Makes the Phillipines the 51st state.
A strategic and resource asset.
“A strategic and resource asset.”
One of the reasons the United States retained the Philippines as a temporary territory after capturing them from the Spanish Empire during the Spanish-American War was to keep Germany, Japan, or other predatory nations from seizing them from the Filipinos and using those islands as an imperial base controlling international maritime trade in Asia and the South China Sea. The American plan was to prepare the Philippines to united its diverse populations engaged in perpetual civil wars and become a self governing society capable of self defense as either an independent nation or as a self governing U.S. territory.
China’s political and military offensives in the South China Sea highlight the problems which result from having a Philippines to disunited by civil war and domestic strife to maintain a credible defense of its own territories.