THE upcoming peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) should be approached with caution, as we stressed in our earlier editorial on December 1, and perhaps even with a bit of healthy skepticism, given the unfortunate record of failure in all previous attempts to find a peaceful resolution to the world's longest-running communist rebellion. They are not, however, as Vice President Sara Duterte characterized them in a statement earlier this week, 'an agreement with the devil.'