The United States has taken yet another step toward shaping the Southeast Asian archipelago nation of the Philippines into an Ukraine-style proxy with which to encircle and contain China, this time in the form of a $500 million military assistance package for Manila.

By exploiting the more emotional themes of superficial nationalism, the US is successfully clouding the Philippine population’s ability to focus on the more practical necessities of trade and development, shaping a national policy prioritizing the former at the expense of the latter, leaving the nation mired in poverty as it continues to fall behind the rest of the region.

Predicated on the supposed “threat” China poses to “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea, the US has encouraged Manila to reverse previously growing cooperation with China in the realm of infrastructure and development, and instead, invest in the nation’s militarization against China.

Amid the military build up, no alternatives to the economic prosperity and development China offers is even being discussed, let alone implemented.

Just as was the case for Ukraine from 2014 onward, the Philippines faces a future where, at best, it suffers irreversible economic decline, and at worst, finds itself at the center of a losing proxy war with China.

US Belligerence Over Chinese Building

According to a July 26, 2024 Defense One article titled, “Austin heads to Asia with $500M for the Philippines,” the US is providing hundreds of millions of dollars in “foreign military financing” to “help the island nation bolster its defenses.”
The article would elaborate further, stating:

The $500 million in assistance is part of what a second official described as the “first-ever security sector assistance roadmap, which provides a framework for efficiently investing this $500 million in foreign military financing as well as Philippine national funds investments. Initially, we’ll focus those shared investments on maritime self defense and cybersecurity capabilities.”

The same article cites tensions in the South China Sea between China and the Philippines stemming from a territorial dispute over the Second Thomas Shoal as an example of why the Philippines needs to “bolster its defenses,” which includes allowing the US military to expand its footprint across the nation.

Even a cursory examination of history proves, however, that China does not pose a threat to the Philippines, and that the nation’s biggest and most enduring threat is the United States itself.

A Sordid History of US Use and Abuse

The current US military presence in the Philippines is a legacy of America’s colonization of the archipelago nation from 1898-1945 during which the US brutally suppressed a war of independence, killing over 20,000 Filipino fighters and over 200,000 Filipino civilians. US abuses at the time included the use of concentration camps and torture, according to the US State Department’s own Office of the Historian.

Since........

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