President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines met with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at Malacañang Palace in Manila on Feb. 2, where they agreed to expand the U.S. military presence in the country.
In a joint statement, the two governments agreed to “announce their plans to accelerate the full implementation of the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement” (EDCA) and “designate four new Agreed Locations in strategic areas of the country.”
The EDCA, which was agreed upon in 2014, allows the U.S. to use land in the Philippines for its military activities. It was formulated almost a quarter of a century after U.S. troops vacated their bases in the Philippines — including a massive base at Subic Bay — during the collapse of the U.S.S.R. At that time, the U.S. operated on the assumption that it had triumphed and no longer required the vast structure of military bases it had built up during the Cold War.
From the 1990s, the U.S. assembled a new kind of global footprint by integrating the militaries of allied countries as subordinate forces to U.S. military control and building smaller bases to create a much greater reach for its technologically superior airpower.
In recent years, the U.S. has been faced with the reality that its apparent singular power is being challenged economically by several countries, especially China. To contest these challenges, the U.S. began to rebuild its military force structure through its allies with more of these smaller, but no less lethal, bases.
It’s likely that three of the four new bases in the Philippines will be on Luzon Island, at the north of the archipelago, which would place the U.S. military within striking distance of Taiwan.
For the past 15 years, the U.S. has pushed its allies — including those organised in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — to strengthen their military power while increasing U.S. techno-military power and reach by establishing smaller bases across the world and producing new aircraft and ships with greater territorial reach.
This military force was then used in a series of provocative actions against nations it perceived as threats to its hegemony, with two key countries, China and Russia, facing the sharp edge of the U.S. spear. At the two ends of Eurasia, the U.S. began to provoke Russia through Ukraine and provoke China through Taiwan. The provocations over Ukraine have now resulted in a war that has been going on for a year, while the new U.S. bases in the Philippines are part of an escalation against China, with Taiwan as a battleground.
Flashpoint
In recent years, Taiwan has become a flashpoint for tensions between the United States and China. The seriousness of the situation was recently underscored on Dec. 21, when U.S. and Chinese military aircraft came within 3 metres of each other over the South China Sea.
At the root of this simmering conflict are the countries’ diverging perspectives over Taiwan’s sovereignty. The Chinese position, known as the “One China” principle, is firm: although the mainland and Taiwan have different political systems, they are part of the same country, with sovereignty residing in Beijing.
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