For those of you with your eyes on that part of the world, you surely did not miss the arrest of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on March 11 earlier this year. Arrested and charged by the International Criminal Court, Duterte was flown to The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity.
Duterte, who has compared himself to Hitler, led the Philippine state between 2016 and 2022. During this time, this imperialist lackey intensified the counterrevolutionary war against the Filipino people. Since the Communist Party of the Philippines was reconstituted in 1968, the party has led the Filipino people in a people’s war against the Philippine state. The acts of which Duterte is accused by prosecutors were part of the Philippine state’s “war on drugs” and “war on terrorism,” both of which are covers for the war against the people and to crush the people’s war.
Collusion and struggle within the Philippine state
As we know, contradictions always exist within the bourgeois ruling class, as they can never resolve them. Instead, they unite as a class only in cullosions against other rival factions or against the oppressed classes in an attempt to curb the call for revolution. This side of the bourgeoisie, the struggle, is evident in several ways within the Philippine state following Duterte’s arrest.
The fact is that even though Duterte has now been charged and arrested, he represents a faction that still wields considerable power in the country. Sara Duterte, Rodrigo’s daughter, is the current vice president under Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who in turn is the son of the notorious dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled with an iron fist between 1965 and 1986. It seems that the former alliance between the two oligarch families has broken down with the new circumstances and Rodrigo Duterte out of the picture. In the spring, Sara Duterte tried to get her brother Paolo Duterte nominated as speaker of parliament, but this was prevented by, among others, the current speaker Martin Romualdez, cousin of President Marcos Jr.
To stir things up even more, Vice President Sara Duterte has been under indictment since December for corruption, among other things. However, she does not seem to be giving up without a fight and has declared herself to be in opposition to the government – which, of course, raises eyebrows given that she is the vice president. We will follow developments in the Philippines and our comrades’ analysis at philippinerevolution.nu. As they say, the genuine opposition of the people holds both the Duterte and Marcos factions responsible for their crimes against the people.
The same collusion and struggle exist in imperialist countries too, of course, but we see them expressed more openly in oppressed countries. Oppressed countries and their rulers do not always have their own country’s interests at heart when imperialist bribes beckon. Let us now look at the interests of Swedish imperialists in all this.
What are Swedish imperialists doing in the Philippines?
For Swedish anti-imperialists who sympathize with the Filipino people, it is extremely important to understand how Swedish imperialism is an accomplice and profiteer in the counterrevolutionary war. Swedish arms manufacturer Saab has negotiated billion-dollar deals with the Philippine state, including the sale of the notorious JAS Gripen fighter jet and the Sea Giraffe naval radar system. These negotiations began under the Duterte regime and are now being continued under Marcos Jr., which only shows that for imperialism, it matters little who sits on the throne.
In September 2024, the JAS 39 Gripen was exhibited at the Asian Defense and Security exhibition in the Philippines. The Swedish government facilitated Saab’s operations in the country in 2016 by opening an embassy immediately after Saab opened an office in the country’s capital, Manila. Between 2019 and 2023, military equipment worth SEK 136.7 million was exported from Sweden to the Philippines. In October 2024, the Philippine government presented a military rearmament plan worth approximately SEK 350 billion, which has made Swedish arms dealers’ mouths water. They naturally want as much of this military budget as possible to go to Swedish contracts.
Social democracy has been an incredibly powerful tool in facilitating these deals, especially during the previous government’s term in office. It was Social Democrat Mikael Damberg, former Minister for Enterprise and Innovation, Minister for Home Affairs, and Minister for Finance, who led Saab’s negotiating delegation with the Duterte regime in 2016. It was also under Social Democrat Morgan Johansson’s responsibility that several arms deals were signed with Duterte. Prominent Social Democrat Margot Wallström has on several occasions spoken about the importance of “feminist foreign policy,” especially during her time as foreign minister from 2014 to 2019, while at the same time supporting Duterte militarily, who has called on the military to “shoot female rebels in the vagina” in an attempt to quell the people’s uprising. Bourgeois feminism shows time and again that it is merely a tool to facilitate female imperialists, at the expense of the world’s people.
The Social Democrats are experts at lying, more than anything else. In 2013, former Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said that “It should not be okay to export weapons to countries that are clearly dictatorships,” while he himself has worked as a weapons lobbyist since the 1990s and currently works for the PR agency Rud Pedersen Communications, which represents Saab, while also serving as chairman of the Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament. Nor have we forgotten the Social Democrats’ involvement in Swedish arms exports historically – how liars like Olof Palme could condemn American imperialism when it suited them, only to sell weapons and vehicles to both sides in the Iran-Iraq war the next moment, as well as to both sides in the numerous conflicts between Pakistan and India, and to the fascist apartheid regime in South Africa, which used these weapons against the black population.
Swedish arms trade with other counterrevolutionary warring states
Thus, it is not only in the people’s war in the Philippines that the Swedish state profits from and is complicit in the slaughter of reaction and imperialism. Looking at more contemporary examples, Sweden exported military equipment to India between 2019 and 2023 worth SEK 3.4 billion, a figure that will only increase after Saab announced in early 2024 that it would open a new factory in the country. Since Sweden joined NATO, defense cooperation and arms trade negotiations with Turkey have increased. According to Svenska Freds, Sweden sold military equipment to Peru in 2023, the extent of which is confidential and we have not been able to ascertain. In April this year, it emerged that the government is now trying to get the Riksdag to approve a multi-billion dollar deal with the Peruvian landowner bureaucratic state. This includes up to twelve Jas Gripen E/F fighter jets. These fighter jets are being purchased for use against the people’s war by this genocidal regime. Swedish imperialists have long profited from arming the Peruvian state, particularly through Saab in Callao, where they manufacture the Combat Boat 90 H.
It is also worth mentioning that the Brazilian state is one of Swedish imperialism’s largest trading partners for military equipment, accounting for a total of SEK 12.9 billion between 2019 and 2023. In 2023, Brazil was the second largest buyer of Swedish military equipment. Swedish arms exports to Brazil have included the Bandvagn 206 from BAE Systems Hägglunds, AT4 anti-tank weapons, and Jas 39 Gripen fighter jets from Saab. One of the most important players in the negotiations between Saab and the Brazilian state has been Stefan Löfven, who has been involved in negotiations between both parties since 2008.
Despite its relatively small size, Swedish imperialism is an enemy of the world’s people. It does not care if it has to deal with a Duterte or a Marcos Jr. And likewise, it does not matter whether it is the Social Democrats or the Moderates who are in government here, they will all serve their masters, the Wallenbergs. Swedish imperialism has been sluggish in recent years, with stagnant and even negative growth. But now that Europe is gearing up for a dispute with the US, Swedish imperialism is ready to see the growth curve point upwards. This will be at the expense of the oppressed peoples of the world and the working class at home.