[asia-apec 916] Resolution on US-Japan Militrist Agenda

[ppc]

DECLARATION of the ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION on US-JAPAN MILITARIST AGENDA
in the ASIA-PACIFIC

Co-sponsored by BAYAN-Philippines and Asia-wide Campaign
at the Asia-Pacific People's Assembly, Kuala lumpur, Malaysia

12 November 1998

Globalization, trumpeted as the inexorable integration of the vastly
disparate economies of the advanced capitalist countries and the
backward, pre-industrial Third World nations into a single prosperous
world economy, has unraveled and become exposed as a false messiah.
Instead, the policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization
are now widely seen as delivering deathblows to the crisis-ridden
economies of underdeveloped countries and the so-called newly
industrializing countries (NICs).

The results for oppressed peoples are plain to see: workers thrown out of
their jobs or forced to
accept slave wages and myriad flexibilization schemes; peasants and
indigenous peoples displaced from their land and driven to extreme
poverty by "development projects" and export-driven land conversions; massive
migration of rural poor to cities only to become jobless slum dwellers;
the commerce of women and children in sweat shops and burgeoning sex
trade; the exploitation and abuse of migrant labor; bankruptcies of
domestic enterprises and entire economies.

Working people in industrialized countries are not spared as
international capital seeks to invest and set up shop where labor costs
are the lowest and trade unions are crushed, coopted or non-existent.

Resurgent mass protests, uprisings, national liberation struggles and
generalized unrest are the peoples' response to severe economic hardships
brought about by the neoliberal policies of imperialist globalization.

In the Asia-Pacific, the US and its junior partner, Japan, have been most
active in pushing globalization to the dominated countries and peoples.
They unite in coercing the latter to comply with GATT-WTO, IMF-World Bank
and APEC and other regional economic bloc impositions, with the collusion
of subservient states and their ruling elites, in order to open the door
wide open to corporate plunder by monstrous TNCs.

The current financial and economic crisis which saw the crash of East
Asian economies including that of Japan, the collapse of the Russian
economy, the floundering of the Chinese and Latin American economies, and
now threatening to backlash on the US and EU economies, only underscores
the urgency for the US and Japan to secure their immense interests in
the region.  In order to to protect these interests and to suppress
peoples' movements challenging them, the US and Japan flex their
military might and intervene covertly and overtly in the internal
affairs of countries in the region.

Despite being the sole superpower in the world today, the US maintains
100,000 forward deployed troops in main military bases and facilities
concentrated in South Korea and Okinawa islands.  Post-World War II
military treaties concluded by the US with Japan, South Korea, the
Philippines, Thailand and others are the cornerstone of US hegemony
in the region.  Other Asian countries without US bases are covered by
Accessing and Cross Servicing Agreements (ACSA) which provide unhampered
sea/air ports usage and supply arrangements.

The US and Japan have strengthened their strategic security alliance and
stepped up their joint military activities. Building on the basis of the
1952 US-Japan Security Alliance, the two governments issued in 1996 the
Joint Declaration on Security Alliance and followed this in 1997 with
the New Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Security Cooperation. It can no
longer be denied: Japanese militarism is being revived in conjunction with
US domination of the Asia-Pacific.

The New Guidelines enable the US and Japanese military to conduct joint
operations not only for the "defense of Japan"  but also in case of
"emergencies in areas surrounding Japan," like the Korean peninsula, the
Taiwan straits, and other flashpoints in the region.  It extends the
scope of operations of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces all the way to
the Indian Ocean, Middle East and East Africa.

As a concrete example, in May this year, when the Indonesian people rose
up to overthrow the Suharto dictatorship, the New Guidelines were
implemented. US Marines in Okinawa island were dispatched and waited off the
Indonesian coast to intervene if the pro-imperialist government should
collapse. The Japanese government mobilized Air Self-Defense Forces and
the Maritime Safety Agency.

The US is currently applying intense political and economic pressure on the
Philippine government to immediately ratify a Philippine-US visiting forces
agreement or VFA in the wake of the dismantling of US bases there in
1991.  This one-sided, onerous and deceptive agreement seeks to re-establish
US military presence in the Philippines and Southeast Asian region.

The Korean peninsula continues to be divided between North and South as
the Korean War has not ended since only a fragile truce and not a peace
treaty exists between the protagonists.  Meanwhile the US' saber rattling
against North Korea is undermining the people's demand for peaceful
reunifiction and destabilizing the entire Asia-Pacific region.

In Indonesia, the US is actively intervening to ensure a post-Suharto
and Habibie pro-US regime which allows for civilian rule but under which
the dreaded US-trained and armed ABRI or Indonesian Armed forces
retains its "dual function in security and politics." This means ABRI keeps
its vast apparatus of repression and is rendered immune to being held
accountable for gross human rights violations such as the slaughter of
half a million Indonesians when Suharto seized state power in 1965 and
the extermination of one-third of the East Timorese people with the
forcible annexation of East Timor.

Peace-loving peoples of the Asia-Pacific must condemn the US military
hegemony in Asia-Pacific, Japan's growing militarism and the US-Japan military
alliance.

To frustrate imperialist attacks against militant peoples' movements and
the outbreak of US and Japan wars of aggression in the region, we must
strengthen our own struggles as well as international solidarity in
order to realize the following:

1) abrogation of all US military agreements and treaties specially the
US-Japan Security Treaty and Defense Cooperation Guidelines;

2) junking of the proposed RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement;

3) removal of US military bases in the Asia-Pacific region, in particular
Okinawa, Japan and South Korea;

4) conclusion of a peace treaty to end the cease-fire status between
North Korea and the US  and promote the peaceful and independent
reunification of Korea;

5) abrogation of the Taiwan Relations Act to prevent US intervention in
the Taiwan Strait and promote peaceful relations and the reunification
process of Taiwan and mainland China.

6) dismantling of the “dual function” of the US-trained and armed Indonesian 
Armed Forces and  making them accountable for gross human rights violations.