<div style="text-align: justify; "><b style="font-size: 1rem;">If you look at a map of East Asia, you can see an arc of US alliances stretching from South Korea and Japan in the north to Australia in the south.</b><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But smack in the middle of that is a missing link - the Philippines, which borders two of the biggest potential flashpoints, Taiwan and the South China Sea, or the West Philippine Sea as Manila insists on calling it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">America hopes to finally stitch that gap when Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin meets Philippine President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr in Manila on Thursday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A deal with the Philippines, in part reversing the US' departure from their former colony more than 30 years ago, is no small matter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There is no contingency in the South China Sea that does not require access to the Philippines," says Gregory B Poling, director of the Southeast Asia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The US is not looking for permanent bases. It's about places, not bases."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That is, it is seeking access to places where "light and flexible" operations involving supplies and surveillance can be run as and when needed, rather than bases where large numbers of troops will be stationed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">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.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We had a live and let live situation in the South China Sea. But in 2012 they tried to seize control of Scarborough Shoal. Then in 2014 they began building the islands. The land grab by China changed the relationship."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We have very limited capability against the threat from China," says former Philippine Ambassador to the US Jose Cuisia Jr.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He says the Chinese have repeatedly broken promises not to militarise their new South China Sea bases.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The Chinese have militarised those features and that puts more of our territory under threat. Only the US has the power to stop them. The Philippines cannot do it alone."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But this time there will not be thousands of US marines and airmen filling the red-light districts of Olongapo or Angeles city again. BBC</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br></div><div style="text-align: justify; ">bnbd24/kh</div>