The government of the Philippines on Monday identified four new military camps to be used by U.S. forces.
Two of those camps will be across the sea from Taiwan, which has been the target of recent intensified saber-rattling by China. Analysts say that China has been watching and waiting to see how Russia fares in its invasion of Ukraine before going forth with an assault against its own self-governing neighbor, just one hundred miles off China’s coast.
The new camps follow a joint announcement in February to expand the United States’ military presence in the Philippines. The deal was made public during a visit to the Philippines by Lloyd Austin. The Secretary of Defense met briefly in Manila at the time with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who has said the move would boost his archipelago nation’s global defense.
The Philiippines is the United States’ oldest treaty ally in Asia, and the joint agreement in part reverses U.S. troop withdrawal from its former colony more than 30 years ago.
According to Marcos’ office, the new camps include a Philippine navy base in Santa Ana and an international airport in Lal-lo. Those locations, specifically, have reportedly added to already increased tensions between the U.S. and China because they would provide U.S. forces with a staging ground close to southern China and Taiwan.
In a statement, the Pentagon said the new locations “will strengthen the interoperability of the U.S. and Philippine Armed Forces and allow us to respond more seamlessly together to address a range of shared challenges in the Indo-Pacific region.”
