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Three Decades After Subic Bay Withdrawal, U.S. Military Returns to the Philippines With a New Model to Check China
When both Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base were closed as active American military facilities in the early 1990s, the Philippines was said to be the sick man of US alliances. The same Philippines now seems to have emerged as America’s pivot in the Indo-Pacific.
General Ronald Clark, Commander of US Army Pacific, made it clear in an October 18 interview with the Financial Times that the Philippines, alongside Japan and South Korea, is central to US deterrence against hostile forces (implying China) in the Indo-Pacific.
The commander of US Army Pacific, a component of Indo-Pacific Command, said he wanted to demonstrate more “exquisite” military capabilities to help “show the adversary some things that they should be concerned about.”
As part of that push, US Army Pacific has expanded its role, including by temporarily deploying weapons in the Philippines, Japan, and other parts of the region that would play a critical role in a war with China, including over Taiwan, according to General Clark.
He revealed how Typhon, a mobile missile launch system that fires SM-6 missiles at ships, and Tomahawks that could strike parts of coastal China from the Philippines, have been used in recent joint exercises with the Philippines.
The US Army has also been using the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) in ways designed to send a clear message to China about the joint military capabilities of America and its allies, Clark said.
Mentioning an exercise earlier this year in which the army moved long-range precision weapons from the US to the Philippines and brought ammunition from South Korea for a live-fire mission, Gen. Clark stressed that it was important for deterrence.
“It causes them to go: ‘Hey, this is something that we have to think about,’” he said, adding, “You can see it operate and we can do it at scale at a time and place of our choosing. So, you reveal capability in order to give your adversary pause.”
Incidentally, in an earlier conversation with the Wall Street Journal, Gen. Clark, who commands 107,000 soldiers, talked about the “tyranny of distance” that made it impossible to fight China with just air and naval power.
He argued that China’s vast geographic expanse and its anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities make it impossible or too risky to rely solely on air and naval power.
Here, Gen. Clark argues that the Philippines’ geography is a major advantage. The country’s 7,641 islands sit near vital maritime routes, the South China Sea, and the Luzon Strait/Taiwan Strait, making it an irreplaceable staging ground for US surveillance, logistics, and coastal defense.
From Batanes in northern Luzon—100 miles from Taiwan—to Palawan facing the Spratlys in the south, the archipelago locks the two hottest flashpoints: the north controls the Taiwan Strait, and the south controls the South China Sea.
For the US military, it is the only territory that can monitor both the Taiwan Strait and the West Philippine Sea simultaneously. The archipelago can thus complicate the movement of Chinese naval forces from their coastal waters into the wider Pacific.
Incidentally, America is rebuilding its military presence in the Philippines after its 1992 withdrawal.
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The return to Subic Bay and the expansion of US military cooperation across the Philippines mark a major strategic reversal. Washington is once again developing access to facilities that can support its operations in the western Pacific.
The US has access to nine Philippine military sites under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) and is investing more than $300 million to upgrade infrastructure.
However, all 9 (nine) bases are owned by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), but the US has been granted rotational access. The first 5 (five) were agreed in 2014, with 4 (four being added later in 2023 by President Marcos Jr. to deal with threats from the South China Sea.
The nine sites are being turned into A2/AD nodes that complicate any Chinese movement through the First Island Chain.
Notably, rather than building massive permanent bases, the US and the Philippines are building a flexible, distributed network that complicates targeting by China and raises the costs of a potential conflict (“deterrence by denial”).
Viewed thus, it is understandable why the US has introduced, as seen in Gen. Clark’s FT interview, advanced mobile-strike and missile systems such as the Typhon mid-range missile system into the Philippines, capable of reaching targets in the South China Sea and southern China.
One could further argue that Gen. Clark’s interview was not about the Philippines alone. It was about a new American way of fighting a war in the Indo-Pacific that is distributed, land-based, visible, and anchored on three democracies of Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. That is why he put the Philippines in the same sentence as Japan and Korea.
One can thus surmise that, in a future contingency arising from Chinese actions, Japan will provide airfields, South Korea ammunition, and the Philippines firing positions.
This aligns with the US 2026 National Defense Strategy that EurAsian Times explained earlier. The idea is to build “a strong denial defense” along the First Island Chain.
In this scheme of things, Japan is the northern anchor — with long-range missiles, US-Japan command integration, and bases. South Korea is the arsenal and logistics hub — Clark himself cited a live-fire exercise in the Philippines using ammunition brought from South Korea, showing how Korean stockpiles now sustain Philippine operations.
The Philippines is the southern anchor and now a vital Indo-Pacific center for the US. The 12th Philippines-United States Bilateral Strategic Dialogue, held in Manila on February 16, 2026, officially reaffirmed both allies’ commitment to maintaining a vigilant posture, strengthening deterrence across the First Island Chain, and keeping critical sea lanes open.
Apparently, Washington is not only institutionalizing this triangle, the US, Japan, and the Philippines, but also widening its scope by involving Australia and forming the “Squad.”
The Squad’s core focus is to counter maritime pressure and escalation in the South China Sea and East China Sea and reinforce freedom of navigation.
Accordingly, defense officials and defense chiefs from the four nations have increasingly aligned through mini-lateral dialogues, joint exercises (such as Balikatan), and security assistance packages (including transfers of Japanese warships and patrol aircraft to the Philippine Navy).
The developments above make it clear that the Philippines has become the centerpiece of Washington’s strategy to deter China in the Indo-Pacific. As Elbridge Colby, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said this year, Manila is Washington’s “model ally”.
In his words, “When our partners are strong, deterrence is strong. And that is exactly what we have here in Manila, under the leadership of President Marcos, Secretary of National Defense Teodoro, and other key leaders. We see and respect a resolute and proud nation that is determined to strengthen its own capabilities to better defend itself and its interests. A model ally.”
The Philippines now strengthens America’s network of strategic positions running from Japan through Taiwan to the Philippines. Both are developing capabilities intended to make Chinese military operations more difficult, costly, and uncertain.
But as explained above, that is in a manner that affords more operational flexibility for America through access to ports, airfields, and other facilities that can help US forces disperse, sustain operations, and respond more quickly during a crisis, without depending on a small number of major bases.
In other words, thirty-four years after losing its sovereign bases in the Philippines in 1992, the US military has returned with comparable power, but by shifting its status from a base owner to a rotational guest.
- Author and veteran journalist Prakash Nanda is Chairman of the Editorial Board of the EurAsian Times and has been commenting on politics, foreign policy, and strategic affairs for nearly three decades. He is a former National Fellow of the Indian Council for Historical Research and a recipient of the Seoul Peace Prize Scholarship.
- The author can be reached at prakash.nanda (at) hotmail.com
The post Three Decades After Subic Bay Withdrawal, U.S. Military Returns to the Philippines With a New Model to Check China appeared first on EURASIAN TIMES.
