgotten these and no amount of reparations goods going into the hands of a few corrupt men in my country will give your monopoly-capitalists enough license to re-appear on the scene of their crime. We are once more alerted to Japanese militarism, a partner of U.S. imperialism in the exploitation of the unliberated areas of Asia, particularly Southeast Asia.

The Japanese people themselves, as the Philippine delegation has observed, condemn the re-emergence of Japanese militarism under the wings of U.S. imperialism. Like the Filipino people, they have suffered too much because of imperialist wars.

We are in deep sympathy with the struggle of the Japanese people against the militarization and nuclearization of Japan, against the persistence and expansion of U.S. military bases and facilities within Japanese territory, against the docking of nuclear- powered submarines, against the development of F-105D nuclear-capable bombers in Japan, against the criminal neglect of atomic bomb sufferers.

We are against the impending dispatch overseas of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, against the continued U.S. possession of Okinawa and Ogasawara, against the revision of the Peace Constitution, against the Japan- ROK Treaty and the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty and against the implementation of the three "Arrow Operation" plan.

The Philippine delegation takes note of how well- entrenched U.S. imperialism is in Japan even until now. We wish to expose before this conference the role of fuglemen that U.S. imperialism has assigned the Japanese monopoly-capitalists in such U.S. inspired maneuvers as the Asian and Pacific Conference (a preparation for a new military alliance embracing American puppet-state) and also the Southeast Asian Economic Development Ministerial Conference (dubbed as "independent Asian Diplomacy").

By putting Japan in the forefront, U.S. imperialism has the sinister motive of making the Japanese people share the blame and the costs of U.S. aggression in Asia, and making the Japanese government take belligerent attitude towards the Chinese people and supporting fascist regimes like those of South Vietnam, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia and others for the benefit of the monopoly-capitalists.

The Japanese people know the horrible effects of nuclear weapons as demonstrated by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and by the Bikini tests. The U.S. government tested its weapons on the Japanese people in an obvious act of racial discrimination.

The Japanese people, therefore, are very much concerned about the possession of nuclear weapons by imperialist states. This concern is shared by the Philippine delegation.

The Moscow Tri-Partite Treaty or partial test ban treaty has not brought us any closer to the prevention of nuclear war. It has on the other hand brought us closer to it because it has served only to legalize the nuclear stockpile of U.S. imperialism and it has allowed it to develop and improve its nuclear weapons through underground tests. The worst result of this treaty, of course, has been the further befuddling of the minds of revisionists.

The "non-proliferation" treaty being proposed by the United States and endorsed by its revisionist partners does not also bring us any closer to the prevention of nuclear war. On the other hand, it is intended to bring us closer to it because it obscures further the basic problem of imperialist possession of nuclear weapons, both strategic and tactical.

All countries of the world must heed the call of the People's Republic of China for the complete prohibition of nuclear weapons. All nuclear weapons must be banned and entirely destroyed. A common agreement to this effect and no less must be immediately made by all nuclear-armed countries.

Nevertheless, if a complete prohibition of nuclear weapons cannot as yet be achieved, then there is no substitute for persistent militant struggle of all peoples of the world against U.S. imperialism. Let us simply remember, that there was once a time when U.S. imperialism had nuclear monopoly and it engaged in nuclear blackmail. But, both nuclear monopoly and nuclear blackmail were rendered useless by revolutionary struggles. Why fear nuclear blackmail when the nuclear monopoly has been broken by revolutionaries?

On the part of the Filipino people, we realize fully that we can help prevent the outbreak of a nuclear war by setting ourselves free from U.S. imperialist domination. We know that we must first be freed of those U.S. military bases in our national territory to free ourselves from those nuclear weapons which they contain and which are poised against our brother Asian peoples. And we must also be freed of the U.S. economic, cultural and political domination for which these foreign military bases exist.

In conclusion, let me assure my brothers here that we, the Filipino people, shall prove ourselves worthy of your fraternal consideration only through militant struggle. Long live all anti-imperialist movements of the world!