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,” 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........

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