The recent news that US President Donald Trump has invited Marcos Jr. to sit on his so-called “board of peace” is beyond absurd. There is no peace to be found among warmongers and mass murderers. What both Trump and Marcos Jr. represent instead is the peace of the graveyard marked by the silence enforced by bombs, bullets, and a climate of fear and impunity.
Trump’s attempt to posture himself as a “peacemaker” is exposed by his own record of unabashed US warmongering from military aggression and regime-change operations in Syria, Venezuela, and Iran, to his brazen threats against Greenland and even Canada, In the United States, Trump has unleashed brutal attacks against immigrants, and activists, criminalizing dissent and stoking racist violence, further isolating himself alongside a government of loyal sycophants.
Under the Marcos Jr. regime, at least 48,200 people, mostly peasants and indigenous communities, have been forcibly displaced as a result of relentless aerial bombardment and intensified “counterinsurgency” operations across the Philippine countryside. At least 15 individuals have been forcibly disappeared, while more are killed including NDFP peace panel consultants and negotiators. At least 134 civilians have been murdered, including children and women, as the fascist Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) continues indiscriminate bombings and ground operations that violate international humanitarian law.
Far from pursuing genuine peace, the Marcos Jr. regime has consistently refused to address the roots of armed conflict – chronic landlessness, joblessness, and poverty. Decades of failed agrarian reform programs have left millions of farmers landless, with 7 out of 10 farmers still unable to own the land they till, and condemned instead to semifeudal and feudal forms of exploitation. Workers’ wages are virtually stagnant. In 2025, incomes rose a measly 7.5%, far below the skyrocketing inflation of basic goods and necessities, effectively eroding real incomes and pushing more families into hunger and debt. Instead of confronting these structural injustices, Marcos Jr. has chosen the familiar path of militarization and fascist repression, branding any form of dissent as “terrorism.”
It is therefore no wonder that more and more Filipinos are joining the armed struggle in the countryside. Much like his father, Marcos Jr. has increasingly groomed himself as the number one recruiter of the New People’s Army.
That Marcos Jr. now finds himself embraced by Trump comes also as no surprise. Marcos Jr. has proven himself a loyal lapdog of US imperialism, faithfully implementing Trumps’ military, economic and geopolitical agenda. Recently, the US itself revealed the formation of a new permanent ground force in the country: the so-called “Army Rotational Force Philippines” further confirming the accelerated militarization being carried out under Marcos Jr.’s watch. This new US troop deployment exists alongside other US units such as Task Force Philippines and the Marine Rotational Force – Southeast Asia, signaling a state of perpetual US military presence on Philippine soil. This expansion also coincides with the deployment of US Typhon mid-range missile systems last year, the use of US drones, establishment of additional EDCA bases, and plans for over 500 large-scale military exercises involving more than ten thousand foreign troops in 2026 alone.
The farce of Marcos Jr.’s inclusion in Trump’s so-called “board of peace” is a futile PR tactic to launder the crimes of warmakers and US puppets. A harbinger of war, Marcos Jr. recklessly drags the Philippines closer to catastrophic US conflict with China out of his desperation to please Trump and his imperialist patrons.
Marcos Jr. is increasingly isolated. Recent impeachment complaints filed against him reflect the widespread people’s outrage over his regime’s brazen corruption and betrayal of the Filipino masses. The reactionary Philippine Congress may have blocked these actions to impeach Marcos Jr., but they cannot suppress the growing, uncontainable anger of the Filipino people.
Source: https://ndfp.info/no-peace-to-be-found-among-warmongers/