America hopes to finally stitch that gap when Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin meets Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr in Manila on Thursday.
Philippine sources say the deal would expand US access to military bases in the country – a key bit of real estate which would offer a front seat to monitor the Chinese in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
Three of the bases the US is seeking access to could be on Luzon, an island on the northern edge of the Philippines, the only large piece of land close to Taiwan – if you don’t count China.
In other words, this is not a return to the 1980s, when the Philippines was home to 15,000 US troops and two of the largest American military bases in Asia, at Clark Field and nearby Subic Bay.
Then in 1991 the Philippine government called time. The Filipinos had recently overthrown the hated dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, and sending the old colonial masters home would further cement both democracy and independence.
The Vietnam war was long over, the Cold War was winding down, and China was as yet a military weakling. So, in 1992, the Americans went home – or at least most of them did.
Roll forward 30-odd years and another Marcos – Ferdinand Marcos Jr or Bong Bong as he is popularly known – is back in the Malacañang Palace.
More important, China is no longer a military weakling, and it’s knocking on the Philippines’ front door. Manila has watched – horrified but powerless to intervene – as Beijing has set about redrawing the map of the South China Sea. Since 2014 China has built 10 artificial island bases, including one at Mischief Reef, deep inside the Philippines’ own exclusive economic zone or EEZ.
Up to then relations between Manila and Beijing had been free of major problems, says Herman Kraft, a political science professor at University of the Philippines.