Last spring, the United States quietly placed long-range missile launchers within reach of China’s mainland — and almost no one noticed. There was no congressional debate, no televised announcement, and no vote.

It was the latest step of a growing military partnership with the Philippines, just across the South China Sea.

The U.S. has been steadily expanding its military footprint in the Philippines as part of its broader strategy against China, a nuclear-armed rival. With little public scrutiny or accountability, Washington is now preparing to deploy a second Typhon missile system to the Philippines. Experts and U.S. officials have widely acknowledged that the confrontational policy could bring the U.S. into direct conflict with China.

“The United States has been fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the Philippines since World War II,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a joint press conference in Manila earlier this year. “Our partnership not only continues today, but we are doubling down on that partnership, and our ironclad alliance has never been stronger.”

Filipino activists, for their part, want the U.S. military out.

“We are being used as a training ground, as an experiment ground for the U.S. missile system.”

“We are being used as a training ground, as an experiment ground for the U.S. missile system,” Mong Palatino, the secretary-general of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, a progressive civil society coalition, told The Intercept. “It endangers our population, it undermines our security. The lesson here is that we will not be able to be self-reliant as long as we are dependent on a former colonial master like the U.S. in protecting our sovereignty.”

The U.S. and Philippine governments spread misleading narratives to hype the threat posed by China threat as a means of justifying the U.S. military presence, he said.

The deployment of the offensive weapons system has already triggered a forceful response from China, which now publicly warns that these systems risk “self-inflicted destruction” for the Philippines and could upend fragile regional stability. Without naming Washington directly, China’s most recent national security white paper condemns the regional buildup of “intermediate-range missile systems” and the return of a “Cold War mentality.”

With the Philippines already embroiled in a maritime dispute over China’s claim to the entire South China Sea, the document warns that deploying missiles in the Philippines would lead to “aggravated regional tensions,” making maritime disputes “more difficult and complicated” to resolve.

Last year, China’s defense ministry spokesperson noted a pattern: “wherever US weapons are deployed, the risk of war and conflicts will rise, and the local people will suffer undeserved suffering from war.”

It’s difficult to imagine an American official accepting the deployment of Chinese or Russian missile systems in Mexico or Cuba; in one of those cases, obviously, not much of an imagination is needed. Yet Washington expects Beijing to tolerate precisely this scenario on its own doorstep.

The vast majority of Americans have little or no awareness of the U.S. expanding military posture in the Philippines, or what it could trigger. The American public has barely been informed that it may soon be underwriting another confrontation with a nuclear peer.

Once committed to confrontation, Manila’s leaders may gamble on indefinite U.S. support. If that support wavers, whether due to domestic politics, a loss of public appetite, or economic factors, the consequences could be ruinous for a country that will bear the brunt of any direct clash between the two giants.

The war in Ukraine serves as a cautionary tale. After years of war and staggering losses, Ukraine’s bargaining position is arguably worse than it was before the invasion, a tragic outcome that might have been avoided with early diplomacy.

The danger in the South China Sea is that Washington is encouraging a similar trajectory: backing increasingly aggressive stances from regional partners without fully grappling with the risks or leveling with the public about where this path could lead.

Once again, escalation is all happening in the absence of serious public debate.

“We’re Back With Them”

The first Typhon missile launcher, which can fire missiles as far as 1,200 miles, including Tomahawk cruise missiles, was stationed in the Philippines last year as part of annual joint military exercises between American and Filipino troops.

Washington has had a mutual defense treaty with the Philippines since 1951. In recent years, the U.S. military has expanded its presence, adding new bases and committing $82 million to build out infrastructure at those sites. The U.S. and the Philippines have also quietly approved a new ammunition manufacturing hub — funded by the U.S. and set to be built beside Subic Bay, which was once home to the largest U.S. naval base in Asia.

“They’re a very important nation militarily and we’ve had some great drills lately.”

The expansion of the security partnership accelerated under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the son of longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who has embraced Manila’s historic ties with Washington after a period of drift under his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.

After meeting with Marcos last week, President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. will lower its tariff rate for the Philippines from 20 percent to 19 percent.

“They’re a very important nation militarily and we’ve had some great drills lately,” Trump said after the meeting. “We’re back with them. I think I can say that the last administration was not getting along with them too well.”

“And Pete, I would say that you were — you couldn’t be happier, right, with the relationship,” Trump added, nodding to the defense secretary.

At the helm of this growing security relationship is Hegseth, a controversial appointment with little background in Southeast Asia. Hegseth, a former Fox News host, has even gone viral for his lack of familiarity with the region. During his confirmation hearing, he couldn’t name a single member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Meanwhile, activists in the Philippines — from fisherfolk and environmentalists to labor leaders — have been speaking out against the growing U.S. military presence. When 18,000 troops from the U.S., Philippines, and Australia took part in a military exercise in the South China Sea in 2023, protesters marched outside the U.S. Embassy in Manila, warning that the Philippines would be the most devastated if conflict broke out between the U.S. and China.

The U.S. military presence in the Philippines has long been resisted by the Filipino public, with mass movements successfully pressuring the government to expel American bases in the early 1990s. That victory came after decades of struggle under a U.S.-backed dictatorship and, today, with a Marcos back in power, the U.S. is strengthening its alliance even as authoritarianism tightens its grip.

As Washington turns the Philippines into a potential battleground for great-power conflict, Filipino activists hope Americans will also confront the long-buried history of how the U.S. first came to occupy the archipelago — through invasion, colonization, and the mass killing of Filipinos in the name of empire.

Most of all, though, they want those lessons to be transposed to the present, to stop the looming threat that their country could be sacrificed to war with China in the name of that same empire.

“Of course, we have a maritime dispute with China, but that maritime dispute should not be used as a justification to allow a country like the U.S. to use the Philippines as its forward military base,” Palatino said. “We should resolve our maritime dispute with China diplomatically and peacefully.”