U.S. may expand military presence in Philippines

PanARMENIAN.Net - Two decades after American forces were evicted from their biggest base in the Pacific, the Philippines may ask the United States back to counter China's growing military power. The United States and the Philippines are in talks to increase the American military presence in Southeast Asia, VOA reported citing The Washington Post newspaper.

The Philippines has indicated a willingness to host American ships, surveillance aircraft and joint military exercises.

The U.S. was forced to leave its naval base in the Philippines Subic Bay in the 1990s after lawmakers rejected a new treaty.

But Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia analyst with the University of New South Wales says the Philippines' leadership is now reaching out to the U.S. to counter China's growing military power and continued confrontational incidents between Chinese and Philippine vessels in the South China Sea.

“The Philippines' nationalism is aroused because there are even further intrusions since last year in the Philippines waters and the Philippines has got basically a very low basis of which to even know what's going on let alone exercise jurisdiction,” Thayer said.

The South China Sea is of tremendous strategic importance to world shipping and is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves. China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia all hold competing claims to parts of the sea.

The talk of an increased American military presence in the Philippines follows agreements to base thousands of U.S. troops in Australia and to station warships in Singapore.